That’s my take on it, or as I put it if they fire back it’s OK to kill them. If a civilian does take up arms to defend their country, they are acting as a militia and you can kill them too.
They could be in a factory making munitions and it’d be ok to bomb them, wouldn’t it?
Marc
Well, as other folks have mentioned, enemy troops don’t come with an “unwilling” tag that lets you sort out the conscripts from the enthusiastic. And once you’re in the “us vs. them” scenario up to your neck, all bets are off. So for an individual soldier, killing conscripts is done in self-defense, and is thus, in my view, a moral wash.
And as for the commanders and generals and the governmental heads who actually started the war - If you believe going to war is the right thing to do in a given instance, so much so that you’re willing to put your country’s own troops on the line - should you balk when you hear your opponent has instated a draft?
The more interesting question to me, and the one I thought you might be asking when I saw the title - is it moral to conscript unwilling people and send them to die in the first place?
If you’re even asking these questions, you’re probably not thinking of enlisting. If there is a draft, apply for CO status. If you go to war, the grunt beside you won’t appreciate the niceties of your philosophical position.
The US “shock and awe” style of warfare means killing innocent civilians, women and children. Join the service, you better be down with that.
When did war become an irrational undertaking? War may not be moral (it’s an arguable point anyway) but it’s often rational.
What exactly to you believe “shock and awe” means, exactly? You do realize that the phrase was supposed to mean a massive aerial bombardment of military positions (not civilian population centers) so that by the time the ground troops came in the enemy would be so demoralized all they’d have to do is round up POWs, right?
And you also realize that this never in fact happened? It was a disinformation campaign by the Pentagon, so that the Iraqis would be expecting a massive bombing campaign. Instead we moved in ground troops pretty much right away with most only close-air support. Iraqi generals didn’t believe reports of the positions of our ground troops because there hadn’t been the expected massive bombing campaign.
If you have a different understanding of what “shock and awe” means, perhaps you should explain it, explain where you got that impression, and explain why your interpretation of the phrase is more accurate than mine.
You may be right about “shock and awe”. I am not a close student of military strategic thinking. Surely you don’t suggest, though, that the US military campaign in Iraq does has not involved killing women and children, and more than a few? You may say we have tried to minimize it, but we do kill noncombatants.
Yes, innocent civilians, women and children do get killed in war. What I objected to was saying that this was the “US style” of warfare, as if the US military’s warmaking style is particularly prone to killing innocent civilians, women and children. That is not the case, in fact the opposite is true. If you had said:
“Warfare means killing innocent civilians, women and children. Join the service, you better be down with that.”
I wouldn’t have complained.
It somewhat depends on the rules of engagement that you and your enemy care to follow. But in general terms I see no problem in destroying equipment that produced material that the enemy is using to kill your guys, civilians who die in the attack are not the primary objective.
Can we have a cite that it ‘never happened’?
How do you explain the horrific bombing which was reported at the time - and also is documented on many websites ie. http://www.marchforjustice.com/shock&awe.php?
Is it your position that there was no bombing and that the destruction and death of civilians was all 'disinformation?
I guess maybe we are using different starting points. Once the war starts the postulates that were used as justification for starting it are, in essence, de facto accepted. Based on them and the fact that you are now at war, the conduct of the war becomes extremely rational.
I don’t think that makes war in its totality, including all of the factors that go into starting one, a rational operation.
It seems to me that even a psychopath is rationally following up on the postulates with which he starts.
And trying to make sense of the various rules and regulations during the battle about whom it is legal or moral to kill is as hazardous as asking a cop to pull out his policy manual to see whether or not he should shoot the guy who is reaching for a gun.
The only purpose I see for after the fact examination of wartime actions is to try to clarify the policy about conducting war so that the next time we won’t make the same mistakes.
Different mistakes are of course always excusable.
Unless your primary objective is to terrorize and demoralize your enemy into surrendering. This has certainly been a legitimate objecive in the past. Is it an immoral one? I don’t know. Is it ethical to kill half a million people to prevent the deaths of several million more?
The problem with war and especially in trying to fight a “limited war” is that it tends to spiral out of control. Generally when the stakes are that high, people will do whatever it takes to win. “Rules” are essentially meaningless if they mean the difference between victory and defeat.
In fact one of the primary aims of the European strategic air campaign was to make German civilian industrial workers, and the civilian population in general, targets. With the industrial workers it was intended to disrupt their lives to the point where their effectiveness in munitions making was degraded and for other civilians as a morale breaker.
The article in the Air Force Law Review gives a few details. The part of the Casablanca Directive that dealt with the strategic bombing was the result of a plan put forward early in the war by British Air Marshall Portal. He developed the plan, including estimates of RAF assest required, RAF losses and the number of civilian casulaties to be expected in the operation. Churchill took the plan forward to the Casablanc Conference with Roosevelt and the plan was generally adopted under the covering verbiage from the US side of “precision daylight bombing of military and industrial targets.”
Morally speaking it is okay to kill someone if they are trying to kill you. That is why no one ever talks about the act of killing conscripts as immoral.
The only morality that can be debated logically here is whether or not it is moral to have conscription at all.
I would tend to say conscription is indeed moral if the subjugation of the conscripts brings about greater good for a great number of people, and if the opposite action brings about great harm to a great number of people.
Also, you must not have been alive during Vietnam Wesley as many people indeed made it quite well known they considered it wrong that the military was made up of many unwilling participants. So it’s not like you’ve uncovered an issue that has not been addressed.
It just hasn’t been addressed recently because no major wars have been fought using conscripts as of late. Or at least not in countries where any sort of debate would even be considered in such a situation.
Actually I was specifically thinking of the Japanese campaign with the firebombing of Tokyo and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I think your example applies as well. In the PBS channel show I was watching the other day, there really was no consideration to not using the Bomb. How would Truman have been able to say “sure we could have ended the war 6 months and 100000+ lives ago with this superbomb we developed, but we chose not to”?
That’s a given. But is it morally ok to kill the guy who runs the powerplant that powers the munitions factory that arms the guy who’s trying to kill you?
By that logic couldn’t 51% of a population enslave 49% of the population for the “greater good?”
Marc
Or the person who buys and prepares the food so that the guy can function who rungs the power plant that … Or the motorman on the streetcar that takes to work the guy who runs the power plant that … And so on through virtually the entire population.
I think in war most those in the combat forces have to have blinders on and the functions need to be compartmentalized so that everyone concentrates on a specific and limited job so that thoughts about the end results of their actions don’t intrude.
No, because there cannot be a “greater good” with half the population enslaved, unless it is to prevent 100% from being enslaved or destroyed.
A better anology is “is it ok to temporarily enslave 10% of the population to defend the other 90% from slavery, oppression or destruction?”.