Some important distinctions

It occured to me recently (while showering, when most good ideas emerge) that much of the discussion about the morality of killing in war is ineffective because important distinctions aren't made clear.

First, there's the essential question. Is it ever morally justified to kill enemy combatants? If killing the bad guys is not morally justifiable, then all participation in war is immoral. I feel very confident that killing combatants who fight for an unjust cause is morally permissible and perhaps obligatory for soldiers waging a just war. In fact, I find that many people who oppose war on moral grounds don't have a problem with killing enemy combatants of an unjust aggressor.

What they they have a problem with is believing that the unjust enemy combatants can be held responsible for their actions. This leads to the question, Does it matter (morally) if the enemy combatants have been coerced (to some extent) into fighting? And what, after all, constitutes sufficient coercion to absolve a person of his moral responsibility?

Finally, there's the question of the unintentional killing of noncombatants. Even if it's morally permissible to kill the enemy combatants (free and coerced), should you do so if you can reasonably foresee that non-combatants will be killed as well?

In short, the issues of moral responsibility and collateral damage are central to almost all discussions about the morality of killing in war, although too often we don't make these distinctions explicit. I think that I make a good case for the morality of killing unjust enemy combatants, given that I hold myself (and others) to a high standard of autonomy and moral responsibility. The collateral damage piece I'm still trying to think, through. Our enemy in the current war uses noncombatants as tools to gain an advantage, so we cannot hope to avoid the issue.

The Good Samaritan arrives early

Among my statements that were included in the film "Soldiers of Conscience," my thought experiment about the Good Samaritan has evoked the most passionate feedback.

Some people have found it very helpful as a metaphor that expresses their moral sense that even good Christians must sometimes engage in violent acts in defense of themselves or others.

Conversely, some have taken offense. A person I'll refer to as TJ, a Methodist pastor, expressed his reaction in an email to me:

"First, please do not continue insult the story of the good samaritan by your interpretation. ...You are as ill-equipped to discuss theology, and especially in such a repulsive way, as I am to discuss military combat strategy...Your profile lists your interests to include faith and ethics. That, sir, may look good on your profile, but you and I both know that ethics and morals go out the window in war. To say otherwise... is insulting to the intelligence of all people who have ethics and morals in their lives...You should be ashamed. I will assume you are not."

For the record, all my work is based on my conviction that ethics and morals do NOT "go out the window in war." They are challenged by war's difficult circumstances, of course, but we must not respond to that challenge by quitting and giving in to evil; rather, we should redouble our efforts to prepare ourselves and create systems that empower moral behavior in combat. But I digress.

My insight on the Good Samaritan emerged from a conversation with a pacifist who was arguing that Jesus calls us to love, not to fight; that He calls us "to be like the Good Samaritan." The pacifist was assuming that someone who would kill someone who was attemping to kill the innocent is not someone who would help a beaten victim along the street, as it it were an either/or proposition.

I responded, "If I found a person left for dead along the road, I like to think that I would stop and render aid, just like the Good Samaritan. But if I found someone being beaten by robbers, I like to think that I would protect him by stopping the attack, even if I had to beat the hell out of the robbers. And I think the Good Samaritan would have done the same."

So, here's the thought experiment. What would the Good Samaritan--an exemplar given to us by Christ of a person who loves his neighbor--do if he had arrived at the scene earlier, while the robbers were assaulting the man?

1. Would the Good Samaritan walk on by?
2. Would the Good Samaritan stop and wait, allowing the beating to continue, and hope that the victim survived?
3. Would the Good Samaritan rush to find someone else to stop the beating?
4. Or, would the Good Samaritan risk his own safety to stop the attack and protect the victim, using violence as necessary?

When we look at it this way, I think it's pretty clear that the loving, decent, honorable, courageous, and Christian thing to do is to stop the attack.

After all, Jesus calls on us to love our neighbors as ourselves. I know that if I were ever being beaten mercilessly, I would fight back, and I would want any passerby to join in my defense. So, I will do the same for others.

I welcome and invite any feedback that focuses on the merits of the argument.

Jack Jett on Rational Radio

I just enjoyed a 20-minute conversation with Jack Jett on his radio show, which broadcasts in Dallas/Ft Worth and over the Web. His questions covered a lot of ground--pacifism, trust between the military and gov't, the justness of the war in Iraq, the morality of killing in war. He allowed me time to respond, and he was impressively fair.

I tip my hat to Jack, I hope his listeners found the conversation interesting, and I welcome any feedback.

Pete
Sat, 15 Nov, 4 pm eastern

On Conscientious Objectors, Soldiers, and Courage

I posted this on the POV.org blog in response to viewers of Soldiers of Conscience praising the featured conscientious objectors' courage.


A consistent--and, in fact, necessary--assumption of war pacifists is that the soldiers on both sides of a war are not fully autonomous human beings. Aiden reveals that assumption when he states, "the vast majority of Iraqi soldiers and insurgents are really poor, uneducated men with no prospects, forced into a life of violence not by belief, but by economics." I'm sure he would say the same thing about American Soldiers--that we are "forced or fooled" into choosing to serve their country in uniform.

I cannot tell you how many times, during my masters and doctoral work at civilian universities, and at professional conferences on both ethics and education (my fields of study), people have said to me, "Why would someone as intelligent as you ever join the military?" They are dumbfounded when an actual encounter with a Soldier reveals their assumptions to be false.

I have been inside the pacifist, anti-military movement, and it is characterized by a paternalistic disdain for those who choose to serve in the military. This assumption is so foundational, so shared, that anti-military pacifists take it for granted. They simply go about their work of "saving" those "poor, no-other-options-in-life" patriotic Americans from defending the freedoms we all enjoy.

The other point I would like to make concerns the (mis)use of the word "courage." The film and its media outreach present the CO's as courageous. Let's take a minute to examine the nature of the courage they demonstrated.

If courage is defined as overcoming fear, what is the CO afraid of? People thinking of him as a coward? Fear of social rejection by the peer group? Although this is undeniably a form of courage, it's the civilian equivalent to not drinking when your underage peers do, or of telling someone that you didn't appreciate their racist joke. The primary risk is social rejection.

So, a CO's courage is a legitimate form of courage (a type of moral courage), but it hardly compares with the the moral and physical courage exhibited by Soldiers who sign up to fight and then actually risk their lives in battle.

What does a Soldier fear? Death. Dismemberment. Things that are a bit more serious and permanent than social rejection. The civilian equivalent of a Soldier's courage is a fireman who rushes into a burning building to save someone trapped inside, or of a lifeguard who braves a rip tide to rescue swimmers.

Who's the hero--the kid who resists peer pressure or the one who risks his own life and limb to save someone else? Both are heroes, but the latter one deserves greater admiration.

For every 1 conscientious objector who shows courage in the face of peer pressure, there are more than 1,000 Soldiers who show courage in the face of violent death. We should all be thankful for that unseen, courageous majority. No one gives them book deals.

Radio Interview on KQED San Francisco

Wow, I just endured a frustrating interview. The anti-military assumptions and leading questions of the host, Michael Krasny, were the most biased I've ever encountered.

I was just waiting for him to begin a question with, "Given that killing in war is immoral and the war in Iraq is wrong and that the only psychologically healthy people in the military are those who apply for conscientious objection, a process that the military makes unnecessarily difficult, what do you think about...."

Is he that biased on every topic?

The other people on the program were:

Gary Weimberg, the co-director of Soldiers of Conscience, who in the beginning of the interview played along with Krasny's line of questioning but later on challenged some of the host's assumptions;

Aiden Delgado, who is marvelously articulate and a genuine, Buddhist conscientious objector (CO). I'd want to talk war and morality with him over a beer, except that his Buddhist views are ulimately irreconcilable with my core values. He'd let someone be killed, even if he could stop it, so as not to diminish his own life. To the Judeo-Christian worldview, that's plain selfish. To a Buddhist, that makes sense.

J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience and War, a CO advocacy group. She thinks she knows a lot more about war than she does. Her knowledge of warfare comes from conscientious objectors she helps and mass-market books, yet she claims to know what it's like in combat units in war. Ignorance+bias = a waste of the listener's time.

My favorite caller was a psycotherapist who treats veterans with PTSD. She says that EVERY patient she has suffers from the effects of war. From that, she generalized that EVERY veteran of war suffers. Talk about generalizing from a skewed sample. Healthy veterans would have no reason to see her.

I hope my participation did some good; if nothing else, I interrupted a left-wing chatfest against the military.

Slides I use to discuss the moral justification of killing in war

Several folks have asked if I have a paper or presentation I can share that would help them lead a discussion with their Soldiers on the moral justification of killing in war.
I have intended for months to write a concise paper, or at least put notes to the slides, but alas I haven't. So, I post these slides, knowing full well that bullets don't tell the whole story...but I hope that these are at least helpful. Talking openly about the morality of killing with our Soldiers accomplishes a lot on its own. I know that someone out there will take this discussion to the next level. Please share back with me the insights you discover.

A Challenge to "Pacifists"

I received an email today from someone who objected to my reference in "Soldiers of Conscience" to the Story of the Good Samaritan.

Here is part of my response to him. I welcome feedback on my challenge. Am I off base?

My point in offering the hypothetical about the Good Samaritan is to point out that it's easy to oppose the use of violence in the abstract--when one is not personally facing it. It's easier to console victims than to prevent their victimization.

I invite you and any others who share your pacifist beliefs to practice what you preach--to disavow in your own lives both violence and the threat of violence. I challenge you to post on your windows and doors an announcement that you will neither ask nor permit the police to intervene for your protection, nor will you use any violence to protect yourselves or your property. After all, the police accomplish their mission (protecting the innocent) by using force. For good measure, wear a large pin on your shirt announcing your renunciation of any force on your behalf. Let the world know that you will not respond to violence with violence, and you will not allow anyone to do so on your behalf!

Then see what happens.

The great majority of people will applaud your idealism. But others will rob you blind. Sick pedophiles might even assault your daughter or little sister. And you will....watch? Pray for them? Call your insurance agent?

Why, after all, does a Mennonite college employ armed guards?

I don't mean to sound callous, but I've traveled the world a bit as a Soldier, and I have seen the effects of evil. Most Americans never have to face evil--thanks to national and local security forces. I wish it were so for everyone in the world.

Jesus himself was very harsh on hypocrites and self-righteous religious leaders, but he never had a harsh world for Soldiers, despite several opportunities.

I could go on, but I wonder if you will accept the challenge, and invite all your pacifist brethren to do the same. THAT could launch a movement that changes the world.

"Soldiers of Conscience" film screening

Last week I attended a screening for the documentary "Soldiers of Conscience," which addresses the moral question of killing in war. I am one of the people featured in the movie.

It's a high-quality, interesting work that will generate healthy discussion on this overlooked topic.

Some military folks find the film to be too "pro-conscientious objector," pro-pacifist. I agree that it offers (superficially) compelling arguments from several articulate COs from the current war in Iraq, but any imbalance is caused by the more-developed narrative that pacifists employ. The military profession, in contrast, doesn't have an articulated moral justification for killing in war (unless you count my unofficial writings). Consequently, in the film I'm the only military person who offers moral (rather than legal or practical) arguments. Overall, I judge the film to be "fair yet unbalanced."

I recommend it. Its national broadcast premiere is on PBS on Thursday, 16 Oct. I welcome your feedback.

NBC Dateline

I received word this week that the "Dateline" episode this Memorial Day Weekend, on Sunday 25 May at 7pm EDT, will address the guilt that many soldiers experience after killing (justly) in war.

Dateline came by my office last October and filmed an interview. I hope that the show will raise awareness on the issue. A big first step to helping our soldiers make sense of their experience of killing in war is breaking the taboo and becoming more honest about the moral reality of war. A second necessary step is having a shared vocabulary that enables soldiers and citizens to talk about the wrestle through the concepts and experiences. Traditional Just War Theory is woefully in adequate in addressing the moral issues of individual killing. Hopefully my writing has contributed to both goals. More needs to be done. I invite you to join the discussion and the cause.

Killing enemy combatants--a justification

Introduction
The profession of arms talks about ‘morality and war’ using legal terms and concepts. For example, we justify our decision to deploy and fight when the President orders us because we signed a contract to obey the officers appointed over us. Similarly, we consider ourselves blameless when we kill enemy combatants as long as we do not violate the laws of war or the rules of engagement in doing so. These legal rules are so important to our professional identity that all soldiers receive instruction on the laws of war in basic combat training and then annually thereafter, and soldiers at war review the rules of engagement much more often, sometimes daily.

Not everyone in our society, however, accepts these legal answers to moral questions. War pacifists are people who believe that war is morally unjustifiable. They claim that soldiers are morally wrong to participate in war and to kill other human beings, regardless of what’s legally permissible at the time.

Currently, we military leaders do not do enough to prepare our soldiers to understand and justify their actions in moral terms. This not only leads many soldiers to needlessly suffer moral guilt, but it also leaves them vulnerable to the arguments of war pacifists. Our troops deserve better from us.

In this essay, I investigate “morality and war” from a soldier’s perspective without resorting to legal justifications. My intent is to empower our profession to better understand the moral reality of war. What I write here is not doctrine. I speak only for myself—a career officer and Army-educated ethicist—and hope that our discussions around this topic will deepen our commitment to and comfort with our vocation as warriors.

This paper is divided into two sections. The first section puts forth an explanation of why soldiers are morally justified in killing enemy combatants, and it offers a framework for moral decision-making in those tragic circumstances of war when our actions will likely cause unintentional harm to non-combatants (i.e., collateral damage). The second section challenges the age-old notion of the “moral equality of soldiers” and suggests that soldiers’ moral justification for killing in war depends on the overall justice of the war.

Section I: Killing in War

Why killing enemy combatants is morally justified

thesis: When we kill enemy combatants, we are not violating their rights to not be killed, because they have already forfeited that right by their free choice to violate the rights of others not to be killed.

Every person, by virtue of being a human being, possesses the right not to be killed by another person.[1] This is commonly referred to as the “right to life,” but the term “right not be be killed” is more precise. Our rights, for example, are not violated when we die of heart disease, cancer, or a lightning strike. Our “right to life” is violated only when another person intentionally or negligently acts to kill us. [2]

The term “right not to be killed” also makes clear that we possess rights only in relation to other human beings. If a dog bites us, the animal has not violated our rights. Perhaps the dog’s owner has, if she negligently allowed the dog to roam unleashed, but the dog itself cannot be said to have violated our rights. We possess rights only in relation to other human beings who can be held accountable for their choices.

Our rights as human beings put limits on how others can act towards us. One person’s right has priority over another person’s freedom. For example, my right not to be killed trumps my angry neighbor’s freedom to kill me over our dandelion dispute. Were he to kill me, he would commit a moral wrong. To paraphrase the philosopher J. S. Mill, we possess the freedom to choose our actions provided they do not violate the rights of another. Rights must trump freedoms, if rights are to have any meaning at all.

Rights themselves are absolute, but possession of them is not. People forfeit their rights if and while they are engaged in violating the rights of others. This explains the rights of self defense and defense of others. When an attacker violates the right not to be killed of those who possess it, he forfeits his own right not to be killed.

Enemy combatants are people who are engaged in violating and threatening the rights of others not to be killed or enslaved. Thus, when we kill combatants, we do no moral wrong; we violate no rights. In fact, we vindicate the rights of those people whom the enemy combatants were threatening.

The Problem of Collateral Damage
thesis: In war, the least morally wrong option is the morally right choice.

War would be morally less complicated if our enemy would agree to face us on a field of battle away from noncombatants. That way, we could be sure to kill only those who had already forfeited their right not to be killed.

Unfortunately, our enemy is our enemy precisely because he seeks the death of non-combatants, if not by his own guns than even better by ours. Thus, we must fight against an enemy who hides among noncombatants, using them as human shields to create for us a moral dilemma—whether to protect the noncombatants (which is our end, or goal) or to kill enemy combatants (which is a primary means to achieve our goal).

What should a soldier do when faced with a situation in which a proposed plan of action to kill enemy combatants will likely also kill noncombatants? It is impossible to say outside of the context of the particular battle space; the soldier will have to make difficult decisions that involve tradeoffs. The decision, however, should be based on a framework that respects the rights—short-term and long-term—of those who still retain them, i.e., their own soldiers and noncombatants.

A Framework for Choosing a Course of Action

In a situation where a combat action could foreseeably risk the rights of non-combatants, soldiers are morally obligated to choose the course of action that in their judgment best respects the rights of those affected. Leaders must take into account: the mission, their fellow soldiers, and non-combatants.

Mission accomplishment can be understood in terms of rights. In a just war, the overall mission is to defend human rights. The many missions that subordinate units accomplish in support of that overall mission are the means by which the overall mission gets accomplished. These sub-unit missions may vary in how directly and substantively they support the overall mission, but they do contribute. The more directly and substantively they contribute, the more significance they have to supporting human rights. Any mission, then, can be evaluated in terms of its importance to the long-term defense of rights of everyone involved.

Military leaders must also take into account the rights of their own soldiers, who are fighting to defend the rights of others. Although soldiers are volunteers who willingly accept the risks of their profession, their leaders must develop and choose courses of action that accomplish the mission without unduly risking the lives of those entrusted to them.

Finally, leaders must incorporate the rights of potentially affected noncombatants into their course-of-action analyses. To some in our profession, the leadership mantra “Mission First, People Always” is interpreted as “Mission First, Soldiers Always,” thus overlooking our duty as military professionals to protect noncombatants. The fact is, every human being possesses the right not to be killed, unless by his own choice to violate the rights of someone who retains her rights, he forfeits his own right. This is not a binary condition; people can forfeit some of their rights claim, according to their participation in a rights violation. Thus, civilians can lose some of their right to not be killed if they support the rights-violating activities of enemy combatants. For example, a noncombatant who allows enemy combatants to assemble in her house forfeits much of her right to not be killed, so it is less of a moral wrong to take action against morally legitimate targets that results in her death.

Because there are, in combat situations, a nearly infinite number of possible situations involving varying levels of risk to mission, soldiers, and noncombatants, it is impossible to develop a flow-chart-like algorithm that would produce morally justified courses of action. Leaders have to assess their particular situations and use their professional judgment. As a guideline and to foster discussion on this important topic, I offer the following two examples to demonstrate how the Mission-Soldiers-Noncombatants framework can inform leaders’ decisions.

***
Situation 1: a water-supply convoy that is moving through a built-up area in a town receives poorly aimed small-arms fire to their flank at 250 meters.

Analysis 1: in this situation, accomplishment of the mission (water re-supply) does not require the soldiers to kill their attackers. In the big story of the war, the ambush will not even be a footnote. Also, given the distance of the ambush, the safety of the soldiers is not a major issue as they continue their mission. Finally, there is no evidence that the noncombatants who may be in the line of fire to the ambushers have forfeited their own rights not to be killed.

One reasonable conclusion: the soldiers would NOT be justified in returning large volumes of un-aimed fire. The risk to the rights of noncombatants would not be balanced by a commensurate benefit to mission accomplishment (long-term rights) or force protection (soldiers’ rights).

***
Situation 2: an infantry unit that is deliberately attacking a fortified urban area is receiving effective fire from an enemy strongpoint that is adjacent to the occupied homes of non-combatants. Civilians in the area had been warned about the attack and given opportunity to relocate. The enemy fire has halted the main effort of the operation.

Analysis 2: in this situation, accomplishment of the mission does require destruction of the enemy. Our own soldiers are already at great risk; their loss of momentum is likely providing the enemy time to maneuver. Moreover, other soldiers in adjacent units are relying on the soldiers’ continued progress to protect their flanks. Finally, the civilians had the opportunity to escape the situation, so they must bear some of the risk; they have compromised some of their own rights not to be killed.

One reasonable conclusion: destroy the enemy position with direct tank or fighting-vehicle fires. Respect for noncombatant rights should limit our use of less discriminating systems such as unguided field artillery and close-air support. Respect for our own soldiers’ rights impels us not to attempt a dismounted assault.
***

There is much more that could be said about these examples—much more information that leaders should take into account. What is important morally, though, is that military leaders’ course-of-action analyses and decisions give due respect to the three relevant categories in such situations—the mission, friendly soldiers, and noncombatants.

Section II: The Supposed “Moral Equality of Soldiers”

Traditional Notion of the Soldiers’ Moral Equality
thesis: Those who defend rights do not forfeit their own rights.

My argument thus far has assumed that we are the “good guys” and enemy combatants are the “bad guys”; that we retain our right not to be killed while they have forfeited theirs. Believe it or not, the long tradition of just-war thought rejects this notion—instead claiming that all combatants, on both sides of a conflict, are “moral equals” (Walzer 1977; Christopher 1999).
Briefly, the argument for the “moral equality of soldiers” states that since combatants on both sides take up arms against each other, then all combatants are both threats to their enemy and threatened by their enemy. Combatants on both sides, by this account, are equally guilty of being threats, so they all forfeit their right to not be killed. Consequently, all combatants are also equally innocent of violating their enemy’s rights. Thus, soldiers on both sides are moral equals, and no moral wrong is committed when one combatant kills another.

The moral equality of soldiers has an obvious superficial appeal to both soldiers and politicians. To soldiers, it anesthetizes them of their responsibility to fight only for a just cause, and it relieves them of any moral responsibility for killing enemy combatants. To politicians, it ensures that their armies will wage the wars they launch. We should not be surprised, then, that the moral equality of soldiers has been written into the laws of war. It makes war more palatable, morally and politically.


Moral Implications of the Moral Equality of Soldiers
thesis: To subscribe to the moral equality of soldiers is to equate soldiers to mafia thugs or gang members, no better or worse than their enemies.

Should we accept the idea that enemy combatants are our moral equals? As a soldier, I am offended at the claim that soldiers who fight for human rights and freedoms have the same moral standing as those who fight for Nazi or Islamist fascism. Moreover, as an ethicist, I am concerned that we would accept an argument that rationalizes killing on the basis that no one is morally wrong because everyone is morally wrong; i.e., all combatants have forfeited their right to not be killed, so none of them is wrong to kill each other. This line of reasoning has implications that we should be unwilling to accept. As we will see in the ensuing paragraphs, it is only the moral inequality among people in a context that gives killing in self defense[3] its moral authority.

Consider, for example, a situation in which someone who has forfeited his right not bo be killed engages in conflict with someone who retains that right. Imagine that an armed bank robber has taken a hostage at gunpoint. By threatening the life of the hostage, the robber has forfeited his right not to be killed. Imagine further that a police officer then arrives at the scene and aims her firearm at the robber. Has the officer done anything wrong? No. Not only has the robber already forfeited his right not to be killed, but also the police officer has an obligation to protect innocent people, including the hostage. Would we say that the police officer, by virtue of “threatening” the robber, forfeits her own right not to be killed? Would the robber be justified in shooting the officer in “self defense”? Of course not, on both counts. Context matters. The officer cannot violate the rights of someone who has already forfeited them. The moral inequality between the robber and police officer makes it morally acceptable for the officer to kill the robber, but not vice versa.

Consider, on the other hand, a situation in which all parties have forfeited their rights not to be killed. Imagine two organized crime “families” that make their money by threatening the lives of businessmen and who compete over the same turf. They are “at war,” ready to knock off their rival extortionists at any opportunity. In this situation, “family members” on both sides who participate have forfeited their rights not to be killed. If a member of one family attacked someone from the other family, there would be no violation of rights. If the body guards fended off the attack and killed the attacker, they would not be morally justified. Nor, by this argument, would they be morally wrong. They would simply be killing in self interest, not justified self defense. In itself, that is not a violation of rights. However, if any innocent bystanders were killed in the exchange, the Mafioso would bear a grave moral burden, because they would have violated the victims’ rights to not be killed, and have done so for no morally worthy reason.

Are American soldiers analogous to the police officer or to the mafia hit men? Are we defenders of rights or amoral mercenaries? To subscribe to the moral equality of soldiers is to equate soldiers to the mafia thugs, no better or worse than their enemies. On the other hand, to subscribe to the idea that soldiers are analogous to the police officer entails that soldiers must act for a just cause. Soldiers must maintain their moral authority by threatening only those people who have already forfeited their rights not to be killed, and they must not do anything that forfeits their own rights. In other words, they have to fight in wars that are just. Is this a reasonable requirement?

The notion of the moral equality of soldiers can be traced to the Medieval Age and the concept of soldiers’ “invincible ignorance.” Invincible ignorance was the claim that soldiers are either too ignorant or uninformed, or both, to determine whether their side is the aggressor or the defender in a war. Thus was born the conditions that gave rise to the moral equality of soldiers. These conditions, however, no longer apply, at least not in the developed world. Perhaps it was once the case that soldiers were invincibly ignorant, when feudal lords rallied their illiterate serfs to battle, but it is certainly not true today. Today’s soldiers are educated and have access to a wealth of information. To assume that all soldiers are “invincibly ignorant” and thus incapable of judging the justice of a war is misinformed, inaccurate, and insulting to soldiers.

Conclusion

War is not a “moral-free zone.” Prosecuted by humans on their fellow humans, it involves the fundamental moral issues of life and death. In this paper, I have argued that every human being possesses the right to not be killed, and therefore, killing in war is justified only when the enemy soldiers have already forfeited their own rights not to be killed. I further argued that combat situations in which the legitimate killing of enemy combatants may potentially risk the rights of noncombatants require that military leaders give due to respect to the rights of everyone involved by considering the mission, their own soldiers, and affected noncombatants. I further argued that this rights-based justification for killing in war requires a moral inequality among soldiers. After all, if the enemy combatants aren’t wrong, then we have no right to kill them. Finally, I claimed that contemporary soldiers are capable of judging the morality of a war, and thus are responsible for ensuring that they are supporting a morally justified cause.

Footnotes
[1] The right to not be killed and the right to not be enslaved are both rights that are worth killing and dying for. For the sake of brevity, in this article I will refer only to the right to not be killed, but the same argument applies to the right to not be enslaved.
[2] For the sake of brevity, in this article I will treat “violate rights” to include “threaten imminently to violate rights.” We do not have to wait for our rights to be actually violated for the violator to forfeit his or her own rights.
[3] The right of self defense and the right to defense of another are distinct but based on the same principles. Also, the justification of killing in war relates to both rights. For the sake of brevity in this article, I will refer only to the right of self defense, but the right to defend another also applies.


References
Christopher, P. (1999). The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction to Legal and Moral Issues. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall.

Walzer, M. (1977). Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. United States of America, Basic Books.

"Good" in war is the lesser of evil choices

Part of the reason that many Soldiers suffer psychologically from combat is that the language we use to talk about war too often fails to capture its moral reality.

There have been "good wars," but war itself is not a good in the same sense that being honest or generous is good. War always represents a failure--of diplomacy, of human cooperation. War can be good only in the sense that waging it is the lesser of bad choices. I.e., it is better to fight than to be enslaved, even though the killing and destruction that war entails is awful, because being enslaved and all it entails is an even worse outcome. At the individual level, it is better to kill some responsible parties than to allow innocents to be killed. Many morally right choices in war would be morally wrong in any other circumstance.

This explains why Soldiers often experience guilt after killing enemy combatants. They made the morally right choice, but it was still a lousy choice for a human being to have to make. There's still something that feels wrong, especially if they have not been educated candidly about what to expect to feel when they kill another human being.

The binary, good/bad language used by our politicians to promote or justify war is not only inaccurate, but it also contributes to the psychological trauma of veterans. A justified war is a necessary evil. Killing in war is a necessary evil. Except for the intense love forged among Soldiers who fight side by side, there is no genuine good created by acts of war.

Our combat veterans should absolutely be commended for exhibiting the physical and moral courage that is required to defend our values, lives, and liberty. A sovereign nation could not survive without them. But we--as a profession of arms, as a nation--need to do a much better job of being honest with our Soldiers about the moral reality of war. Even when war is justified and good in the circumstances, it's still fundamentally bad.

Does this make sense to others?

If you have killed in war...

...I would love to hear from you about how you make sense of the experience, i.e., how you justify it morally.

I asked this same question in 1997 just as I began my study into the moral justification of killing enemy combatants in war, and the responses were fascinating. Now I hope to learn more, and perhaps to develop a taxonomy of justifications that could become part of Soldiers' professional education. I know how I would justify killing (although I have not killed anyone), but I also realize that there may be other approaches that work for other folks.

I would love to hear from you, if you have killed in war. Your information would remain confidential unless you prefer otherwise.

Pete Kilner
LTC, Infantry
pgkilner@gmail.com

Observations from Iraq

Earlier this year, from 21 April --9 June, I had the privilege of traveling around Iraq and interviewing Army junior officers. I pretty much was able to visit a different company each day. In all, I interviewed 142 captains and lieutenants, all of whom were current or past company commanders or platoon leaders in the war. I was so impressed by their competence and commitment; I'm humbled the wear the same uniform as these heroes.

The purpose of the interviews was to gain a deeper understanding of the most demanding leadership challenges that our junior officers are experiencing in the war.

Inevitably, issues of morality came up in our conversations. Here are some of my impressions:

1. Our Soldiers are exhibiting remarkable restraint in the use of violence. Time and again when listening to their stories, I found myself thinking, "Shoot the bastards" or "Just bomb the building!" when in reality the Soldiers on the ground chose not to employ heavy-handed force--despite wanting to emotionally. The attitude in most units is: we're the good guys, so we chose the harder right over the easier wrong.

2. My biggest "aha" discovery was the awareness by many leaders that unjustified killing has harmful effects on the perpetrators. Many Soldiers are on their 2nd or 3rd tour, and they have seen what happens to Soldiers who kill when they shouldn't--they suffer psychologically. As more than one leader told me, "I make sure we do what's right, because someday--win, lose, or draw--this war will be over, and I want all my Soldiers to feel proud about how they conducted themselves." This long-term awareness--leading today in a manner that will take care of my Soldier not only today, but also 10 years from now--is a recent phenomena, as far as I can tell. I think it stems from the increased awareness of the harmful psychological effects of acting unjustly in war.

3. It's a complicated moral universe when the Iraqi Security Forces that we are funding, training, and arming are actively engaged in attacking us. Again, the patience and restraint being demonstrated by our Soldiers is nothing short of remarkable.

More to follow...

Soldiers of Conscience documentary

Soldiers of Conscience (www.socfilm.com) is a feature-length documentary on conscientious objection. I am featured in the film as one of the people who argue for the moral permissibility of participating in war. The producers, Gary Weimberg Catherine Ryan of Luna Productions, did an admirable job of interviewing people on both sides of the CO issue, but I have to admit that the COs they feature are exceptionally articulate.

That makes sense. The COs are folks who had to argue their way out of military service. They can articulate their position. I am really the only person on the "killing in war can be moral" side who had given the issue the thought it deserves, and it showed.

Soldiers of Conscience is a film that will challenge your beliefs. I'm still confident in mine, but I know other military folks who were disturbed by the questions the film raised in their own consciences. For me, this is just more evidence that we in the military profession have to do a lot of hard thinking to think through and to articulate to our members the moral justification for killing in war.

SOC is still on the film-festival circuit, looking for a good distribution deal. It has won awards at the Hamptons and Rhode Island film festivals, and had a week-long run in Seattle, but it still hasn't made the leap to a mass audience.

If you get the opportunity to see the film, I recommend it. It is unbiased (rare for the genre) and very interesting.

Morals in a Combat Zone

Morals in A Combat Zone
Published originally in the Washington Post on Sunday, June 11, 2006, page B07

Earlier this month, folks from The Washington Post invited me to write an op-ed on Haditha. I saw it as an opportunity to communicate to the American people the way military professionals approach morality in war, and thus to raise the level of discussion about it. I sent drafts to many of my fellow Soldiers and received great feedback. In particular, LTC Tony Pfaff and MAJ Dave Barnes, both of whom have taught philosophy at West Point when I did and have since fought in Iraq, provided especially helpful input.

GEN Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, liked the piece and sent a message to all Army commands, recommending that leaders read and discuss it with their Soldiers. I couldn't have hoped for a better response from my fellow Soldiers. Here's the op-ed.
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The differing reactions to the alleged killing of noncombatants by American soldiers in the Iraqi town of Haditha reveal a troubling ignorance about the moral reality of war. Much of the national dialogue about the incident is being dominated by people whose approaches to making moral judgments on wartime actions are fundamentally flawed.

In one corner are those who are so convinced this war is wrong that they see only the bad things soldiers do in it. Such people are blind to all the good our soldiers and the war are accomplishing, and they revel in exploiting any incident of misbehavior by soldiers to smear all members of the armed forces and the entire war effort. By their logic, abuse of detainees by one platoon in one prison in 2003, or the alleged killing of civilians by one squad in one town in 2005, is conclusive evidence that the entire war effort is evil. These people are unable to reconcile the fact that unjust actions can and do occur within a war that nonetheless is morally justified.

In the other corner are those so convinced of the rightness of our cause that they refuse to acknowledge that our soldiers sometimes make choices that are clearly wrong and for which they should be held accountable. These people equate supporting the laws of war with being unpatriotic and disdainful of the troops. What they fail to recognize is that their implicit argument is both insulting to soldiers and corrosive to the foundation of the military profession. My fellow soldiers and I recognize fully that we are responsible for our individual actions, and that our permission to do violence to other human beings is constrained by our obligation to do so only when it is morally justified.

These polar positions are not novel. They are consistent with schools of thought that military ethicists refer to as the war-pacifist and war-realist positions, both of which fall outside the mainstream of the just-war tradition. What is disturbing is the way these competing perspectives have been hijacked by groups with political agendas and thus given a wider hearing than they deserve.

We should all reject such simplistic approaches to judging soldiers' actions in war. A combat zone is not some parallel universe where the nature of human beings or moral judgment is different. Combat is a human endeavor, and like any human activity it can be carried out morally or immorally, and moral judgments can be made on it.

In simplest terms, when soldiers are careful to target only enemy combatants and to limit unnecessary destruction and suffering, they fight morally. If they intentionally or negligently fail to abide by these restrictions, they fight immorally.

A harsh reality of war is that it involves large numbers of people making life-or-death decisions in very stressful conditions. Inevitably, as in all areas of life, some don't always conduct themselves as they should. Those who commit crimes should be held accountable, keeping in mind the extenuating circumstances of combat.

The circumstances of this war's battlefields are terribly complex. Soldiers find themselves conducting a wide range of operations, from war-fighting to policing, often during a single patrol, and those different operations require different principles for the use of force. It is often difficult for soldiers to discern which approach is appropriate and when. Not infrequently, a well-intentioned soldier ends up killing a noncombatant because of mistaken identity or some other factor caused by the fog of war. In such circumstances, we can say that the action is neither justified nor unjustified but that it is excusable. Not every wrongful death in combat is a war crime.

The good news is that well-trained, well-led soldiers can and do overcome the moral challenges of war and conduct themselves with great honor, and the great majority of American soldiers are well trained and well led. Although we fight an enemy who intentionally violates all norms of human decency and goads us to follow him into the abyss of wanton killing, America's soldiers continue to exhibit remarkable restraint.

What explains the difference between units that commit war crimes and units that don't? Leadership. This is the critical factor in ensuring moral conduct in war. When junior officers and senior noncoms train their soldiers to do what is right and when they maintain their composure and lead by example, their soldiers are able to retain their moral bearings despite the temptations and frustrations of battle. American military history reminds us that war crimes can be prevented by small-unit leaders with moral courage and judgment.

The incident at Haditha is not likely to be the last time that we as a nation find ourselves judging the actions of our soldiers at war. All Americans should resist the calls of those who seek to condemn all soldiers based on the actions of a few, just as we should reject any claims that soldiers are immune from judgment. Instead, we should judge each soldier and situation on the merits, paying special attention to the circumstances in which the fateful decisions were made and to the actions of the soldier's leaders.

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My only regret with the article is that it can be read to imply that the Marines in Haditha did commit a war crime, and of course we still do not know what happened there.

I'm back

From January through May, I was consumed doing my dissertation work, and thus didn't have the mental space and physical time to keep this blog up to date. My PhD is in Instructional Systems, and my reseach was on online communities, not ethics, so there was no carryover of ideas.

Recent events, such as reports on the alleged incident at Haditha and the conscientious objection claim of an Army LT about to deploy to Iraq have gotten my juices going again.

CO is only half the word

A logical implication of my rights-based approach to justifying war is that selective conscientious objection (CO) must be permitted. The challenge of this, though, is determining when a soldier is a legitimate conscientious objector and when he is just afraid and selfish.

In my limited experience, I’ve found that “CO” is only half the word. The other half is –“WARD”. As in coward. How do we distinguish CO’s who are legitimate (those with real, well thought-out moral convictions against the war) from those who are mere cowards?

My former unit in the 82nd found one way to address this challenge during the Gulf War in 1991. In the days of the air campaign before the ground campaign began, a soldier in an infantry battalion declared that he “could not kill his Muslim brothers” and fully expected to be sent to the rear or sent home. His battalion leadership, however, distrusted the soldier’s motive, and put him to a test. The commander took the soldier’s weapon away (so he wouldn’t run the risk of killing his Muslim brothers) and assigned him to the unit’s forward-most unit, the scout platoon. He told the soldier that he could help with radio watch and medical care—tasks that wouldn’t involve him in killing. Well, to make a long story short, when it came time to initiate the attack into Kuwait, that soldier was BEGGING for his weapon. Once he saw that his cowardly attempt to avoid the risk of combat wasn’t going to work, he was ready to kill rather than be killed.

This worked for one unit, but it’s obviously not an approach that could be used on a large scale. Still, it makes clear the challenge of permitting selective CO, a challenge that I’m still trying to think through.

Anyone have any ideas?

More evidence of the MH "blind spot" on PTSD

A story in today's USA Today reveals that "1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return." As always, the Pentagon spokesperson and mental-health leaders attributed the mental health problems only to what happened to Soldiers, giving no attention to what Soldiers may have done.

“The (wartime) deployments do take a toll,” says Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman. “We send them to austere locations, places that are extremely hot, extremely cold, very wet, very dry … where they may also encounter an armed enemy.”

As if feelings of suicide after a deployment were caused by the weather in Iraq.

The article also included this list from DoD:

Of servicemembers returning from the Iraq war this year:

• 47% saw someone wounded or killed, or saw a dead body.
• 14% had an experience that left them easily startled.
• 6% wanted help for stress, emotional, alcohol or family problems.
• 2% had thoughts of hurting someone or losing control.
• 1% had thoughts that they might be better off dead or could hurt themselves.

Given that we know--anecdotally, from research, and from common sense--that killing another human being is usually a traumatic experience, shouldn't we be talking about the experience of killing and how we can help Soldiers prepare for it and come to terms with it? This "blind spot," this unwillingness to speak about an aspect of our profession that makes many of us uncomfortable, is harming our Soldiers.

Remembering the Battle of Mogadishu

Today is the 12th anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu, when Task Force Ranger and the 10th MTN fought, killed, and died in what was arguably our first battle against Al Queda.

My thoughts and prayers go out to our brave Soldiers and their families. Battles as intense as that one leave a lifetime mark on those who are involved, for better or worse.

Developing a Coherent Moral Argument

The profession of arms talks about ‘morality and war’ using legal terms and concepts. For example, we justify our decision to deploy and fight when the President orders us because we signed a contract to obey the officers appointed over us. Similarly, we consider ourselves blameless when we kill enemy combatants as long as we do not violate the laws of war or the rules of engagement in doing so. These legal rules are so important to our professional identity that all soldiers receive instruction on the laws of war in basic combat training and then annually thereafter, and soldiers at war review the rules of engagement much more often, sometimes daily.

Not everyone in our society, however, accepts these legal answers to moral questions. War pacifists are people who believe that war is morally unjustifiable. They claim that soldiers are morally wrong to participate in war and to kill other human beings, regardless of what’s legally permissible at the time.

I am concerned that we in the profession of arms do not do enough to prepare our soldiers to understand and justify their actions in moral terms. This allows many soldiers to needlessly suffer moral guilt, and it leaves them vulnerable to the arguments of war pacifists. Our soldiers deserve better.

In the ensuing posts, I investigate “morality and war” from a soldier’s perspective without resorting to legal justifications. My intent is to empower our profession to better understand the moral reality of war. What I write here is not doctrine. I speak only for myself—a career Army officer (infantryman) and Army-educated ethicist—and hope that our discussions around this topic will deepen our commitment to and comfort with our vocation as warriors.

These posts mark the beginning of what I hope will become an extended, coherent, rights-based argument that addresses the fundamental moral questions of war. It is divided into two sections. The first section explains why soldiers are morally justified in killing enemy combatants, and it offers a framework for moral decision-making in those tragic circumstances of war when our actions will likely cause unintentional harm to non-combatants (i.e., collateral damage). The second section challenges the age-old notion of the “moral equality of soldiers” and suggests that soldiers’ moral justification for killing in war depends on the overall justice of the war. Future additions to this essay will continue this rights-based line of argument to its logical conclusion that soldiers are not morally justified if they kill in wars that are unjust. That, in turn, will lead to examinations of the moral justification of war and of the legitimacy and limits of conscientious objection.

I invite and welcome your critique and suggestions for improvement.

Killing in War: a Rights-based Justification

Killing in War: a Rights-based Justification

Why killing enemy combatants is morally justified

BLUF: When we kill enemy combatants, we are not violating their rights to not be killed, because they have already forfeited that right by their free choice to violate the rights of others to not be killed.

Every person, by virtue of being a human being, possesses the right to not be killed by another person. This is commonly referred to as the “right to life,” but the term “right to not be killed” is more precise. Our rights, for example, are not violated when we die of heart disease, cancer, or a lightning strike. Our “right to life” is violated only when another person intentionally or negligently acts to kill us.

The term “right to not be killed” also makes clear that we possess rights only in relation to other human beings. If a dog bites us, the animal has not violated our rights. Perhaps the dog’s owner has, if she negligently allowed the dog to roam unleashed, but the dog itself cannot be said to have violated our rights. We possess rights only in relation to other human beings who can be held accountable for their choices.

Our rights as human beings put limits on how others can act towards us. One person’s right has priority over another person’s freedom. For example, my right to not be killed trumps my angry neighbor’s freedom to kill me over our dandelion dispute. Were he to kill me, he would commit a moral wrong. To paraphrase the philosopher J. S. Mill, we possess the freedom to choose our actions provided they do not violate the rights of another. Rights must trump freedoms, if rights are to have any meaning at all.

Rights themselves are absolute, but possession of them is not. People forfeit their rights if and while they are engaged in violating the rights of others. This explains the rights of self defense and defense of others. When an attacker violates the right to life of those who possess it, he forfeits his own right to not be killed.

Enemy combatants are people who are engaged in violating and threatening the rights of others to not be killed or enslaved. Thus, when we kill combatants, we do no moral wrong; we violate no rights. In fact, we vindicate the rights of those people whom the enemy combatants were threatening.

The Problem of Collateral Damage

BLUF: In war, the least among morally wrong options is the morally right choice.

War would be morally less complicated if our enemy would agree to face us on a field of battle away from noncombatants. That way, we could be sure to kill only those who had already forfeited their right to not be killed.

Unfortunately, our enemy is our enemy precisely because he seeks the death of non-combatants, if not by his own guns than even better by ours. Thus, we must fight against an enemy who hides among noncombatants, using them as human shields to create for us a moral dilemma—whether to protect the noncombatants (which is our end, or goal) or to kill enemy combatants (which is a primary means to achieve our goal).

What should a soldier do when faced with a situation in which a proposed plan of action to kill enemy combatants will likely also kill noncombatants? It is impossible to say outside of the context of the particular battle space; the soldier will have to make difficult decisions that involve tradeoffs. The decision, however, should be based on a framework that respects the rights—short-term and long-term—of those who still retain them, i.e., their own soldiers and noncombatants.

A Framework for Choosing a Course of Action

In a situation where a combat action could foreseeably risk the rights of non-combatants, soldiers are morally obligated to choose the course of action that in their judgment best respects the rights of those affected. Leaders must take into account the mission, their fellow soldiers, and non-combatants.

Mission accomplishment can be understood in terms of rights. In a just war, the overall mission is to defend human rights. The many missions that subordinate units do in support of that overall mission are the means by which the overall mission gets accomplished. These sub-unit missions may vary in how directly and substantively they support the overall mission, but they do contribute. The more directly and substantively they contribute, the more significance they have to supporting human rights. Any mission, then, can be evaluated in terms of its importance to the long-term defense of rights of everyone involved.

Military leaders must also take into account the rights of their own soldiers, who are fighting to defend the rights of others. Although soldiers are volunteers who willingly accept the risks of their profession, their leaders must develop and choose courses of action that accomplish the mission without unduly risking the lives of those entrusted to them.

Finally, leaders must incorporate the rights of potentially affected noncombatants into their course-of-action analyses. To some in our profession, the leadership mantra “Mission First, People Always” is interpreted as “Mission First, Soldiers Always,” thus overlooking our duty as military professionals to protect noncombatants. The fact is, every human being possesses the right to not be killed, unless by his own choice to violate the rights of someone who retains her rights, he forfeits his own right. This is not a binary condition; people can forfeit some of their rights claim, according to their participation in a rights violation. Thus, civilians can lose some of their right to not be killed if they support the rights-violating activities of enemy combatants. For example, a noncombatant who allows enemy combatants to assembly in her house forfeits much of her right to not be killed.

Because there are, in combat situations, a nearly infinite number of possible situations involving varying levels of risk to mission, soldiers, and noncombatants, it is impossible to develop a flow-chart-like algorithm that would produce morally justified courses of action. Leaders have to assess their particular situations and use their professional judgment. As a guideline and to foster discussion on this important topic, I offer the following two (rather extreme) examples to demonstrate how the Mission-Soldiers-Noncombatants framework can inform leaders’ decisions.

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Situation 1: a water-supply convoy that is moving through a built-up area in a town takes small-arms fire.

Analysis 1: in this situation, accomplishment of the mission (water re-supply) does not require the soldiers to kill their attackers. In the big story of the war, the ambush will not even be a footnote. Also, given the distance of the ambush, the safety of the soldiers is not a major issue as they continue their mission. Finally, there is no evidence that the noncombatants who may be in the line of fire to the ambushers have forfeited their own rights to not be killed.

One reasonable conclusion: the soldiers would NOT be justified in returning large volumes of un-aimed fire. The risk to the rights of noncombatants would not be balanced by a commensurate benefit to mission accomplishment (long-term rights) or force protection (soldiers’ rights).

***

Situation 2: an infantry unit that is deliberately attacking a fortified urban area is receiving effective fire from an enemy strongpoint that is adjacent to the occupied homes of non-combatants. Civilians in the area had been warned about the attack and given opportunity to relocate. The enemy fire has halted the main effort of the operation.

Analysis 2: in this situation, accomplishment of the mission does require destruction of the enemy. Our own soldiers are already at great risk; their loss of momentum is likely providing the enemy time to maneuver. Moreover, other soldiers in adjacent units are relying on the soldiers’ continued progress to protect their flanks. Finally, the civilians had the opportunity to escape the situation, so they must bear some of the risk; they have compromised some of their own rights to not be killed.

One reasonable conclusion: destroy the enemy position with direct tank or fighting-vehicle fires. Respect for noncombatant rights should limit our use of less discriminating systems such as field artillery and fixed-wing close-air support. Respect for our own soldiers’ rights impels us not to attempt a dismounted assault.

***

There is much more that could be said about these examples—much more information that leaders should take into account. What is important morally, though, is that military leaders’ course-of-action analyses and decisions give due respect to all relevant factors in such situations—the mission, friendly soldiers, and noncombatants.

Rejecting the Moral Equality of Soldiers

The Supposed “Moral Equality of Soldiers”

Traditional Notion of the Soldiers’ Moral Equality
BLUF: Those who defend rights do not forfeit their own rights.

My argument thus far has assumed that we are the “good guys” and enemy combatants are the “bad guys”; that we retain our right to not be killed while they have forfeited theirs. Believe it or not, the long tradition of just-war thought rejects this notion—instead claiming that all combatants, on both sides of a conflict, are “moral equals” (Walzer 1977; Christopher 1999).

Briefly, the argument for the “moral equality of soldiers” states that since combatants on both sides take up arms against each other, then all combatants are both threats to their enemy and threatened by their enemy. Combatants on both sides, by this account, are equally guilty of being threats, so they all forfeit their right to not be killed. Consequently, all combatants are also equally innocent of violating their enemy’s rights. Thus, soldiers on both sides are moral equals, and no moral wrong is committed when one combatant kills another.

The moral equality of soldiers has an obvious superficial appeal to both soldiers and politicians. To soldiers, it anesthetizes them of their responsibility to fight only for a just cause, and it relieves them of any moral responsibility for killing enemy combatants. To politicians, it ensures that their armies will wage the wars they launch. We should not be surprised, then, that the moral equality of soldiers has been written into the laws of war. It makes war more palatable, morally and politically.

Moral Implications of the Moral Equality of Soldiers
BLUF: To subscribe to the moral equality of soldiers is to equate soldiers to mafia thugs or gang members, no better or worse than their enemies.

Should we accept the idea that enemy combatants are our moral equals? As a soldier, I am offended at the claim that soldiers who fight for human rights and freedoms have the same moral standing as those who fight for Nazi or Islamist fascism. Moreover, as an ethicist, I am concerned that we would accept an argument that rationalizes killing on the basis that no one is morally wrong because everyone is morally wrong; i.e., all combatants have forfeited their right to not be killed, so none of them is wrong to kill each other. This line of reasoning has implications that we should be unwilling to accept. As we will see in the ensuing paragraphs, it is only the moral inequality among people in a context that gives killing in self defense its moral authority.

Consider, for example, a situation in which someone who has forfeited his right to not be killed engages in conflict with someone who retains that right. Imagine that an armed bank robber has taken a hostage at gunpoint. By threatening the life of the hostage, the robber has forfeited his right to not be killed. Imagine further that a police officer then arrives at the scene and aims her firearm at the robber. Has the officer done anything wrong? No. Not only has the robber already forfeited his right to not be killed, but also the police officer has an obligation to protect innocent people, including the hostage. Would we say that the police officer, by virtue of “threatening” the robber, forfeits her own right to not be killed? Would the robber be justified in shooting the officer in “self defense”? Of course not, on both counts. Context matters. The officer cannot violate the rights of someone who has already forfeited them. The moral inequality between the robber and police officer makes it morally acceptable for the officer to kill the robber, but not vice versa.

Consider, on the other hand, a situation in which all parties have forfeited their rights to not be killed. Imagine two organized crime “families” that make their money by threatening the lives of businessmen and who compete over the same turf. They are “at war,” ready to knock off their rival extortionists at any opportunity. In this situation, “family members” (assuming that membership is voluntary and informed) on both sides have forfeited their rights to not be killed. If a member of one family attacked someone from the other family, there would be no violation of rights. If the body guards fended off the attack and killed the attacker, they would not be morally justified. Nor, by this argument, would they be morally wrong. They would simply be killing in self interest, not justified self defense. In itself, that is not a violation of rights. However, if any innocent bystanders were killed in the exchange, the Mafioso would bear a grave moral burden, because they would have violated the victims’ rights to not be killed, and have done so for no morally worthy reason.

Are American soldiers analogous to the police officer or to the mafia hit men? Are we defenders of rights or amoral mercenaries? To subscribe to the moral equality of soldiers is to equate soldiers to the mafia thugs, no better or worse than their enemies. On the other hand, to subscribe to the idea that soldiers are analogous to the police officer entails that soldiers must act for a just cause. Soldiers must maintain their moral authority by threatening only those people who have already forfeited their rights to not be killed, and they must not do anything that forfeits their own rights. In other words, they have to fight in wars that are just. Is this a reasonable requirement?

The notion of the moral equality of soldiers can be traced to the Medieval Age and the concept of soldiers’ “invincible ignorance.” Invincible ignorance was the claim that soldiers are either too ignorant or uninformed, or both, to determine whether their side is the aggressor or the defender in a war. Thus was born the conditions that gave rise to the moral equality of soldiers. These conditions, however, no longer apply, at least not in the developed world. Perhaps it was once the case that soldiers were invincibly ignorant, when feudal lords rallied their illiterate serfs to battle, but it is certainly not true today. Today’s soldiers are educated and have access to a wealth of information. To assume that all soldiers are “invincible ignorant” and thus incapable of judging the justice of a war is misinformed, inaccurate, and insulting to soldiers.

What we owe our Soldiers

This week, I received an email from a friend who is attending the Army's Command & General Staff College, which is the intermediate level (rank of major) education for officers. He had been tasked to lead a seminar discussion based on my article, "Military Leaders' Obligation to Justify Killing in War," so he asked me some questions as he prepared. Below are his questions and my off-the-cuff responses.

1) What are our moral obligations as leaders to our soldiers?
There are probably tons, but here are some thoughts off the top of my head:

a. Train them to be proficient in their wartime tasks, so they have the best chance of accomplishing their mission and returning home alive.

b. Respect them as persons--this includes things such as recognizing their family obligations and not humiliating them and looking out for their long-term welfare (encourage GI Bill, financial counseling, etc). A part of respecting our soldiers as people is ensuring that they can integrate their soldierly tasks with their human ones--that they can make sense of the death they see and deal. If we recruit people, train them to kill, order them to kill, and then not help them make sense of killing so they can go on with their lives, then we're using them as mere soldiers, not treating them as soldiers who are people--before, during, and after their service.

2) How do leaders lessen a soldier's psychological impact of killing?
a. Preparation is HUGE. According to killologist Dave Grossman, one of the three critical components of developing PTSD is surprise--facing an unexpected trauma. As leaders, we can help by talking with our soldiers about how upsetting killing can be. It shouldn't come as a shock to them--real war ain't a range.

b. We can also let them know what we as leaders care about fighting morally. They may not have the education or maturity to understand it all, but they should have the confidence that someone they trust does. Then we just have to walk the talk.

c. Third, after a fight we can help by talking about it, and encouraging our soldiers to do the same. Most PTSD doesn't begin showing until months or years after the trauma, when Soldiers have the time to reflect and think about things. If we as leaders recognize this, then we'll be in a position to be there for our troops (including those who fought with other units on previous tours), and we'll know that killing another human being isn't something that most people "get over" quickly or easily.

I hope this helps. Let me know how it goes.

NPR Interviews

The audiofiles of the interviews are available online: Here and Now, a 15-minute interview and the Leonard Lopate show, a 35-minute discussion that included WSJ reporter Greg Jaffe.

I'll be interviewed today (Wed, 24Aug) on the syndicated radio show Here and Now at 12:10pm EDT, and tomorrow (Thur, 25Aug) on WNYC's Leonard Lopate show from 1:15-2pm EDT. Feel free to listen in and send me your feedback.

Are ROE sufficient?

A senior leader recently said to me that the LLW and ROE are all that Soldiers need; and, in fact, that introducing morality into the battlefield equation will only confuse Soldiers and undermine discipline.

I respectfully disagree. First of all, would you ever try to justify an action as moral by saying, "The lawyer said it was ok"? I think that we all know that what's legally permissible and what's morally permissible can be very different. In almost all cases, they do correspond with each other, but they may not always, and they come from different sources. Law and policy is contingent--written by a lawyer or commander; morality is necessary--it has a less flawed, more enduring Author. Thus, for a soldier who has killed someone in Fallujah, the knowledge that the JAG in Baghdad or Arlington would say that the killing wasn't illegal isn't going to be a great comfort to his conscience. He already knows that, since he acted IAW ROE, he won't be court-martialed; but he may still wonder if what he did was morally wrong.

I dispute the claim that Soldiers who are familiar with the justification of killing in war would undermine discipline by being more likely to hesitate and put themselves and others in jeopardy. For one, a well trained Soldier will react reflexively to an imminent threat, without having to think, regardless of his knowledge about morality. Second, in those ambiguous situations where a Soldier must think and use his judgment, a well formed ability to reason morally will aid him in making the right decision, faster. Third, if a proposed action that is permissible under ROE turns out, in a particular sitution, to be immoral, we WANT to have Soldiers who are sufficiently morally aware to make the morally correct decision.

In the end, though, I just can't see a Soldier reflecting--days or years after killing in war--on his actions and saying, "I did what was morally right; I acted within the ROE." I HAVE heard statements like that, but they ring of rationalization and guilt, not justification and peace.

The ROE are the "cheat sheet" that provide the basics for conduct in combat, but I'm convinced that a deeper appreciation of the moral principles that are prior to--and foundational for--the ROE will better support Soldiers' long-term development as Soldiers and as people.

Link to masters thesis

Soldiers, Self Defense, and Killing in War

Chapter 1 is a critique of Michael Walzer's Just and Unjust Wars, which is used at West Point and is the best text on Just War Theory. Walzer understands warfare, but he implicitly relies on an account of killing in self defense that is much too permissive, one that claims that we are justified in killing anything or anyone that threatens us.

Chapter 2 is a critique of war-pacifism as laid out in Richard Norman's Ethics, Killing, and War. I argue that he presents a strong case for when killing is and is not justified, but--because he simply does not understand soldiers and warfare--he applies his criteria inaccurately to soldiers in war.

In Chapter 3, I show how Norman's account of justified killing can be combined with Walzer's more accurate understanding of warfare to produce a moral justification for killing in combat.

This was my first deep thinking on the subject, so I invite and welcome any critiques of the argument.

Warfighter or Security enforcer: the moral implications

Counterinsurgency operations (COIN) present tons of challenges, not the least of which is how they complicate the moral calculus of killing.

A Soldier who fights in a high-intensity war against a uniformed enemy can confidently assume that every enemy soldier is a combatant, a threat, someone whom it's morally permissible to kill. That's why Soldiers don't fire warning shots; instead, they aim to "put two in the chest." People downrange are to be killed unless they surrender or become incapcitated.

In contrast, a Soldier who is part of a security force in a situation where his mission is to protect the people and where a non-uniformed enemy hides among the people, such as the situation we face in the Iraq COIN, faces a calculus more like that of a police officer. He must assume that people are innocent civilians until evidence suggests otherwise. People downrange are to be protected unless they show hostile intent.

This puts Soldiers in a bind; it gives the bad guys a huge advantage. The bad guys usually get to initiate fires, forcing Soldiers to transform from cops to killers in an instant.

I worry that this too easily creates an over-reaction. Our Soldiers are doing a remarkable job overall of limiting collateral damage, but one area I worry about is some units' "react-to-contact drills" that include firing every weapons system, immediately in all directions, as suppressive fire, with or without targets. Doing this, of course, often leads to harm to innocents, which can be traumatic to the Soldiers who did the firing. Needless to say, it also furthers the insurgents' cause, "proving" that we don't care about the lives of Iraqis.

Like I said, this is a huge challenge for leaders on the ground. With very few exceptions, we ARE adhering to the laws of war, while the insurgents and terrorists are violating just about EVERY law of war (e.g., steal an ambulance, execute the driver, pack the ambulance with explosives, and intentionally kill children; does it get any worse than that?), to include not wearing uniforms.

But we have to find and share effective ways to help Soldiers transition seamlessly and continuously between their roles as warfighters and security forces. Soldiers who kill innocent people because of TTPs that privilege "force protection" over "moral justification" will one day pay the price of PTSD. Leaders need to be proactive and continuously seek ways to train their Soldiers to make justifiable moral calculations, even in the most difficult circumstances.

note: Thanks to LTC Tony Pfaff, whose ideas in this area have sparked my thinking. He has written a chapter (one I've heard about but not read) on this topic in a forthcoming book on the Army Profession.

Talking about this stuff "publicly"

Some of my fellow Soldiers have questioned whether I should be addressing this issue--the need to talk about the moral justification of killing and its possible linkage to PTSD/PITS--in such a public forum. There's a concern that this is our 'dirty laundry' that we shouldn't air out for everyone to see.

It’s true, after all, that some anti-war groups have used some of my words (usually out of context) to further their agendas.

So, here's some thoughts on why I think we as Soldiers should talk publicly about this issue:

Public discussion on killing will be good for the Army and its relationship with the people its serves because civilian readers will likely be pleasantly surprised-to-shocked to realize that: the Army actually educates and trains Airborne-Ranger types who care deeply about morality in war; that officers study morality and war; that West Point teaches it as part of a required class; that the Army encourages and rewards critical thinkers; that its leaders care about the long-term well being of America’s sons and daughters; to list just a few largely unrecognized truths.

With less than 10% of recent generations serving in the military, many of our fellow citizens do not personally know a Soldier or Marine. This blog is a way to communicate directly with the American people, at a more personal level. Who I am as a military professional may have a greater impact than what I say. In each and every of the many situations in which I have talked to civilians about the morality of killing in war, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. People stand in line to thank me…although what really connects with them is that they experience what they want desperately to believe—that their nation’s Army, the world’s most powerful army, is genuinely concerned about doing the right thing.

The fact is, our military is much more morally aware than Hollywood movies and media-frenzy aberrations like Abu Gharib give us credit for. In this blog, I will be able to share many true anecdotes that convey the humanity, the moral goodness of our soldiers and leaders. By engaging with the American people--even those who have anti-military opinions—in reasoned and thoughtful dialogue, we can break some anti-military stereotypes and project a more accurate, positive view of America’s military.

In another sense, this blog and other efforts on this issue will be good for the Army because the Army is Soldiers, and our efforts will raise awareness on an issue that will help Soldiers. External awareness of an internal issue is a good thing, when change is needed. The Army is a bureaucracy, and like all bureaucracies it reinforces the status quo. It’s amazing how a great idea, said at a staff meeting, gets nods but no action, yet the same idea reported in the civilian media gets immediate action. It doesn’t have to be a critical news report; in fact, bureaucracies retrench and resist change in the face of criticism. But bureaucracies respond well to external validation of an issue that they recognize as valid as long as it is communicated in a positive way. That is what I try to do.

A captain who commanded an infantry company in OIF-1 sent me a note after reading the New Yorker article: “Moreover, infantrymen have to kill at a personal level, and in many ways physically experience the death of both enemy soldiers and non-combatants. I think that overall, soldiers will be better prepared for combat and recover from the experience more completely if the Army educates them it moral acceptability…I did not observe any immediate negative psychological impact, however, at the time none of us had the distance necessary to really contemplate the events… The real question is what occurs once soldiers are safe and think fully about their actions.”

The problem of PTSD will not go away. The only right thing to do is to take action that might be able to prevent or relieve it for thousands of Soldiers. The smart PR action is to show the people we serve that we are concerned about the problem (which is already all over the news) and we are working to address it.

Think about it. We are the first Army in centuries to recognize and address this problem. We take care of our people, and in doing so we will reinforce right conduct in battle. That’s a story the American public should hear.

This is not a risk-free endeavor. But nothing worthwhile is ever risk free. As military professionals, we must do what’s right by our Soldiers, America’s sons and daughters who volunteered to defend our Constitution. They are our credentials. They must be our priority.

"Back into the fight" vs "Back into civil society"

There have been a bunch of articles lately, especially in the Army Times, about actions the Army is taking to address the problem of PTSD among Soldiers. I'm a little concerned to hear the Army place so much emphasis on the role of combat-stress teams (CSTs), which are in-country teams of uniformed mental-health professionals who counsel Soldiers after critical events (e.g., firefights).

By many accounts, CSTs are very effective at getting Soldiers "back into the fight." So, it seems that CSTs address what's been called "shell shock" and "battle fatigue" in previous wars.

But, I wonder: is the treatment that gets Soldiers back to being Soldiers the same that's required to help Soldiers re-integrate as civilians? After all, PTSD isn't about not being able to get back into the fight; it's about not being able to leave the fight behind.

Recent reports indicate that symptoms of PTSD are more common in the follow-up screenings done 3-4 months after re-deployment than they are in the screenings done at redeployment. PTSD seems to be correlate positively to having time to reflect upon the things experienced in battle. What can we do for Soldiers after they have re-deployed and they begin serious reflections?

Conceptual overview of required philosphy course I taught at West Point

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to attempt to provide a conceptual overview of PY201, Philosophy. [I wrote this for my students, but it may interest others now, including my many former students who are leading Soldiers today in the war; course key terms are in bold.] Some of this is material that we have not covered this semester. I include it nevertheless because it will probably (hopefully?) make sense to you.

This addresses the three section of the course:

• critical thinking
• overview of moral theories
• morality and war

PY201 addresses three areas of philosophy—critical thinking, moral philosophy, and morality in war. Your goal here at West Point should be to become a leader who will make the right decisions in war. To do so, you must be able to think critically in order to evaluate the various and competing theories of moral philosophy. Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what it means and entails to live morally. Once we better understand what morality is, we are able to apply personal moral decision making to the challenging arena of war.

Critical Thinking

Leadership is the art of persuasion. In order to be able to consistently persuade diverse people, we must appeal to their reason. All healthy human beings share in reason, whereas their emotions are unique to themselves. In order to be effective leaders, then, we must be able to make good arguments that appeal to reason.

An argument is a collection of claims, one of which is the conclusion whose truth the argument attempts to establish; the other claims are called the premises, which are supposed to lead to, or support, or convince that the conclusion is true.

A claim is any declarative sentence that we can view as either true or false. An objective claim is one whose truth value is independent of what anyone thinks or feels (e.g., Virginia Tech is ranked #2 in the BCS poll). On the other hand, a subjective claim is a claim whose truth value does depend on thoughts or feelings (e.g., I love Virginia Tech football). Because the truth value of objective claims can be shared and verified, they are more convincing than subjective claims.

A claim in an argument should not be too vague or ambiguous. A claim is too vague when it is unclear what the speaker intended (e.g., “Cadets are more conservative than other people). A claim is ambiguous if there are at least two clear ways to understand it (e.g., Dogs smell better than horses).

Good arguments, ones which should convince a rational person to accept the conclusion, are comprised of claims that are plausible (true or likely to be true) that lead to conclusions. If plausible claims lead to a conclusion that must be true, then the argument is sound (valid form + plausible premises). If plausible claims lead to a conclusion that is likely true, then the argument is nondeductively successful.

Complex arguments are comprised of sub-arguments, whose conclusions (intermediate conclusions) serve as the premises to the main argument. In a typical argumentative essay, particular points of evidence (premises) support ideas that are expressed in topic sentences (intermediate conclusions/main premises) which, in turn, support the essay’s thesis statement. A good thesis statement is usually comprised of the arguer’s position on an issue and her reasons for that position (final conclusion + main premises).

For example, the thesis statement, “Officers are morally obligated to serve in wars that they believe are unjust, because they are not responsible for the decision to go to war, they lack the information to make informed judgments, and the best way to realistically achieve objective justice is to follow the procedures of formal justice,” is really an argument that in standard form appears as:

P1. Officers are not responsible for the decision to go to war.

P2. Officers lack the information to make informed judgments on the justice of a wars.

P3. The best way for officers to realistically achieve objective justice is to follow the procedures of formal justice.________________________________________________________

C. Officers are morally obligated to serve in wars that they believe are unjust.

Moral Philosophy

Everyone has a sense of right and wrong, and it is usually very easy to distinguish right from wrong in most everyday situations. We may not always do what we know to be right, but at least we know that what we are doing is wrong. What is wrong is usually frowned upon by society, illegal, disrespectful to others, and harmful to everyone overall. Take, for example, stealing. No one likes a thief, police arrest thieves, victims of theft feel “wronged,” and, in general, stealing creates a net unhappiness in the short and long-term. Because most everyday moral decisions are no-brainers, we do not have to think often about what morality is, about what it really means to say that something is immoral, about what it is that makes right “right” and wrong “wrong.”

Professional soldiers do not have the luxury of being morally unreflective. Officers fight and lead others into wars, and in wars the everyday moral rules are turned upside down. Outside of war, killing another person is the ultimate evil. In war, killing other people is the moral norm. This can be terribly morally troubling unless the officer understands what morality is.

In this course, we expose you to different theories of morality, explaining and critiquing them so that you can use your critical thinking skills to gain a deeper understanding of what you think morality is. Each of the moral theories that we study has some claim on truth, yet all of them have some apparent problems, and many of them contradict each other. You must discern your own sense of right and using, using your argumentative skills and theoretical understanding of the moral theories to arrive at some coherent explanation of why the activities of war are morally permissible.

Here is a brief overview of the moral theories that we studied:

Ethical relativism claims that there are no universal moral truths (except, of course, the universal claim that there are no universal claims). Ethical conventionalism is the relativistic position that morality is whatever a culture decides that it is. If the culture changes its opinion, then what is moral changes. Ethical subjectivism is the viewpoint that each person determines his or her own morality, so no one can judge anyone else. Everyone has his or her own standard of morality. An appeal of ethical relativism is that it limits moral judgment against us. A problem with ethical relativism is that it negates our authority to make moral judgments on others. For example, the conventionalist cannot logically contend that the holocaust was wrong or that slavery was wrong; whatever society held was right was, by definition, right. Likewise, the ethical subjectivist cannot logically make any moral claims against anyone else. If someone were to brutally kill the little sister of a subjectivist, all the subjectivist could fairly say was, “I wouldn’t have done that. That would be wrong for me to do, because I think that brutally killing children is wrong. Still, I respect that your morality may say that such killing is right.”

The next four moral theories that we cover are objectivist—they recognize that at least some moral principles are objectively valid, which means that they are binding on all people.

The Divine Command Theory of morality holds that it is the will of God, expressed through revelation, that makes right things right and wrong things wrong. We must do what God commands. An appeal of this theory is that it integrates our spiritual and moral selves. A problem with this theory is that it, unless we are prepared to accept that God’s will is arbitrary (i.e., rape would be moral if God declared it so), it seems that God would have to refer to a pre-existing standard in order to do what is right. Therefore, we could make use of that standard independent of God’s decrees.

Ethical egoism and utilitarianism are consequentialist theories. The moral worth of an action lies in its consequences; intentions are morally irrelevant.

Ethical egoism holds that what is morally right is whatever serves our own interests. What makes something right is the fact that it furthers our interest; what makes a decision wrong is that it harms our serf-interest. An appeal of ethical egoism is that it recognizes our selfishness. Many of us have, to various extents and at different times, the desire to take care of ourselves, even at the expense of others. A problem with ethical egoism is that it contradicts many of our moral intuitions. For example, most of us would not kill someone even if we knew we could get away with it and doing so would benefit us (say, insurance money).

Utilitarianism holds that what is good is happiness, so morality consists of maximizing net happiness in the world (the greatest happiness principle). Act utilitarians contend that we are morally bound to always choose the option among available alternatives that will produce the most net (short- and long-term, direct and indirect) happiness. An appeal of act utilitarianism (AU) is that it maximizes happiness. Some problems with act utilitarianism are that it rejects rules of behavior (which we tend to support, such as don’t steal) , that predicting consequences in very difficult to do, and that it can demand choices that violate our conceptions of rights and justice. Rule utilitarians attempt to solve the problems of AU by arguing that, rather than making decisions for each situation, we should simply follow those rules of behavior that tend to maximize happiness, even if they don’t do so in every case. Problems with this theory include its basic justification—if increasing happiness is what grounds morality, then by what criteria does RU follow rules even when doing so will not maximize happiness?

Kantian ethics (KE) holds the viewpoint that morality is unrelated to capricious, nebulous factors such as “happiness.” Instead, what is morally right is a function of reason, so it is the same for all persons, and it is morally binding no matter how one feels. Kant calls this dictate of reason, this Moral Law, the Categorical Imperative. Kant contends that all persons share in reason, which is the capacity to transcend the physical laws of this world and to choose freely. He holds that reason chooses unreasonably—wrongly—when it contradicts its very nature, which is when it violates the freedom (the “reason”) of other rational beings. Therefore, the categorical imperative demands that we respect reason by respecting other persons. In practical terms, we fail to respect other persons as persons when we use them merely as means or when we violate their autonomy. An appeal of Kantianism is that it promotes the dignity and rights of every person. A problem of Kantianism is that it is unyielding; feelings and outcomes are irrelevant. All that matters is that persons always base their choices upon maxims (self-given principles for action: what they are doing and why they are doing it) that do not violate the categorical imperative.

Whereas AU, RU, and KE are very systematic theories which provide “answers” almost by formula, Virtue Ethics and the Ethics of Care are more particular.

Virtue ethics does not focus, as the systematic theories do, on making the right decision. Instead, it focuses on developing the kind of person who will make the right decision, whatever that may be. Virtue ethics emphasizes the development of the nonrational part of ourselves by developing right habits. VE champions the development of personal traits—such as courage, justice, temperance, generosity, honesty-- which lead to a well-lived life for the individual within society. To the VE, right training creates right habits, and right education promotes right thoughts, so that people who have been raised well will make the right choices and achieve a good life. An appeal of VE is that it recognizes that no one has yet found a principle that seems to apply well in every circumstance; that is why it focuses on developing good virtuous people who have good habits and judgment who can make the right decision in each circumstance. A problem with VE is that it is circular. How do we know that a person is good? He does good things. What are good things? Whatever a good person does.

The Ethics of Care assumes that women view moral issues differently than men do. Whereas men tend to act according to abstract principles, the EC holds that women act according to relationships. Women develop morally from a state of selfishness, to a state of selflessness, and finally to a mature understanding that morality is a complex web of obligations and rights borne of relationships in which they must care for both themselves and the other. The ethics of care emphasizes the particularity of morality. The appeal of EC is that it recognizes the unique moral voice of women, who (studies claim) reject abstract principles when they conflict with real persons and real relationships. A problem of EC is that its adherents must still make use of moral principles in order to decide how to act within relationships. It is not a stand-alone theory of morality.

Now that we have some theoretical basis from which to make and understand our moral judgment, let us apply them to war.

Morality and War.

War happens. If it’s true—as it has been said--that the only inevitable events in life are death and taxes, then war can take a lot of credit for bringing about both of them. Anyway, that wars are fought is an undisputed, descriptive fact. On the other hand, whether or not we can make moral judgments about both those wars and the actions that occur in them is open to some discussion.

Those who deny that actions of war (by politicians and/or soldiers) are subject to moral judgment are military realists. There are two “schools” of realist thought. One school holds that morality does not apply at all to the realm of international relations. They argue that states act in their self-interest, which is defined in practical terms as power and security. Thucydides’ description of the Athenian generals’ argument at Melos is considered an example of this type of realist attitude. The other school of realist thought concedes that morality applies to international relations, but it contends that moral judgment applies (jus ad bellum) only to the state that starts a war. The aggressor state is immoral; the defender state is moral. Therefore, any action taken by the state that has a moral end (the defender state) is free from moral judgment. The ends justify the means for the state that is “in the right.” General Sherman’s “March to the Sea,” which he justified by arguing that the Confederates’ were morally responsible for the hell that he was unleashing, is an example of this type of thinking.

As we have seen, the morality of war is judged at two levels. Every state that is at war has an end, a goal that it hopes to achieve. It also employs means to achieve that end. The moral judgment of a states end is termed jus ad bellum; literally, this means “the justice of a war.” Jus ad bellum is examined by examining the reasons why a nation goes to war and continues to fight a war. The traditional criteria used to judged jus ad bellum are: (with my editorial comment, of course)

1. Just Cause. The state must be fighting for a morally justified end.

2. Right intention. The state must not only have a must cause, but also it must actually be fighting for it. For example, the US had a just cause for liberating Kuwait; the Iraqi invasion was a violation of Kuwaiti territorial integrity and political sovereignty. Consequently, it was a violation of the right of all those who valued the Kuwaiti political community. However, if the actual intention of the US was to keep the price of oil down, then the US would not have actually been fighting (and dying and killing) for a just cause.

3. Legitimate authority. Only the leaders of a political community have the moral authority to commit its people to war.

4. Formal declaration. You can’t sucker-punch another nation. See FM 27-10, para.20.

5. Chance of Success. Don’t waste human lives in a hopeless cause. This is always a judgment call for the political leaders. In the history of war, some underdogs have won. Appeasement is a tough pill for a nation to swallow; it’s the forfeiture of those rights which bound that people of that nation together in the first place.

6. Last resort. War should not be the first option for resolving disputes. If it’s possible to accomplish an end without resort to war, then it’s morally obligatory for political leaders to do so. Walzer, however, rejects this condition as impractical. There is, he argues, always something else you can try. Instead, Walzer argues that aggression always justifies a forceful defense of rights.

7. Proportional. When political leaders commit their nation to war, what they expect to gain must be proportional to what they expect to lose. This ties in closely with criterion #5. It might, for example, be immoral to fight to defend Easter Island if the expected loss of life is two million soldiers. However, it is hard to put a price on concepts such as human rights and national sovereignty.

In Walzer’s discussion of jus ad bellum, he focuses on the first criterion, just cause. He uses the Legalist Paradigm to clarify his discussion of what is a just cause. See notes, chapter 4.

The fundamental form of Walzer’s theory of aggression is the Legalist Paradigm, which has six basic points.

1. There exists an international society of independent states. The dominant value of this society is the survival and independence of its separate political communities.

2. This international society has a law that establishes the rights of its members—above all, the rights of territorial integrity and political sovereignty. States rights depend on the common life of their members; since societies are often in-flux, so are these rights.

3. Any use of force or imminent threat of force by one state against the political sovereignty of another constitutes aggression and is a criminal act.

4. Aggression justifies two kinds of violent response: a war of self-defense by the victim and a war of law enforcement by the victim and by any other member of international society. This is analogous to a person’s right to defend herself and a third-party’s right to intervene on her behalf.

5. Nothing but aggression can justify war. Principle of non-intervention. Just as we must respect a person’s autonomy, we must respect a state’s sovereignty.

6. Once the aggressor state has been militarily repulsed, it can also be punished.

The legalist paradigm allows that the only moral ends in war are the 3 R’s:

1. Resist the aggression

2. Restore the ante-bellum status quo.

3. Reasonably prevent a recurrence of the aggression.

The other level of moral judgment in war considers the means that the soldiers of a nation employ to achieve the desired national end. Traditionally, this is referred to as jus in bello; literally, this means “justice in war.” It addressed whom soldiers can kill, and how they can kill them.

1. The “whom” soldiers can kill is the addressed by the principle of non-combatant immunity. Non-combatants are those who are not combatants (that helps!). Who are combatants? Morally, combatants are those who—through some choice of their own—have forfeited their rights to not be killed by choosing to engage in an activity that is threatening to their enemy. As such, all soldiers are combatants. “Soldiers as a class are set apart from the world of peaceful activity; they are trained to fight, provided with weapons, required to fight on command…[It] is the enterprise of their class, and this fact radically distinguishes the individual soldier from the civilians he leaves behind” (JUW, 144). Munitions factory workers are combatants, too, but “they can be attacked only in their factory (not in their homes), when they are actually engaged in activities threatening and harmful to their enemies. Non-combatants, then are those who have done nothing, and are doing nothing, that entails the loss of their rights.

All of this talk of rights brings us to the Moral Equality of Soldiers (see notes, chapter 3). All soldiers are moral equals. They all possess war rights: they have forfeited their right to life vis-à-vis enemy soldiers, and they have gained the right to kill enemy soldiers. Since non-combatants have not forfeited their rights, then soldiers may not (morally and legally) kill them. Neither can non-combatants kill soldiers. If they do, then they are (legally and morally) murderers.

The moral difficulties of war arise because not all of the fighting is done by fighter aircraft and naval ships at sea. If is were, then non-combatants would not get harmed. As it is, the fact remains that wars are fought over territory, and that is almost always land. And non-combatants live on land. Therefore, soldiers must keep in mind the principle of discrimination. They must be discriminatory in their choice of targets. They must never target non-combatants, and they must take actions to limit collateral damage that affects non-combatants.

When soldiers face the tough decisions that involve attacking legitimate military targets that foreseeably could cause collateral damage, they must resort to the doctrine of double effect for guidance.

When a proposed action has an intended good effect and an unintended but foreseeable bad effect (i.e., collateral damage), then it is morally permissible to take that action if and only if:

1. The action itself is morally permissible.

2. The direct effect is morally permissible.

3. The actor’s intent is good; he/she aims only at the good effect; the bad effect is not the means to the good effect.

-Double intention; the actor must accept some risks to himself to minimize the foreseeable bad effects.

4. The good effect is expected to be proportional to the bad. (It’s worth it.)

Now let’s discuss the Law of War. The purposes of the law of war are to limit unnecessary suffering, safeguard certain fundamental human rights, and facilitate the restoration of peace (FM 27-20, para.2). Since wars should only be fought over very important issues, it is presumably important to the belligerents that they win. The principle of military necessity “justifies those measure not forbidden by international law which are indispensable for securing the complete submission of the enemy as soon as possible” (FM 27-10, para.3). Military necessity does not override the law of war.

Any violation of the law of war, by either a combatant or non-combatant, is a war crime (FM 27-20, para.3b).

The only legal way to violate the law of war is a reprisal. “Reprisals are acts of retaliation in the form of conduct which would otherwise be unlawful, resorted to by one belligerent against enemy personnel or property for acts of warfare committed by the other belligerent in violation of the law of war, for the purpose of enforcing future compliance with the recognized rules of civilized warfare” (FM 27-10, para.497). Reprisals can be conducted only against combatants. Walzer argues that reprisals are moral only if they are limited, proportional, directed against combatants, and truly in response to a transgression (JUW, 221).

Walzer argues that a nation is morally permitted to violate the law of war and the principle of non-combatant immunity if and when it faces a “supreme emergency,” which is when it faces an imminent, grave threat to its very existence and it has no other means available to it to preserve its existence. He justifies this concept by referring to the near-absolute right of a political community to not be “blotted out.” He employs this concept to defend Great Britain’s bombing of German population centers in 1941.

A commander’s responsibility in war encompasses everything that his or her unit does or fails to do. Commanders are responsible for issuing only moral orders and for ensuring the moral action of their subordinates by training them in the law of war, conducting inspections, and by punishing violators. Read FM 27-10, paras. 501and 509.

Christopher argues in Ethics of War & Peace that military officers have a moral obligation to serve in wars, even those that they believe to be unjust. He gives three arguments to support his position. First, he argues that the decision to go to war is a political decision, so the soldier has no business even worrying about it. Secondly, he argues that the principle of civilian control of the military demands officers service in even unjust wars. Just as military personnel would be wrong to go to war without orders from the political authority, they would be just as wrong to not go to war when ordered to do so by the political authority. Finally, Christopher argues that military personnel should not be so arrogant as to assume that they have sufficient information to make a better moral judgment than those who are better informed.

Finally, Pacifism. Pacifists reject violence as a means to ends. Absolute pacifists reject violence in all its forms, in all aspects of life. Ghandi was an absolute pacifist. War-Pacifists are people who accept the legitimate use of violence in defense of rights under certain conditions (such as self- or other-defense against a rapist), but they do not think that soldiers in wars actually face the conditions that justify violent means of self-defense. Their main reasons are that the enemy soldiers did not freely chose their threatening actions and that the moral agents “put themselves into the situation of danger” by becoming soldiers. Selective-pacifists are those who accept the possibility of justified killing in some wars (such as WWII), yet reject the morality of killing in other (“unjustified”) wars (such as Vietnam).