Here is the scenario. You have received highly reliable info that Saddam is in a specific location, let’s say a large building. You don’t know how long he will remain there. The dilemma: the building is currently occupied by 100-200 civilians, many of whom are women and children. You do not have ground troops close to the location, but you can target a cruise missile on the building in under ten minutes. Do you order the attack and risk killing scores of innocent civilians, or do you wait for another shot?
The reason why I posed this question is that in recent days, American troops have come under criticism for killing several Iraqi civilians in their attempts to take down Saddam. So what will it be? Do the benefits that come with the death of Saddam justify the additional civilian deaths that must also occur? I say no. Why? I don’t believe that we have the right to intentionally kill non-combatants in order to eliminate Saddam. (The key word here is “intentionally”.)
Whether or not we have the right to do so would be a good ethical debate, but will probably come to no good end, as most folks are polarized on this sort of issue.
Ethics aside, however, we have set plenty of precedent in the past for taking huge numbers of lives in order to resolve an issue, i.e. Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Waco, etc. We’ve become so desensitized to death in far-off places that it would not be much of a public relations risk for the military to take such action in Iraq.
To answer your poll-ish question, no, I don’t think the end would justify the means.
Ok, Saddam is no longer the head of Iraq. That makes him just a normal wanted man. The US can kill any normal wanted men anytime. It is not political assasination anymore.
Good thing there isnt a law prohibiting the overthrow of an foreign govt or else we’d be in deep doodoo.
and as for the OP. Personally, I would not use a cruise missile to kill a single person. Too messy. wont be enuf left to get a DNA sample from. I’d just keep track of him and wait for another shot.
The hundreds of civilians are definitely a factor, but you do know what we did to the same number of Branch Dividians in Waco Texas, right?
Darn. Here I was invited into an ethics question, only to find it based on an invented hypothetical. It is ethical to invent scenarios, then answer them in the name of ethics? Or is that called wild speculation?
