Thoughts of a Soldier-Ethicist

After the Yellow Ribbon Conference

2011-11-13T16:02:00.000-05:00

This weekend I attended the After the Yellow Ribbon conference at the Duke Divinity School.

Put together by OIF-vet, conscientious objector, and Duke Divinity student Logan Mehl-Laituri and fellow Divinity student Alaina Kleinbeck, it was an interdisciplinary event that included ecclesial, medical (mental health) and military perspectives in conversation devoted to helping veterans make sense of the moral reality of war.

I learned something from everyone there. The speakers who inspired me the most were Dr Warren Kinghorn (from the Veterans Admin and Duke) and Dr David Miller, a fair-minded and well-spoken pacifist. I was privileged to give the keynote address and later have the opportunity to give my presentaton on "the moral justification for killing in war" to the majority-pacifist audience.

The goal of the event was to come together, talk honestly and listen openly, and find common ground so we all can help heal those vets who experienced moral injury in war. IMHO, it succeeded beautifully. This conference showed me that just warists and war pacifists can come together productively.

BBC article and my upcoming deployment

2011-06-11T16:17:00.000-04:00

Life is funny. On the day that I leave my regular work (at a desk) and begin the process of deploying to Afghanistan, the BBC runs an article that quotes me, resulting in a deluge of emails and comments at a time when I have little opportunity to engage online.

I spoke with the BBC correspondent, Stephen Evans, more than four years ago when he visited West Point.

So, I ask that those who write me to have patience; my internet connectivity will be limited for the next couple months at least. I will reply to each of you as I am able. In fact, next year (summer 12-spring 13) I plan on taking a sabbatical to write a book on ethics in war, so I will (finally) have time to focus, think and write, and I will re-read all the good ideas I've received over the years on this blog.

Here at the replacement center at Ft Benning, GA, I've already enjoyed great conversations with an Army lawyer and an Army doctor about moral decisionmaking. (The doc even shares my interest in exploring complexity theory and ethics.) Within 10 days, I'll be privileged to hear the stories, experiences, and perspectives of our soldiers who are engaged in the fight. I am blessed to have such opportunities, and I will do my best to use tleverage my experiences to contribute to the wider conversation on war and morality.

Yours in the search for Truth,

pete

Unspoken ethical norms in war

2010-07-03T19:20:00.000-04:00

I've had the privilege to interview more than 300 junior officers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I have been very impressed and inspired by their deep commitment to leading their soldiers to fight morally. Combat requires moral decisionmaking--there's no getting around it--and our leaders overwhelmingly mean well.

However, I have also observed that many leaders and soldiers feel unprepared for the life-or-death decisions they have had to make in "gray" circumstances. Their pre-deployment training consisted too often of black-or-white scenarios written by Army lawyers who've never had to make decisions in the fog of war. So, our soldiers learn by doing, trusting their gut instincts and character, and they generally do remarkably well.

The soldiers I interview describe their most uselful preparation for combat moral decisionmaking as being their reading of memoirs or other accounts of battle, and movies. Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, With the Old Breed, etc gave them a sense of the decisions they would have to make.

Of course, real accounts of battle are descriptive, not prescriptive...and real descriptions of war are full of events that would be war crimes by legal, media, and other dominant but uninformed-about-war parties.

In my interviews, which are one-on-one, confidential conversations in the war zone, I've noticed that soldiers who are doing the fighting have their own set of ethical standards. In most cases and most situations, their ethical norms are consistent with what is expected publicly of them--be gentle with detainees, do not discriminate against local national civilians even if you know they support (not materially) the enemy, use gov't funds IAW all the regulations, leave interrogations to the trained interrogators, put the mission first, etc.

Yet there are times and situations in which soldiers judge "what's right" on the ground to be much different than the public ethics. Sometimes, soldiers "interrogate" detainees whom they are authorized only to tactically question; sometimes they use funds for purposes not authorized; sometimes they put more risk on civilians whom they know support the enemy; on occasion, they insure that someone they've detained will never able to kill the innocent again.

Each of these action violates the "public ethics" of the US military (and some the Laws of Land Warfare)...yet I've heard well reasoned, convincing moral arguments for them. The problem is, our soldiers cannot ever say publicly what they did, much less offer their reasons, without making themselves liable to legal proceedings. As a result, the next generations of soldiers will continue to be unprepared for the complex, difficult moral decisions they will face in war. It's a catch-22.

So, the profession of arms has two moral codes--the public one, based on black-and-white legal rules, that work much of the time; and a private code, known only by those who have to do the messy work of war.

It's not healthy psychologically to have made difficult moral decisions that you cannot talk about publicly for fear of being punished.

It's also dangerous to have such "unspoken" rules of war that differ from what soldiers are taught in formal training. For example,inexperienced young leaders (2LT platoon leaders) can have trouble enforcing standards when they are not confident that they know the true standards.

I am going to develop a paper on this topic that I'll present at the New Mexico Military Institute in October, and I plan to refine it and present it again at the American Society of Military Ethics meeting in January.

More to follow, but I thought I'd put the ideas out there and solicit your feedback. You can always write me privately at pgkilner@gmail.com if you want to share your experiences and ideas on this or any topic related to moral decisionmaking in the military context.

Diminished moral responsibility of many enemy combatants

2010-03-04T15:00:00.003-05:00

The straightforward examples used in my baseline argument for the moral justification for killing in war are not representative of many of the enemy combatants that we kill in the current wars. Many of those attackingIndigenous Security Forces or Coalition Forces (the good guys) are doing so solely to pay the bills, to put food on the table; others are uneducated and misinformed about the goals of each side in the wars. In other words, many of the attackers are not fully morally responsible for their actions. In terms of domestic self defense, they are more like: a drug addict who commits armed robbery and murder to finance his addiction; or a mentally disabled person who watched a violent movie, came across a loaded weapons, and is now “living the fantasy” by shooting innocent people; or like a man who mistakenly thinks that you raped and killed his mother and is coming to kill you.

In such cases, I think, we would say that using lethal force to stop the attack and protect the lives of innocent people is indeed still morally justified…but it is not satisfying, and is even tragic. When an attacker is not completely responsible for his life-threatening actions, it is sad—but nonetheless necessary and morally justified—to use lethal force in defense of the innocent.

The Justice of the War does matter

2010-01-25T16:10:00.003-05:00

The editors cut a couple important paragraphs from the Army Magazine article. The paragraps address the effect that the justice of the war has on the morality of actions within the war.

"As you likely realized while reading the bubble theory, its approach to justifying killing in war requires that the soldier be fighting for a war that is just. This is a stumbling block for many military professionals. The bubble theory rejects the long-held tenet of the Just-War Tradition that soldiers on both sides of a war are “moral equals”—equally innocent of responsibility for the war but equally guilty of threatening each other. This claim of moral equality between unjust aggressor and just defender treats all soldiers as “innocent aggressors,” and thus reduces the “justification” of killing in war to the moral equivalent of gang warfare—no one is wrong because all are wrong, i.e., all soldiers have lost their bubbles. This waiver on soldiers’ responsibility for fighting may have had merit when feudal lords rounded up their serfs and led them into battle, but it does not reflect the educated, informed, morally autonomous citizen-soldiers of today.

We and our Soldiers cannot simply abdicate our responsibility to respect others’ human rights simply because we took an oath. Granted, given the huge responsibility we bear to protect the innocent, I do think that American Soldiers are morally obligated to fight unless they are convinced that a war is unjust. But I also think that an option should exist for selective conscientious objection. I doubt this would undermine good order and discipline. The patriots who volunteer to defend freedom will not abandon their fellow Soldiers without good cause. I have found most conscientious objectors to be woefully misinformed about morality in war. A healthy, ongoing conversation on the subject might actually enhance not only our Soldiers’ well being, but also recruiting and retention."

Ethics of Killing seminar at West Point

2010-01-25T15:41:00.003-05:00

Department of English and Philosophy Seminar on “The Ethics of Killing”

Last Friday, 22 Jan, Dr. Richard Schoonhoven led a very interesting discussion on the ethics of killing, especially as it applies to war. This was the first of a series of Departmental seminars on the Army’s Professional Military Ethic. About 60 staff and faculty attended the 55-minute seminar.

Here are a few of my take-aways from the seminar:

First, it was validating. Richard didn’t put forth a theory or an answer to the question of the moral justification for killing in war; that wasn’t his intent. Instead, he laid out the many aspects related to the question—e.g., the problem of the innocent attacker, moral responsibility, “invincible ignorance,” the relationship of citizen and state, the connection (or not) of Jus in Bellum and Jus in Bello, noncombatant immunity. Yet, in almost every area of discussion, I felt confident that my approach to the morality of killing could coherently address the issues.

Second, I realized that much of the difficulty in making moral judgment in war is not a matter of developing a coherent set of moral principles; rather, it’s a problem of information. A soldier in combat rarely has complete situational awareness of the moral situation—the justice of the cause, the motives and intent of enemy combatants, etc. In contrast, we generally have much better information while making our everyday moral decisions. So, my insight was that we can develop a coherent combat ethics that assumes full information, yet we’ll have to deal with the complicating reality that soldiers will often act on incomplete or incorrect information. The category of morally excusable actions—those that are objectively wrong but not worthy of moral blame—is a BIG one in war.

Third, I was reminded of something that I’ve often talked about yet never written about—namely, that the justice of a war (jus ad bellum) is something that must be continuously evaluated. Whether or not a war was morally right to engage in in 2003, for example, is really unrelated to what we should be doing in 2010. A war might be just at its inception yet, as conditions change, become unjust to continue; and vice versa. The question is, “Given the feasible alternatives, should we (continue to) engage in the war?” Moral decisions are necessarily made with the information and circumstances of the moment; we can’t change the past, but we can and should resolve to do what’s morally right now and into the future.

Thoughts?

Why study the morality of killing in war?

2010-01-23T16:59:00.000-05:00

Why talk with our soldiers about the morality of killing?

1. Helping our soldiers understand the moral justification of killing is a leadership issue. Many soldiers who have killed in war are wracked by guilt when they should not be. When our soldiers kill justly, they ought to be able to live at peace with themselves. We, their leaders, are responsible for them killing; we ought to do our part to help them live fully afterwards.

2. Our soldiers arrive in the Army without any personal experience of killing another human being. As their leaders, we need to help them prepare for and make sense of the first-in-a-lifetime experience of killing a fellow human being. This contrasts with other, more frequent moral decisions. For example, by the time I turned 18 and joined the Army, I knew that stealing was immoral. Why? Well, when I was an 11-year-old boy, I shoplifted some candy. Almost immediately afterwards, I felt guilty and ashamed of myself. A year later, someone stole my bicycle, and I experienced anger and a sense of violation. So, by the time I became a soldier, I had a well-developed sense of morality about stealing. On the other hand, I had no experience with the morality of killing.

3. When it comes to killing another human being, our soldiers cannot trust their feelings. We human beings appear to be hardwired to feel guilty after being involved in the death of another person. For example, if you are driving a car under the speed limit and paying attention to the road, yet a pedestrian negligently darts in front of your car and is struck and killed, you will feel terribly guilty, despite the fact that you know you did nothing wrong. Apparently, playing a role in another’s death elicits guilt even without any wrongdoing. Sharing this observation alone is comforting to soldiers, who often wonder why they feel a sense of guilt even though they know cognitively that it was right to kill the enemy combatant.

4. Understanding the morality of killing in war empowers our soldiers to talk confidently with family, neighbors, acquaintances, etc., about the things the Army does. Within our military communities, we take for granted that wartime killing is morally acceptable. Other communities, however, do not necessarily share that assumption. All of our soldiers will one day retire or ETS. They will likely be challenged by the ignorant, indolent, and downright hateful towards the military. If we have not prepared our soldiers to respond to questions about wartime killing, we have left them defenseless.

Moral justification for killing in war

2010-01-23T16:51:00.004-05:00

This is my latest version of laying out the argument. Feedback is welcomed!

A moral justification for killing in war
By Pete Kilner, 2009

Introduction:
The Army performs many of the same functions as civilian organizations, yet there is one absolutely unique and defining characteristic of our profession—we are organized, equipped and trained to kill people. As company-level leaders, we recruit patriotic young Americans to kill; equip them to kill; train them to kill; develop and issue orders for them to kill; issue fire commands for them to kill; and commend them for killing enemies of our country. We perform our duties well, and the American people sleep safely at night. However, we as a profession generally do not provide our soldiers with an explanation for why it is morally right for them to kill in combat. Consequently, many of the soldiers entrusted to our care suffer needless guilt after killing in war.

The purpose of this article is to offer you a tool—an explanation for the morality of killing in war that you can adapt for use in your units. This is a presentation I have given to units in the 82nd, 101st, 25th, and the Marines, as well as at West Point and ROTC programs. This explanation may not be the answer, but it is an answer to this difficult and oft-overlooked issue. Perhaps the most important outcome of having this conversation with your unit is a command climate in which your soldiers feel comfortable talking about killing and about the thoughts and feelings that killing provokes.

My story
Leader note: I have found it helpful to open the conversation by sharing my personal journey of thinking about the morality of killing. Every soldier thinks about this subject sometime, but relatively few talk publicly about it. If we want to open a healthy professional dialogue on a topic that is still somewhat taboo, we ought to set the example. Your story may be more grounded in personal experience and less academic (after all, I have never killed anyone), and that is probably more effective.

My personal interest in the morality of killing in war was sparked one night years ago when I was a pre-command captain in the 82nd. Rigged for a combat jump, I was waiting to load into a plane that would unload me and thousands of other paratroopers 400 feet above the ground. (The jump was later cancelled.) Amid the nervous chatter, one young trooper’s sincere question to a chaplain caught my attention.

“Chaplain,” he asked. “We’re gonna kill a lot of people tonight. Is that alright?”

“Of course it’s the right thing to do,” responded the chaplain with confidence. “We’re soldiers. The President told us to do it. That makes it right.”

I remember feeling profoundly disappointed in that response. I knew there had to be a better answer than that.

Two years later, I had the opportunity to re-visit the question when the Army sent me to graduate school to study philosophy. To my surprise and dismay, I could not find the answer. No one—not the chaplaincy, the SJA, the Army, the DoD, academia, not even my religion—provided a satisfactory moral justification for looking down my sights and placing two rounds into the head of an insurgent. Having enlisted as an infantryman out of high school and subsequently becoming an infantry officer, I had always assumed that what I was training myself and others to do was a morally justified action. I realized that I needed either to discover the answer or to find another line of work.

What I discovered in my subsequent research was that those who justify killing in war and those who condemn it approach the topic from very different perspectives. The Just-War Tradition justifies the moral permissibility of war at the international, state-to-state level. Although the tradition includes principles for individual soldiers’ conduct in war, it does not provide a moral justification for the combatant-on-combatant killing that characterizes war. In contrast, the War-Pacifist Tradition focuses its lens down at the level of the individual soldier. It argues that killing another human being in the context of war is morally unjustified and therefore wars among states are morally unjustified. I found both approaches to be inadequate. While the top-down justification did not go far enough in explaining why killing in war can be a morally right choice for the individual soldier, the pacifists’ condemnation of wartime killing was based on fundamental misunderstandings about war and soldiers. In my thesis, I combined a war-pacifist framework for justifiable killing with my own understanding of the nature of war to produce a moral justification for killing in war.

While writing my thesis, I happened to read Dave Grossman’s On Killing, which contains numerous anecdotes of soldiers reflecting on killing. Grossman, who has a background in psychology, makes sense of soldiers’ post-killing psychological problems by examining what happened to them in the experience. As an ethicist, however, I read the anecdotes with a different lens—focusing on what the soldiers had done, not on what had happened to them. I realized then that there might be a link between soldiers being able to justify to themselves the morality of killing in war and their post-combat psychological welfare.

Others' stories
Not everyone who kills in war is troubled by the experience, but many are. Because I have written about this topic, I receive many emails from veterans who have killed in war and from their families (more so from the latter). Their pain is palpable; listen in to these excerpts from a few emails.

From a soldier: “The last guy I killed was in a vehicle that came up to my checkpoint during an HVT raid. He tried to evade, I opened up as per ROE at the time, and shortly thereafter a couple soldiers with me began to shoot at the vehicle. I zeroed 28 rounds of a 30-round magazine into the passenger and driver. The driver was hit but not killed immediately, and he managed to back his car back into his driveway 300 meters away. What I’ll never forget about that engagement was listening to the family react when they saw the inside of the car and their loved one without a chest. I saw a counselor for about 6 months when I got back. I quit when I could start sleeping through the night without having to drink a six-pack beforehand.”

From a soldier’s mom: “My son is wrestling with what he did during his deployment. He was raised Catholic and was taught morality and values and we are big on the right to life. I am now trying to help him settle his conscience by explaining that killing in war is not the same as abortion. We, as a family, have been very active in pro-life activities and rhetoric. Now our son is really grappling with the fact that he took a human life, and I don't know exactly how to explain it, excuse it, or justify it. I want him to feel okay with what he did and about himself. I am avoiding the word forgiven, because I don't feel there is anything to forgive. We are supportive of his decision to join the military and are very proud of his accomplishments and ability to do his job effectively. I don't know how to impress upon him that killing in war is justified and not the same as murder and that he did what he was trained to do, and did a good job. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.”

From a soldier’s wife: “My husband was in active combat in Somalia, Honduras, and Iraq. I think Somalia was the hardest for him. Yesterday I came into our room and saw him staring at the wall. He was pale, diaphoretic, and clenching his fists. I have never seen him like this. I asked if he was ok. This startled him and sort of "woke" him. He said he was fine and didn’t want to talk about it. Later he told me he has been starting to have dreams again and has had a few episodes of feeling charged/panicked, but he is able to regain composure and be fine. We talked at length for the first time about his dreams and his feelings about the people he killed while in combat. He carries so much guilt. He said at the time there was a moving target and he reacted. Now he remembers those same incidences and sees their faces. He is haunted by them. He didn’t want to talk to me or anyone else about it because he didn’t want to be looked at for what he had done instead of who he is. Is there anything you can recommend that I can do or he can do to help deal with his guilt? I love him dearly; he is amazing. I want him to be free. He has carried this for so long. He has been out of the service for 8 years now and it is still with him every day."

Stories like these are a call to arms to improve the way we train our soldiers. We teach our soldiers to kill effectively, so we should also teach them how to live with clear consciences after they have killed morally.

A moral justification for killing enemy combatants in war
Without further ado, here is a rights-based justification for killing. It does not rely on any particular religious belief, but it is consistent with Judeo-Christian assumptions about human rights as well as with principles of American civil law. I refer to it informally as the “bubble theory,” for reasons that will soon be obvious.

Our starting point in justifying wartime killing is the conviction that every person possesses the “right not to be killed.” Some would call this a “right to life,” but we really do not have such a right. If we are struck and killed by lightning or die of cancer, after all, our rights have not been violated. Why not? Because a rights claim is made vis-à-vis another person. No one has wronged us when we are stuck by lightning or develop cancer. Similarly, we do not have a right to speech; instead, we have a right that others not prevent us from speaking on certain topics. In this way, rights claims say something about what others should not do to us.

The ultimate source of our human rights is arguable. Some would say God, others cite human reason, still others refer to implicit social contracts or even man-made laws. But I hope we can agree that all persons do possess rights—whatever their source—and that the most fundamental and basic right is the right not to be killed, followed closely by the right not to be enslaved. Our system of government is premised on the belief that all people are endowed with the rights to life and liberty.

Rights are intangible, so it helps to use a concrete “visual” when we think about them. Imagine, if you will, the “right not to be killed” as a bubble that surrounds each person (see Figure 1). Each of us possesses the right that no one else “violate our bubble” and harm us. By virtue of being human, every person possesses a bubble. This is consistent with our moral intuitions. When we are walking down the street, for example, it would be morally wrong to physically assault a person walking past us. Why? In terms of this explanation, we would be violating that person’s bubble. He possessed the fundamental human right not to be physically harmed.

Yet we also know that someone can forfeit that right—can “burst his own bubble.” A right is a right as long as it does not violate the more fundamental right of another. Thus, we recognize that if a person intentionally violates (or threatens to violate) the bubble of another, he forfeits his own bubble (see Figure 2).

For example, if we are walking down the street and someone confronts us with a gun, we are morally permitted to use violence against the man to protect ourselves. Why? Because by consciously choosing to violate the bubble of another, the man had forfeited his own bubble of rights. The concept of forfeiting rights also applies to situations of coming to the defense of another. For example, if we witness a man pull a woman into an alley and continue assaulting her, we are morally permitted to use violence against that man to protect the victim, just as the victim herself is morally right to fight back against her attacker. Why? Because the attacker, by virtue of violating the bubble of someone who possessed it, had forfeited his own bubble, so our use of violence against him violated no right (see Figure 3).

It’s important to note that a just defender does not forfeit his rights when he attacks an unjust aggressor, as in the scenario above. The following scenario helps to clarify the rights of a defender. 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. 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. 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.
When fighting in a just war, a soldier is a defender. Soldiers continue to possess their bubbles as long as they direct violence only at those who have already forfeited their right not to be killed. Enemy combatants are the ones who have “lost their bubbles” by threatening the rights of those who possess them—non-combatants and/or our soldiers. Even if they are not personally threatening anyone at the time we engage them, combatants for an unjust cause are still morally permissible targets because they are operating as part of a larger organism—the unjust threat. There is a good reason why military uniforms include both the individual’s name and the organization/state in whose name he acts; soldiers act as both individuals and as elements of a collective.

Consistent with the rules of war, an aggressor’s forfeiture of rights is not permanent. The default setting for a human being is to possess the right not to be killed, so when a person is no longer a threat, he regains his right, his bubble. What constitutes a “threat”? A threat is someone who possesses both the intent and the capability to violate someone’s right not to be killed (see Figure 4). As soon as a person no longer has the intent or the capability to violate the bubble of another, he regains his own bubble and should not be killed. This is why it is morally wrong to kill a detainee or an incapacitated insurgent.

Limitations
That, in a nutshell, is the bubble theory of the morality of killing in war. I’ll be the first to acknowledge its shortcoming as a purely logical approach to an intensely emotional experience. Even soldiers who internalize this theory may still experience sadness, guilt, or shame after they kill in war. I doubt we would want it any other way; killing another human being is not something to be taken lightly or celebrated. Maybe the best we can hope for is that good soldiers’ bad feelings will be tempered by the knowledge that they did nothing morally wrong.
It’s also a fair criticism to say that the killing that takes place in war is often much more complicated than the situations described in this article. As one combat vet said to me, “It is almost never this simple. Very rarely is it a case of a white-hatted good guy shooting down the black-hatted villain who's been terrorizing the town. There are almost always shades of gray.” I agree, but we have to start somewhere. This article is intended to provide a “starter pack” of basic principles that you can utilize to initiate a deeper conversation in your units.

Perhaps the most tragic situations in war occur when well-intentioned soldiers mistakenly kill non-combatants. When unjust combatants refuse to wear uniforms, just soldiers bear the burden of identifying those who have forfeited their bubbles. Determining “hostile intent” is a big challenge for our soldiers, who often have to make split-second, life-or-death judgments with incomplete information. Good rules of engagement provide guidelines to assist that decision-making process. Nevertheless, given the complexity of combat, mistakes happen. The ROE will likely permit some immoral killing and condemn some morally justified killing, and soldiers will make well-intentioned, good-faith errors in distinguishing between non-combatants and combatants. It is critical that our soldiers understand that they are not morally blameworthy when they kill someone whom they thought had forfeited their bubble but in fact had not. Perhaps no argument will assuage their regret, but looking into their eyes and telling them, “You made the right moral decision with the information you had at hand” can only help. The vocabulary of rights and “bubbles” can help our soldiers make and justify their judgment calls, not only to 15-6 investigators but more importantly to their own consciences.

Implications
As you likely realized while reading the bubble theory, its approach to justifying killing in war requires that the soldier be fighting for a war that is just. This is a stumbling block for many military professionals. The bubble theory rejects the long-held tenet of the Just-War Tradition that soldiers on both sides of a war are “moral equals”—equally innocent of responsibility for the war but equally guilty of threatening each other. This claim of moral equality between unjust aggressor and just defender treats all soldiers as “innocent aggressors,” and thus reduces the “justification” of killing in war to the moral equivalent of gang warfare—no one is wrong because all are wrong, i.e., all soldiers have lost their bubbles. This waiver on soldiers’ responsibility for fighting may have had merit when feudal lords rounded up their serfs and led them into battle, but it does not reflect the educated, informed, morally autonomous citizen-soldiers of today.
We and our Soldiers cannot simply abdicate our responsibility to respect others’ human rights simply because we took an oath. Granted, given the huge responsibility we bear to protect the innocent, I do think that American Soldiers are morally obligated to fight unless they are convinced that a war is unjust. But I also think that an option should exist for selective conscientious objection. I doubt this would undermine good order and discipline. The patriots who volunteer to defend freedom will not abandon their fellow Soldiers without good cause. I have found most conscientious objectors to be woefully misinformed about morality in war. A healthy, ongoing conversation on the subject might actually enhance not only our Soldiers’ well being, but also recruiting and retention.

If the argument presented here makes sense, then we ought to do something about it. In addition to opening the conversation in our units, we can embed the ideas in our training. In AARs, we routinely ask questions like, “Why did you flank left?” and “Why did you decide to detain that person?” We can also ask, “Why was it morally right to kill that person?” As with anything else, our soldiers will become proficient through training. Killing is central to our profession, and it is a huge moral issue. We already train our soldiers to kill effectively; let’s train them to live effectively after they kill.

Take-aways for our soldiers
· Professionals of arms are entrusted to defend the innocent by using force.
· Every act of killing is a very serious, permanent action that requires moral justification.
· We kill only those who, by their own rights-threatening actions, have temporarily forfeited their own right not to be killed.
· Killing someone, even justifiably, is upsetting at some level. That’s normal and healthy. If the killing is morally unjustified, the psychological impact will likely be much greater.

Opening the conversation about the morality of killing in your unit
A lot more could be said, but this article covers the basics for launching a conversation in our units around the moral justification for killing in war and the natural feelings that killing stirs. A commander-initiated conversation will make your soldiers comfortable with the topic and provide them a shared vocabulary for talking about it. As Grossman says, “We are only as sick as our secrets.” A professional dialogue among you and your soldiers will be a lot healthier than the tortured internal monologues that so many soldiers are currently experiencing.

If you would like a copy of the full presentation, email me at pgkilner@gmail.com. I may be overseas for a few weeks in February with limited connectivity, so please be patient.

A final thought: It’s helpful to think of killing in war as akin to a doctor amputating the infected limb of a wounded warrior—it’s sad and painful, and it takes training and courage to do right, but is the morally right choice among lousy alternatives and therefore ought to be done.

Some important distinctions

2009-03-28T20:34:00.002-04:00

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

2008-12-26T22:21:00.003-05:00

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.

On Conscientious Objectors, Soldiers, and Courage

2008-11-06T19:47:00.003-05:00

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

2008-10-16T14:08:00.002-04:00

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

2008-10-15T23:21:00.008-04:00

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"

2008-09-23T15:31:00.004-04:00

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

2008-09-23T15:18:00.003-04:00

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

2008-05-23T18:15:00.003-04:00

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

2008-01-08T16:05:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-30T21:23:00.000-05:00

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...

2007-11-26T22:04:00.001-05:00

...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

2007-11-26T21:44:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-26T21:19:00.000-05:00

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

2006-06-30T22:33:00.000-04:00

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

2006-06-09T15:11:00.000-04:00

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

2005-12-02T10:46:00.000-05:00

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

2005-10-19T10:35:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-03T17:26:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-03T17:23:00.000-04:00

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

2005-10-03T17:17:00.000-04:00

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).

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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.

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Rejecting the Moral Equality of Soldiers

2005-10-03T17:13:00.000-04:00

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

2005-09-08T23:29:00.000-04:00

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

2005-08-24T09:46:00.000-04:00

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?

2005-08-18T16:51:00.000-04:00

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

2005-08-17T12:55:00.000-04:00

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

2005-08-16T11:30:00.000-04:00

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"

2005-08-12T14:48:00.000-04:00

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"

2005-08-03T17:04:00.000-04:00

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

2005-07-28T21:18:00.003-04:00

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).

Systems thinking and preventing/treating PTSD

2005-07-28T17:15:00.000-04:00

I'm reading Redesigning Society by Ackhof and Rovin (2003), and something occurred to me.

They describe four ways to address a problem:

absolve it--ignore it and hope it will go away.
resolve it--employ behavior previously used in similar situations to get a good-enough outcome.
solve it--discover or create a new behavior that yields a best-possible outcome.
dissolve it--redesign the system or environment to eliminate the causes of the problem.

Accordingly, IF moral guilt caused by killing in war is a cause of PTSD, then even unlimited post-combat medical screening and VA access will not take care of the problem for those afflicted. Those actions (currently being taken, with the best of intentions) treat the symptoms of PTSD, not the cause. DoD is setting itself up for long-term, resource-intensive care if it addresses only symptoms, not root causes.

We as a military profession need to "redesign" the way we think about killing. We need to recognize that it's an upsetting experience--if not initially then later upon reflection--and empower our Soldiers to understand that what they did was morally right. Or, if they killed unjustly, call a spade a spade and help the Soldier come to terms with that. We can't forgive ourselves if we haven't first come to terms with the offense. As LTC Grossman says, we are only as sick as our secrets.

What would a redesign look like? Here are some initial ideas:

FMs would use the words kill, killed, and killing (vice "targets destroyed").
EMs at BCT would be assured that there is a moral justification for killing in war.
NCOs and officers would talk about the moral justification of killing as part of OES and NCOES.
Leaders would talk with their Soldiers about the moral justifications of killing.
Chaplains would be fluent in religious and secular justifications for killing.
Chaplains would assist justifiably guilt-ridden Soldiers to gain forgiveness.
All Soldiers would know that feelings of guilt about killing do not necessarily indicate a moral wrongdoing. Doing a necessary, morally permissible evil can still feel wrong, even when it's right.
Guilt would be talked about the way fear is among Soldiers. It's part of the harsh reality of war that it's really hard to prepare ourselves for, but being informed is nonelessless a good start.

The Military Leader’s Role in Preventing and Treating Combat-related, Perpetration-Induced Psychological Trauma

2005-07-28T14:18:00.004-04:00

Initially presented at JSCOPE 2005. This version substitutes "leaders" for "ethicists," because it's leaders at all levels who can make a difference on this issue for the Soldiers entrusted to them.

Abstract: I argue that military leaders have an important role to play in preventing and treating combat-related Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Syndrome (PITS), which is a particular form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Recent research provides compelling evidence that guilt resulting from having killed in combat is a very significant factor in a veteran’s development of PITS/PTSD. However, the military’s medical community is not addressing this factor. This is not surprising, given that the medical community as a whole tends to focus on environmental conditions and what happens to a person, not on what a person does. Leaders, in contrast, do focus on their Soldiers’ actions and on the morality and repercussions of those actions. I propose that military leaders take a leading role in generating an organizational dialogue on the morality of killing in order to prevent and treat psychological trauma that is caused by the guilt of having killed in combat and not being able to make sense of the experience.

Background
Five years ago at this conference and two years ago in Military Review, I argued that military leaders have an obligation to explain to their soldiers the moral justification for killing in combat. The argument was: since we recruit soldiers to kill, train them to kill, develop plans for them to kill, and order them to kill, we also owe it to them to explain why killing in war is morally justified, because we don’t do this, and there is a lot of evidence that many soldiers cannot live with having killed. At the time, my evidence was qualitative and largely anecdotal. Although research at the time did indicate overwhelmingly that combat exposure and participation in atrocities predicted PTSD, the interpretation of this evidence focused on what had happened to the soldiers (e.g., experienced fear, witnessed dead bodies), not on what the soldiers had done (i.e., killed).

I. Killing in combat can lead to PITS/PTSD

Led by the seminal work of Rachel MacNair, there is now a growing body of research that indicates that what soldiers do—not only what happens to them—can lead to psychological trauma. Using data from the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS), MacNair compared veterans who reported that they had killed in Vietnam to those who reported that they had not killed. She discovered that those who had killed in combat scored higher on most indicators of PTSD, as measured by the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI). The NVRRS data indicated that veterans who had been directly involved in atrocities were much more likely to report symptoms of PTSD than were veterans who merely witnessed atrocities.[3] Also, while combat exposure and PTSD are correlated, veterans who reported that they had killed during an overall tour of light combat were more likely to show PTSD symptoms than were those who reported that they had not killed during a tour characterized by heavy exposure to combat.[4] In other words, killing—much more so than exposure to atrocities or combat—is a major factor leading to PTSD.

The symptoms of those who have killed in combat—as part of an atrocity or legitimate activity—are significantly different from those who have not killed. MacNair found that those who reported they had killed were much more likely to report having done something in the military that they will never tell, to have violent outbursts, to have intrusive nightmares, and to abuse alcohol.[5]

A review of the literature finds other studies that support a link between killing in combat, guilt, and PTSD among Vietnam veterans. Breslau and Davis (1987) found that the experience of participation in atrocities increased by 42% the probability that a veteran would be diagnosed with PTSD, even when the number of combat stressors was controlled. Vargolias (1997) found that combat and atrocity exposure predicted guilt and PTSD. Nelson-Pechota (2003) found that alienation from God and difficulty reconciling one’s faith with Vietnam experiences were related to higher levels of guilt and PTSD symptomology, and that religious worship is a mediator between combat severity and affective guilt.

II. The Army is addressing PTSD, but not killing as one of PTSD’s main causal factors.

American Soldiers and Marines are doing a lot of killing in the Global War on Terror, so we should not be surprised that an Army study found that almost 17% of Iraq veterans and 11% of Afghanistan veterans reported symptoms of major depression, severe anxiety, or PTSD soon after returning from their combat deployments.6] Those numbers will likely increase as soldiers experience multiple combat deployments. Moreover, there is evidence that veterans who show little sign of PTSD over their working lives start showing signs of it at retirement.

The Army medical community “is trying to take a proactive approach to mental health,”[7] said Dr. Charles W. Hoge, chief of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. Deploying soldiers are given pre- and post-deployment health questionnaires, and 7 of the 17 questions seek signs of depression, anxiety and PTSD.[8] The problem is, the post-deployment questionnaire asks only what happened to the soldiers (e.g., Did you see a dead body?), not whether they killed someone.

A recent New York Times article that quoted military psychologists extensively reported:

Psychiatrists say the kind of fighting seen in the recent retaking of Falluja—spooky urban settings with unlimited hiding places; the impossibility of telling Iraqi friend from Iraqi foe; the knowledge that every stretch of road may conceal an explosive device—is tailored to produce the adrenaline-gone-haywire reactions that leave lasting emotional scars.[9]

This and every other statement I have seen in media reports indicate that the military medical community is still looking at the PTSD problem exclusively from the perspective of what soldiers endure, not what they do. In contrast, these words of a battalion chaplain in Iraq express well the concerns of soldiers.

Capt. Tim Wilson, an Army chaplain serving outside Mosul, said he counseled 8 to 10 soldiers a week for combat stress…”There are usually two things they are dealing with,” said Captain Wilson, a Southern Baptist from South Carolina. “Either being shot at and not wanting to get shot at again, or after shooting someone, asking, ‘Did I commit murder?’ or “Is God going to forgive me?’ or ‘How am I going to be when I get home?’”[10]

How is it that the medical community can study the psychological trauma of soldiers in combat yet not pay attention to whether they have killed anyone? After all, as one OIF-vet lieutenant said in a PlatoonLeader forum discussion on the psychological impact of killing, “Frankly, anyone who says that they are perfectly fine after killing another human would scare the hell out of me.” McNair offers an explanation for this blind spot. She argues that sympathy for soldiers has made researchers and others unwilling to “blame the victim.” It is much more pleasant to believe that PTSD results from what an unknown enemy did, not what your nation’s soldier did.[11]

Even if the psychiatric profession did decide to address soldiers’ guilt about killing in war, there are doubts about its ability to effectively engage the problem. Mental health professionals tend to treat guilt as a symptom of a condition to be treated, not as a healthy moral response to a perceived moral transgression. Psychologist James Story put it this way:

The guilt of combat veterans resulting from acts of commission during wartime has been associated with chronic and persistent life problems. Traditional psychological treatments that respond to guilt primarily as a symptom are not well suited for the profound existential issues faced by veterans who acknowledge, or attempt to acknowledge, that their acts have caused great harm to others.[12]

Research indicates that therapists become less sympathetic to and have difficulty listening to patients with PTSD who talk about killing.[13] That is not surprising; mental health professionals and combat soldiers live in different worlds. Several officers in Iraq have told me that they and their soldiers do not talk with the Combat Stress Teams who sometimes arrive after battle, because “they don’t understand.”

In a sense, then, veterans themselves must bear some of the blame for the lack of understanding about combat-related psychological trauma. Due to fear of judgment by non-veterans who “don’t understand” and might judge them harshly, they do not express their experiences. This only perpetuates the problem, as veterans keep silent about their symptoms so as not to appear crazy, which in turn makes those with symptoms feel crazy and alone because no one else seems to have their symptoms.[14]

III. What to do? Break the Taboo

It makes sense that the veterans in the NVVRS who killed in combat were more likely to report both that they did things in the military that they will not talk about and that they are more likely to suffer from intrusive dreams. Perhaps they are suffering from nightmares precisely because they feel unable to talk about things they did, like kill another human being.[15]

As long as there is war, there will be killing. The solution to preventing and treating perpetration-induced trauma, then, lies in enabling soldiers to deal with having killed. As LTC (ret) Dave Grossman put it, “You are only as sick as your secrets.”[16] We must end the taboo on talking about killing and the troubling feelings that killing gives rise to.

We must help our brothers and sisters in the military to understand that feelings of guilt about killing in combat are more likely a sign of moral strength than of mental weakness. The current practice of having re-deploying units identify “high-risk soldiers” to receive counseling sends a terrible message. In one Army study, more than half of the soldiers who met criteria for PTSD reported that they had not sought help due to fear they would be stigmatized and held back in their career.[17] It’s no wonder that redeploying soldiers have shown an “abysmal” level of candor in screening. “We still have a long way to go,” admitted one Pentagon medical officer. “The warrior ethos is that they are no imperfections." [18]

One way to break the taboo is to speak publicly about how feelings of guilt associated with killing in combat are normal, healthy, common, and not indicators of moral culpability. There is such thing as misguided guilt. For example, someone who is driving a car, under the speed limit and paying attention, who happens to fatally hit a child who darts out into the road, will likely feel terrible guilt. He or she will have participated directly in the death of another person, even though he did nothing morally wrong. So it is with justified killing in war. Soldiers need to hear the message that feelings of guilt are not necessarily tied to doing anything morally wrong and are normal in a healthy person.

McNair finds that veterans respond very positively to her talking about the normal feelings of guilt for killing.

They are grateful, because the conclusion they draw is that they are in fact having a normal response, that symptoms they had not told others for fear of appearing crazy were in fact typical and prevalent responses to the circumstances they had undergone. Even if their symptoms were mild enough that they did not seek therapy and could not be said to have a disorder, it was a relief for them to have the knowledge of natural, explainable, common psychological consequence.[19]

A second way to prevent and treat PTSD is to enable those who have killed to talk about their experiences with those who understand. Grossman contends that

[P]ain shared is pain divided. And the means by which this ‘sharing’ can occur is in a group critical incident debriefing, shortly after the trauma, in which each individual completely works through what occurred and receives the acceptance, forgiveness and support of their fellow victims.

I asked an infantry company commander in Iraq what his soldiers needed most from him in combat. “After a fight they need me to pat them on the back and tell them they did the right thing,” he said. “They just need that assurance.” His response happened in the context of an interview on tactical issues, not one about morality.

Conclusion

The psychological well being of our combat veterans requires a cultural shift within the armed forces. They need a military that recognizes what they know all too well—that killing, even justified killing, exacts a psychological toll. As military leaders, we are best able to start and lead dialogues—in our services, our units, one-on-one—that replace the taboo on killing-related trauma with an honest conversation about it.

[1] Peter G. Kilner, “Military Leaders’ Obligation to Justify Killing in War,” Military Review, vol 72, no 2, Mar-Apr 2004, pp. 24-31.

[2] Rachel M. MacNair, Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress: The Psychological Consequences of Killing, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2002; and, Symptom pattern differences for Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress in veterans: Probing the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Kansas, MI, 1999.

[3] See also Jack A. Schapiro, Trait dissociation among Vietnam veterans with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder. Doctoral Dissertation, Pepperdine University, 1999.

[4] MacNair, Perpetration, 174.

[5] Ibid., 18, 178.

[6] Anahad O’Connor, “1 in 6 Iraq Veterans Is Found to Suffer Stress-Related Disorder,” New York Times, July 1, 2004.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Scott Shane, “A Flood of Troubled Soldiers Is in the Offing, Experts Predict,” New York Times, December 16, 2004.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] MacNair, Perpetration, 162.

[12] James E. Story, Therapist countertransference where combat-related guilt is a central factor involved in psychological treatment of combat veterans, Doctoral Dissertation, University of New Mexico, 1997.

[13] MacNair, 91.

[14] Ibid., 163.

[15] Ibid.

[16] Dave Grossman, http://www.killology.net.

[17] Shane.

[18] O’Connor.

[19] MacNair, 165.

Military Leaders' Obligation to Justify Killing in War to their Soldiers

2005-07-28T14:05:00.000-04:00

This is the unedited version. The edited version appeared in Military Review in March-April 2002.

Abstract: The methods that the military currently uses to train and execute combat operations enable soldiers to kill the enemy effectively, but they leave the soldiers liable to post-combat psychological trauma caused by guilt. This is a leadership issue. I argue that combat training should be augmented by explaining to soldiers the moral justification for killing in combat, in order to reduce post-combat guilt. Soldiers deserve to understand whom they can kill morally and why those actions are indeed moral. I outline an explanation for that moral justification.

Introduction

Military leaders are charged with two primary tasks—to train and lead units to fight effectively in combat in accordance with the war convention, and to care for the soldiers under their command. Military professionals generally hold these two tasks to be complementary, accepting General Rommel’s statement that “the best form of ‘welfare’ for troops is first class training.”

American military leaders have been very successful in their task to create combat-effective units. In response to the War Department’s World War II research that indicated that less than half of riflemen fired their weapons at the enemy in combat, the military instituted training techniques—such as fire commands, battle drills, and realistic marksmanship ranges—that resulted in much improved combat firing rates. [1]

Unfortunately, this improved combat effectiveness has come at a cost to soldiers’ welfare. The training techniques that leaders have employed to generate the advances in combat firing rates have resulted in increased rates of post-combat psychological trauma among combat veterans.

In this respect, “first class training” has actually been detrimental to soldiers’ welfare. Training which drills soldiers on how to kill without explaining to them why it is morally permissible for them to do so is harmful to them, yet that is the current norm. Modern combat training conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli—such as fire commands, enemy contact, or the sudden appearance of a “target”—and this maximizes soldiers’ lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy. Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so. In and of itself, such training is appropriate and morally permissible. Battles are won by killing the enemy, so military leaders should strive to produce the most efficient killers. The problem, however, is that soldiers who kill reflexively in combat will likely one day reconsider their actions reflectively. If they are unable to justify to themselves the fact that they killed another human being, they will likely—and understandably—suffer enormous guilt. This guilt manifests itself as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of men who performed their duty in combat.[2]

Thesis.
In this article, I argue that military leaders’ important and legitimate role—that of transforming civilians into combat soldiers who are able to kill in defense of their country—carries with it the obligation to help their soldiers cope with the moral repercussions of their actions. Since military leaders train their soldiers in the skills required to kill others in combat, they owe it to them to educate them as well in the knowledge required to live with themselves in the years after combat. I contend that military leaders should augment current training by explaining to their soldiers the moral justification of killing in combat, and I outline such an explanation.[3] I also suggest that this education would improve the Army’s mission effectiveness.

Section 1. Why Soldiers Deserve a Moral Justification for Killing

In this section, I offer a four-part argument that explains why military leaders should be concerned with the moral justification for killing in combat. It stems from their duty to care for their troops. First, their soldiers are human beings who naturally deem it morally wrong to kill other human beings who happen to be enemy soldiers. As a result, absent training that overcomes that moral aversion, most soldiers in combat would choose not to kill the enemy. Second, military leaders enable their soldiers to kill by utilizing training techniques—such as pop-up marksmanship ranges, fire commands, and battle drills—that emphasize reflexive (as opposed to reflective) action. Such techniques create a bypass around the normal moral decision-making process of an individual, so that soldiers act without first making the decision to do so. Third, while these techniques have greatly increased combat effectiveness, they have exacted a psychological cost on many of our soldiers. Many soldiers who have killed in combat—yet are unable to justify to themselves what they did—suffer from PTSD. Fourth, and finally, this problem can be solved by proactive leadership. Military leaders do not need to abandon proven training techniques. What they do have to do, however, is prepare their soldiers’ consciences for their post-battle reflections. They must help them understand that what they have taught them to do reflexively would be the same choice that they themselves would have made reflectively, because it is the morally right choice. They must also enable soldiers to make morally justified decisions in morally ambiguous circumstances. By doing so, military leaders can empower their soldiers to be able to live with clear consciences after they have justifiably killed for their country as their leaders expected them to do.

1.1 Most Soldiers Do Not Want to Kill the Enemy’s Soldiers

The starting point of my argument is an insight that should be banal, but it isn’t. It is that soldiers are people, too. And people are taught from their earliest days that it is wrong to kill another human being. “Thou Shalt Not Murder” is arguably the closest thing there is to a universally accepted moral norm. Yet, for some reason, military leaders expect those young men and women who become their soldiers to ignore their well-learned moral codes and to kill whenever they are ordered to. We should know better than that.

After all, research conducted on American soldiers in the Second World War suggested that most infantry soldiers chose not to engage the enemy, for primarily moral reasons. In Men Against Fire, Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall, the official historian of the Central Pacific and European Theaters of Operations, described the problem in this way:

[The American soldier] is what his home, his religion, his schooling, and the moral code and ideals of his society have made him. The Army cannot unmake him. It must reckon with the fact that he comes from a civilization in which aggression, connected with the taking of life, is prohibited and unacceptable. The teaching and ideals of that civilization are against killing, against taking advantage. The fear of aggression has been expressed to him so strongly and absorbed by him so deeply and pervadingly—practically with his mother’s milk—that it is part of a normal man’s emotional make-up. This is his great handicap when he enters combat. It stays his finger even though he is hardly conscious that it is a constraint upon him.[4]

Marshall claimed that his extensive post-combat interviews of World War II combat soldiers revealed that most of them were unable to overcome their moral reservations about killing. [5] He asserted that less than 25% of the rifleman in combat fired their weapons, and “that fear of killing, rather than fear of being killed, was the most common cause of battle failure.”[6] Many subsequent researchers have criticized Marshall’s research methods and have disputed his precise claim about firing rates,[7] yet all serious students of World War II do recognize that a significant number of WWII soldiers were non-firers. In The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath, the authoritative study of WWII soldiers, Samuel Stouffer and his associates do not directly address firing ratios, but they do make this understated observation about soldiers’ moral reservations about killing:

Combat required a sharp break with many moral prescriptions of peacetime society. As easy as it seems to be for men to kill when their immediate group sanctions it, and as ambivalent as normal people often are about killing, it is still true that to kill another human being requires of most men from our culture an effort to overcome an initial moral repugnance. Under the requirements of the situation, men in combat were careful to hide this feeling, and it was not a subject of much discussion among soldiers. Killing is the business of the combat soldier, and if he is to function at all he must accept its necessity. Yet the acceptance of killing did not prevent the ambivalence revealed by such comments as that of a veteran rifleman who said, “I’ll tell you a man sure feels funny inside the first time he squeezes down on a Kraut.”[8]

Lest we think that people are somehow fundamentally different today than they were in World War II, consider the experience of this Army officer in the 1991 Gulf War.

Well, later that evening, the battalion that I was supporting (as Engineers) hit four T-72s and a multitude of dismounts in trenches. The action lasted approximately ½ hour. Take note of this. The only soldiers who fired during that entire period were the tankers. They fired both main gun and coax. Not even [the engineer unit’s] .50 cals engaged the enemy. I have since often wondered what it would take to get a U.S. soldier to fire in combat. Although we had rounds flying by our heads, we failed to engage the enemy. I think it merits mentioning that the main gun rounds were fired using thermal sights and you know how a coax works [again, thermal sights]. Did the gunner ever really see the people he was shooting at? Why didn’t my soldiers fire? Did they not see enemy whom they could engage? I doubt that. I could see them from my track without the use of NVGs. Were we confident that the tanks could take out all resistance? A possibility, but shouldn’t we have returned fire when fired upon? Hard to say what went through our minds. I’m not so sure that I would have the courage to fire a round if I knew that it was going to result in the death of another human being. Sure, I can fire on a range and score expert. I can fire a round blindly. Then I can justify to myself that I wasn’t responsible for any deaths that occurred. I would say that long distance killing is easier than facing an enemy face to face. They say that artillery is the King of Battle. No doubt considering that they don’t actually see who they are killing.[9]

While some may find the idea of military professionals being unwilling to kill in battle a bit embarrassing, we should instead think of it as encouraging. We want soldiers who choose to do only what is morally right, who kill enemy combatants yet protect all non-combatants, who can reintegrate into civil society after the war. What military leaders have to do, then, is explain to their soldiers why what they train them to do is the morally right thing to do.

1.2 Military Leaders Train Soldiers to Kill Reflexively

Still, despite this Gulf War platoon’s unwillingness to fire in combat, the military has made great strides in improving its soldiers’ firing rates since World War II.[10] Whether or not Marshall’s research was rigorous, the Army responded to it as if it were. Marshall’s claim about non-firing rates lifted the taboo surrounding the issue, and the Army took action to increase them. By adopting Marshall’s recommendations and incorporating lessons from psychological research, the American military improved its riflemen’s firing rates to 55% in the Korean War and to 90% in the Vietnam War.[11]

Marshall had noted that “at the vital moment, [the rifleman] becomes a conscientious objector.”[12] To help soldiers overcome their aversion to killing, Marshall offered two recommendations: that military leaders give fire commands, and that they train on more realistic marksmanship ranges.[13]

Marshall had noted that soldiers who otherwise would not fire their weapons did do so when their officers were watching them and when they fired crew-served weapons.[14] He therefore recommended that junior leaders give specific firing orders to their troops.[15] Subsequent civilian research on obedience and aggression demonstrated that people are much more capable of aggression when ordered by an authority figure.[16] As the military instituted the doctrinal use of fire commands down to squad-level, firing rates increased. In fact, in a 1973 study, Vietnam War combat veterans listed “being told to fire” as the most critical factor in making them fire, even more important than “being fired upon.”[17]

Marshall also had noted that soldiers have great difficulty shooting at another human being, so he recommended that they be trained to fire at locations rather than at persons. “We need to free the rifleman’s mind with respect to the nature of targets…The proper educating of group fire requires constant insistence on the principle of spontaneous action developing out of a fresh and unexpected situation.”[18]

The modern day transitional (pop-up target) marksmanship ranges follow this advice. They enable soldiers to overcome their aversion to killing by conditioning them to act spontaneously to conditions that are combat-like yet morally benign. Retired infantry officer and psychologist Dave Grossman explains the process this way:

What is being taught in this environment is the ability to shoot reflexively and instantly and a precise mimicry of the act of killing on the modern battlefield. In behavioral terms, the man shape popping up [E-type silhouette] in the soldier’s field of fire is the “conditioned stimulus,” the immediate engaging of the target is the “target behavior.” “Positive reinforcement” is given in the form of immediate feedback when the target drops if it is hit. In the form of “token economy” these hits are then exchanged for marksmanship badges that usually have some form of privilege or reward (praise, public recognition, three-day passes, and so on) associated with them.[19]

This conditioning, this training on pop-up marksmanship ranges, does enable soldiers to kill on the battlefield, and the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu provides great evidence of that.[20] In that 17-hour fight, a few hundred soldiers from Task Force Ranger and the 10th Mountain Division battled thousands of Somalis in fierce, urban combat. The Americans suffered only eighteen dead, while they killed an estimated 300-1000 Somalis. They achieved this extraordinary casualty ratio by being well trained. Based on extensive interviews with the soldiers involved, journalist Mark Bowden wrote a best-selling account of the battle, Black Hawk Down,[21] which includes these revealing comments:

[Ranger Sergeant Scott] Galentine just pointed his M16 at someone down the street, aimed at center mass, and squeezed off rounds. The man would drop.

Just like target practice, only cooler.[22]

[Specialist John] Waddel shot the man. In books and movies when a soldier shot a man for the first time he went through a moment of soul searching. He didn’t give it a second thought. He just reacted.[23]

In an interview with CNN/Frontline, Ranger Private First Class Jason Moore described his willingness to kill in these words:

I just started picking them out as they were running across the intersection two blocks away, and it was weird because it was so much easier than you would think. You hear all these stories about "the first time you kill somebody is very hard." And it was so much like basic training, they were just targets out there, and I don't know if it was the training that we had ingrained in us, but it seemed to me it was just like a moving target range, and you could just hit the target and watch it fall and hit the target and watch it fall, and it wasn't real. They were far enough away so that you didn't see, or I didn't see, all the guts and the gore and things like that, but you would just see this target running across in your sight picture, you pull the trigger and the target would fall, so it was a lot easier then than it is now, as far as that goes.[24]

Clearly, modern military leaders are doing half of our duty—we are training our Soldiers to fight effectively on the battlefield. We are doing so by utilizing techniques that enable soldiers to fire their weapons at the enemy despite the natural moral reservations that they may harbor. By conditioning combat soldiers to reflexively engage targets and by giving them leaders who issue fire commands, military leaders greatly reduce moral deliberation for the soldier in combat.

At one level, this training accomplishes both aspects of military leaders’ duty—it accomplishes the mission, and it takes care of soldiers by keeping them alive. At a deeper level, however, this approach is inadequate. It makes soldiers able to kill, even if they are not willing to do so. It prepares soldiers to deal with the enemy, but it does not prepare them to deal with their own consciences. It keeps them alive, but it leaves them in a life that may be less worth living.

1.3 This Training Has Been Harmful to Combat-Veteran Soldiers’ Psyches

Training soldiers to kill efficiently is good for them because it helps them survive on the battlefield. However, training soldiers to kill without explaining to them why it is morally permissible to kill in combat is harmful to them because it can lead to psychological trauma. When soldiers kill reflexively—when soldiers kill because of military training that has effectively undermined their moral decision-making processes—they conduct their personal moral deliberation of their actions only after the fact. If they are unable to justify what they have done, they often suffer guilt and psychological trauma.

Many combat soldiers experience feelings of guilt in the months and years after their wartime actions. Listen to the words of some combat veterans who performed their wartime duties as their leaders had trained them to do.

First, reflections from a young soldier who fought in Somalia:

Well, that day, I had absolutely no ethical or moral problems with pulling the trigger and taking out as many people as I could. And being back here, years later, I think that they had wives, children, mothers, sons, just like I have a mother and a dog, and all these things. Our government sent us there to do a mission, and I'm sure somebody was paying him to do a mission. [I just] reali[zed] that he was another human being, just like I am. And so that's hard to deal with, but that day it was too easy. That upsets me more than anything else, how easy it was to pull the trigger over and over again…It took a long time to wear off, a real long time, because we were still there for a little while, and then when we came back you were still sort of riding the waves of what happened. And I know for me, the hardest thing to live with is knowing that you took another human life, for no other reason than your government told you to. That's hard. I mean, I'm sure it's been said before but here I would have [gone] to jail for exactly what I did over there and got medals for.[25]

At least one senior enlisted soldier who killed in the Gulf War may have found his actions to have been too much to live with. An officer in his unit described the situation:

Let me give you the results of one person who did kill. His name was 1SG

Doe.[26] He was a 12B, combat engineer first sergeant. Known as hard charging and didn’t put up with much bullshit. While in Desert Storm, he was assigned to my unit. He volunteered for a bunker searching mission. Upon coming to one particular bunker, he heard movement inside. Without bothering to clear the bunker, he yelled at the people inside to come out. When they failed to respond, 1SG Doe fired three rounds from his .45 pistol into the bunker. The noises ceased. They then entered the bunker. 1SG Doe seemed okay with the fact that he had killed two Iraqis at the time. It was a very disturbing experience for everyone else. Note this. He is now at the psychiatric ward at Walter Reed. The pressures of his actions during Desert Storm and Somalia led him to two suicide attempts in the past few months. He is a great guy and I consider him a good friend. However, I believe that in the heat of battle he did something contrary to his (and possibly human) nature. I don’t believe that there really is a moral justification to killing in combat.[27]

I will address that rather disturbing final sentence in upcoming paragraphs, but first listen to one more recent example of a soldier who struggled to justify his combat actions.

Ray, a veteran of close combat in the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, told [LTC Grossman] of a recurring dream in which he would talk with the young Panamanian soldier he had killed in close combat. “Why did you kill me?” asked the soldier each time. And in his dreams Ray would attempt to explain to his victim, but in reality he was explaining and rationalizing the act of killing to himself: “Well, if you were in my place, wouldn’t you have done the same?…It was either you or us.” [28]

These soldiers were “good” soldiers who effectively killed the enemy when their nation and its leaders asked them to do so, only to later suffer guilt. Their experiences are not exceptional. In fact, one non-commissioned officer who fought in the Battle of Mogadishu acknowledges that many of the veterans of Mogadishu suffer from PTSD. “I have come to terms with what I did,” he said. “I talked to my priest. I have religious faith and a supportive family. The guys that don’t have these [tools] are pretty torn up.” [29] The psychological toll of the battle fell most heavily on the junior enlisted Rangers. Nearly all of them left the military at their first opportunity, and at least one committed suicide.[30]

1.4 This is a Leadership Issue

We should not be surprised that soldiers—such as 1SG Doe—suffer debilitating guilt over killing in combat when even their own leaders believe that their actions were unjustified. Soldiers who perform their duty in combat deserve better from their leaders.

If killing another person were never morally justified, then the military profession would be an evil one. Because, however, at least some killing in war is morally justifiable, military leaders have a duty to understand that justification, to explain to their soldiers why it is justified, and to train their soldiers to kill only when it is justified.

Military leaders who train their soldiers to kill in combat without explaining to them the justification for that killing are treating their soldiers as commodities to be used, not as persons to be respected. A values-based Army can and must do better than that.

Section 2. A Proposed Justification for Killing in War.

In this section, I offer a moral justification for killing in combat that is based on the principle of self-defense. This justification is consistent both with legal judgments made in civilian society and with Judeo-Christian moral teaching, so it should be understandable and acceptable to the great majority of American military personnel.

2.1 Refuting a Concern about Offering a Moral Argument

Before explicating the justification, though, I will address the reasonable concern that teaching soldiers the morality of killing would actually harm them by fostering hesitancy on the battlefield. Soldiers who are morally aware of their actions, after all, may be less willing to respond immediately to orders to kill. Such delay could, in turn, cost them their lives and compromise the mission.

In fact, the opposite is more likely true. Soldiers who are confident that killing in war is justifiable and that their leaders are morally informed would be more likely to respond quickly to orders and combat stimuli. Akin to religious crusaders, they would fight with the assurance of moral rightness. Moreover, warfare is becoming increasingly decentralized and ambiguous, so military leaders must move beyond reflexive training. We require of our soldiers that they make life-or-death decisions in the absence of fire commands or obvious stimuli. In operations other than war, soldiers have to make judgment calls that cannot be “trained” in the traditional sense. If we want to maximize our military effectiveness, we must empower our soldiers to make morally informed decisions about when and whom to kill.

The words of an infantry battalion commander during OPERATION JUST CAUSE in Panama should serve as a wake-up call to improve the moral element of combat training. He recognized that the nature of the battlefield—urban, full of civilians, with enemy soldiers of uncertain loyalties—could lead to morally ambiguous situations, and he gave these final instructions to his combat troops before launching an attack:

“Let me tell you the bottom line on our rules of engagement, your conscience…your moral conscience is going to carry it. I don’t want you shot; I don’t want your buddies shot…you don’t have time to call me to clear fires. Make your best call.” [31]

That was an enormous burden to place on soldiers whose “moral consciences” had not been prepared for the moral complexities of combat. It is, I think, soldiers who do not understand the justification of killing who would be more likely to hesitate on the modern, low-intensity, “make your best call” battlefield.

2.2 Justified Killing in Self-Defense

At long last, I will now offer an outline for a moral justification of killing in combat. I developed this by examining the elements that provide legal and moral justification to killing in self-defense in civilian circumstances.[32] I do not have the space here to provide a theoretical discussion of what morality is, but my justification does presume a rights-based morality that is consistent with Judeo-Christian and Kantian moral thought.

Here is the bottom line. It is morally permissible to kill another person when these certain conditions are met: that other person has made a conscious decision to threaten your life or liberty; that person is imminently executing that threat; and you have no other reasonable way to avoid the threat.[33] Moreover, it is morally obligatory to use the force necessary to protect an innocent person from such an attacker as long as you have the means to do so, and especially when you have voluntarily assumed the obligation of protecting that innocent person.

For example, if a person intentionally attacks you with a lethal weapon and you have no reasonable way to escape, then you are justified in using lethal force to protect yourself. Likewise, if you are a police officer, then you are morally obligated to use the force necessary to defend the life of an innocent person against an attacker.

All four conditions—a conscious choice, a threat to a value comparable to human life, an imminent threat, and no life-saving option—must be met to ensure that the killing is morally justified by self-defense.

For example, if the “attacker” were a two-year old child or a sleepwalker, then she probably would not have made the choice to cause the threat and thus would not be morally responsible for it, so killing her in self-defense would not be justified (although it might be excusable). The “conscious choice’ condition would not have been met.

If, likewise, the attacker were a robber who only wanted your or someone else’s wallet, then the value at stake would not justify killing him.[34] The “value comparable to human life” condition would not have been met. We should not kill a human being to prevent mere monetary inconvenience and loss.

If, for example, someone threatened to kill you or someone else next week, then you would not be justified in killing him today. The threat must be imminent. The choice to kill in self-defense must be in response to the attacker’s intentional actions, not merely his intentions.

Lastly, if the attacker were a knife-wielding person confined to a wheelchair and you were fully mobile with access to a staircase, then you would not be justified in killing him. Instead, you should simply escape up the stairs. There must be a “forced choice” between fundamental values. If there is a way to escape the situation without compromising life or liberty, then you are obligated to choose that way and are thus prohibited from using lethal force in self-defense.

These examples illuminate the four necessary elements of justified killing in self-defense:

1) a morally responsible attacker;

2) a threat to a value worth killing for (life or liberty);

3) an imminent threat;

4) no other option to avoid the threat.

Significantly, these conditions also apply to justify killing an accomplice of an attacker. For example, if a gang member were chasing you with a knife with the intent to kill you, and you had to escape from the room, and another (unarmed) gang member were consciously blocking your escape, then you would be justified in using lethal force against your attacker’s unarmed accomplice. In legal terms, that person would be a conspirator to attempted murder. Morally, that accomplice would have made the choice to threaten your life, and you would have had no other way to avoid the imminent threat.

These conditions are more stringent than those required for legally justified homicide in self defense, yet they are met when soldiers kill enemy soldiers in combat.

2.3. Justified Killing Applied to War

When soldiers kill enemy soldiers in war, they meet the conditions of justified killing in self-defense.

The enemy soldiers are morally responsible for the threat that they pose. At some level, they chose to be soldiers, and they must know that they are at war against other people. Fully informed volunteers, of course, are more responsible than poorly informed conscripts, yet the fact remains that even conscripts chose to become soldiers. They had other options, however unpleasant they may have been. Human beings, after all, are not responsible for circumstances beyond their control, such as whether their nation goes to war. They are, however, responsible for the choices they make within those circumstances. People who make the choice to be soldiers in war are morally responsible for the threat they pose to their enemy’s soldiers.

Soldiers do fight to defend values that are worth killing and dying for.[35] At least, they hope so. In a just war, that is the case. Because the moral responsibility for going to war lies with political authorities, and because the intentions of political authorities are often opaque, then soldiers should be largely immune from judgments about the just ends of a war. Therefore, unless soldiers have strong reason to be convinced that their war is being fought for values other than the defense of life and liberty, then they can justifiably assume that they are fighting in defense of those fundamental values.

Soldiers also do face an imminent threat from enemy soldiers. All enemy soldiers are either direct threats or accomplices to direct threats. They all act for the same end—to deny the soldier and/or those he is defending their rights to life and liberty. Soldiers have no recourse to a “higher authority” to defend them. They must fight, or they and other innocent persons will lose their cherished rights.

Finally, soldiers do not have a non-lethal option. If they flee before the enemy, the threat will follow them. Again, there is no “higher authority” to offer protection to them and to those who depend on them to defend their lives and freedom.

Therefore, not only is it morally permissible for soldiers to kill enemy soldiers in combat, but also it is morally obligatory for them to use the force necessary to defend the rights of those who depend on them. Soldiers are the last line of defense for the rights of life and liberty.

2.4 Conclusion

What I have proposed here is only a “user-level” justification for killing in combat. I realize that this argument is incomplete, but my goal is to spark institutional discussion on this important topic. I think that its further development and dissemination to the force would significantly enhance the moral standing of the military profession. The conditions that I have outlined are theoretically robust,[36] and perhaps a more complete explanation of their foundation in rights theory could be offered as an element of officer and non-commissioned officer professional development.

Honest reflection on the moral demands of military service should play a part in the Army’s transformation. Soldiers who are empowered to make well-reasoned moral decisions would be more likely to exercise proper initiative and less likely to err by commission or omission. Rules of engagement are by nature static; the battlefields of the future will be fluid. The Army must grow soldiers who can think for themselves.

Not only should the Army include the moral justification for killing in combat in its training because it would enhance the Army’s effectiveness, but also because it is simply the right thing to do. The profession of arms is a noble calling, and military leaders perform their duties honorably. We devote their lives to preparing our soldiers—mentally, physically, materially—for the rigors of combat. We conduct demanding, realistic training; we keep them physically fit; we equip them with the best weapons. Unfortunately, we are unwittingly failing to prepare them morally, and in doing so we are failing in our duty to care for our soldiers’ welfare. Currently, military leaders are leaving our soldiers unprepared to deal with their post-combat consciences and unprepared to make morally right decisions about whom to kill in morally ambiguous circumstances. This is a leadership problem that is solvable, and it demands our attention and action.[37]

References and footnotes

[1] LTC Dave Grossman, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1995), 189.

[2] The prevalence and degree of PTSD among combat veterans is a disputed issue.

Dr. Jonathan Shay (Achilles in Vietnam), Grossman, and others contend that PTSD severely affects hundreds of thousands of veterans. Other researchers, such as B.G. Burkett (Stolen Valor) and syndicated columnist Michael Kelly, dispute their claims as exaggerated. For the purposes of this paper, we need not take a side. All informed parties recognize that combat-induced PTSD does exist to some extent and is therefore a problem worth solving.

[3] It goes without saying that military leaders must first understand the moral justification themselves before they can teach it to their subordinates. Therefore, military leaders have a duty to develop their own skills of moral discernment. I owe this good point to MAJ Tony Pfaff.

[4] Marshall, Men Against Fire, 78.

[5] Many military officers disputed Marshall’s findings, which did not surprise him. “In the course of holding post-combat interviews with approximately four hundred infantry companies in the Central Pacific and European Theaters, [Marshall] did not find one battalion, company, or platoon commander who had made the slightest effort to determine how many of his men had actually engaged the enemy with a weapon.” Marshall had discovered that what the military’s leaders had taken for granted—that well-trained soldiers will utilize their training to kill the enemy—was a false assumption.

There are reasonable explanations for officers’ unwillingness to accept Marshall’s findings. For one, relatively few officers had ever personally experienced the difficult task of an infantryman—they had not looked down the sights of a weapon and tried to kill someone; that wasn’t their job. Marshall’s research revealed that the typical soldier’s resistance to killing another person was “unrealized” until that moment of truth when it was time for him to fire his weapon. Having not themselves faced that critical juncture, it is understandable that officers would discount it.

Furthermore, some officers objected to Marshall’s findings because they felt that they besmirched the honor of their soldiers. In fact, though, Marshall went out of his way to emphasize that soldiers’ failure to fire their weapons was not indicative of cowardice. He noted that most non-firers performed important and dangerous tasks, such as providing medical aid, distributing and delivering ammunition, and running messages, that supported their firing comrades.

[6] Marshall, Men Against Fire, 78.

[7] See Roger Spiller, “S.L.A. Marshall and the Ratio of Fire,” Journal of the Royal United Service Institution 133 (December 1988) 63-71; and Russell W. Glenn’s Reading Athena’s Dance Card: Men Against Fire in Vietnam (Annapolis, MD:

Naval Institure Press, 2000) 134-136.

[8] Samuel Stouffer, et al., The American Soldier: Combat and Its Aftermath,

vol. 1 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1949) 85-87.

[9] CPT John “Ike” Eisenhauer, personal email correspondence with author,

November 1997. CPT Eisenhauer is an outstanding officer whom I greatly respect.

His candor on this issue is admirable; others with whom I have spoken share his sentiments, but they are not willing to “be quoted.”

[10] The practice of employing psychologists to train men to kill in combat is not a post-WWII phenomenon. See Joanna Bourke’s An Intimate History of Killing (Great Britain: Basic Books, 1999) 57-90.

[11] These figures are from Grossman, 35, who references Marshall’s research, which spanned WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

[12] Marshall, Men Against Fire, 79.

[13] Marshall, Men Against Fire, 71, 81-82.

[14] This explains why nearly all of the officers that Marshall interviewed reported that all of their soldiers fired their weapons. The soldiers that the officers were watching did fire.

[15] Marshall, Men Against Fire, 82.

[16] Stanley Milgram, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View (New York:

Harper & Row, 1974) 186-189.

[17] Grossman, On Killing , 143. He identifies the researchers as Kranss, Kaplan, and Kranss.

[18] Marshall, Men Against Fire, 82.

[19] Grossman, On Killing, 254.

[20] Why did the Rangers and 10th Mountain infantry soldiers fire their weapons while the Gulf War engineer platoon did not? Perhaps it was their level of training, their level of conditioning.

[21] Mark Bowden, Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War (New York: Atlantic

Monthly Press, 1999).

[22] Bowden, Black Hawk Down, 64.

[23] Bowden, Black Hawk Down, 46.

[24] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ambush/rangers/moore.html.

[25] http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ambush/rangers/moore.html.

[26] Not his real name.

[27] Eisenhauer correspondence.

[28] Grossman, On Killing, 240.

[29] Discussion with author, 20 November 1999, West Point, NY.

[30] Discussion with author, 20 November 1999, West Point, NY.

[31] Lieutenant Colonel Harry B. Axson, commander of the 2nd Battalion, 504th

Parachute Infantry Regiment during OPERATION JUST CAUSE, quoted in United States

Army Training and Doctrine Pamphlet 525-100-2, Leadership and Command on the

Battlefield (USA TRADOC, Ft. Monroe, VA:1993) 21-22.

[32] See the author’s M.A. thesis, “Soldiers, Self-Defense, and Killing in War,”

available at: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/public/etd-41998-18346/etd-title.html

[33] See Richard Norman, Ethics, Killing, and War (Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1995) for a detailed development of these elements.

[34] Whether or not it would be justified to threaten the robber with lethal force in order to prevent the robbery is another issue.

[35] Although my argument addresses what are traditionally considered jus in

bello concerns, I reject the absolute jus in bello/jus ad bellum distinction held by Michael Walzer (Just and Unjust Wars) and others, because I reject the concept of invincible ignorance. Soldiers are responsible moral agents, so they should concern themselves with the jus ad bellum question of the justice of the war, and they should not kill in war if their nation’s war is immoral.

[36] See the author’s M.A. thesis, “Soldiers, Self-Defense, and Killing in War,” available at: http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/public/etd-41998-18346/etd-title.html

[37] I presented an earlier draft of this paper at the 2000 Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics (JSCOPE). I want to thank all those who have provided encouragement and comments for my revisions, especially SAMS 2001/2 Seminar 2, COL Michael Haith, COL Al Shine, and MAJ Tony Burgess.

Fighting a Just War Justly

2005-07-28T13:45:00.000-04:00

Written for and posted on the CompanyCommand professional forum in Feb03

Why think about this?
On a rainy September day in 1994, I was participating in pre-jump training at Ft. Bragg. That night we were going to conduct the largest parachute assault since WWII to restore democracy in Haiti. I remember a trooper asking a chaplain, in all sincerity, "Is what we're doing right?" The chaplain responded, "Of course it's right. The president told us to do it. We're soldiers. That makes it right." Needless to say, many of us found that response unsatisfying.

After I commanded an infantry company in the 82nd, the Army sent me to study philosophy, and I used the opportunity to seek an answer to the trooper's question. I wrote my thesis on the moral justification for killing in combat, and I have since taught ethics and just-war theory for four years at West Point.

The Army has no official just-war doctrine (unless you count FM 27-10), and nowhere does it address the morality of killing. Soldiers are expected to do their duty, which is to fight and kill without violating the laws of land warfare. However, the inattention to soldiers' moral concerns has had consequences: more than 1,000 conscientious objectors in the 1991 Gulf War; soldiers and units that have refused to engage the enemy in combat; and soldiers who have felt needlessly guilty about their actions in combat.

Leaders who train their soldiers how to kill, and who order them to kill, owe it to their soldiers to explain to them why it is morally permissible for them to kill. And soldiers who believe in what they're doing will fight more effectively.

I am not currently assigned to a deployable unit, but if I were, this is what I'd talk about with my soldiers. Of course, these are just my unofficial thoughts, but use them if you find them helpful.

Is this a just war? Are we fighting it justly?
The morality of any war is judged at two levels: the morality of going to war (Is it a just war?); and the morality of how the war is being fought (Are we fighting it justly?). Political leaders bear responsibility for the first judgment; after all, they make the decision whether or not we go to war. Military leaders, however, must bear responsibility for the second judgment, because soldiers are the ones "on the ground" actually doing the damage.

When is a war a "just war"?
The traditional criteria used to judge (legally and morally) the political decision to go to war are:

Just Cause. The state must be fighting for a morally justified end. What is a morally justified end? A state may fight to resist an attack (or to help another state resist an attack), to restore the rightful borders of a state that was attacked, and to do what is reasonable to prevent an aggressor state from attacking once again. A state may also launch a pre-emptive strike against a state that threatens it if the threat is imminent and if waiting will make it impossible to successfully defend against the imminent attack.

Right intention. The state must not only have a just 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 rights 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. IMHO, I disagree with this long-held condition. What's wrong with accomplishing a moral good, even if the intention isn't good? For example, if a police officer rescues someone from an attacker, but he does so with the intention of earning awards and promotion, does that mean that he shouldn't have stopped the attacker and saved the victim? Of course not. He accomplished an objective good. The same judgment should be applied to states that accomplish good results with ulterior motives.

Legitimate authority. Only the leaders of a political community have the moral authority to commit its people to war. In our case, that's the president.

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

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 people's fundamental human rights.

Last resort. War should not be the first option for resolving disputes. If it's possible to accomplish an outcome without resort to war, then it's morally obligatory for political leaders to do so. "Last resort," though, is a misleading term. Read literally, it would require appeasement. So, it should be read to mean, "Non-violent means to resolve the conflict have been tried and failed."

Proportionality. 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.

This laundry list of conditions has its limitations. It assumes that all wars are between states (inter-state wars), but the majority of recent wars have been and continue to be intra-state wars (Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya) or non-state wars (the wars against narco-trafficking and terrorism). Perhaps we need to examine the moral principles that serve as the foundation for the traditional rules of war, and apply those principles to today's international situation.

Morally, when is a war just? When it defends the innocent from those who threaten them. All human beings possess the rights to life and liberty, and they can best exercise those rights within ordered communities, so they establish governments and become recognized as countries. The primary purpose of any country (i.e., government, state) is to protect the rights of its people. That is why it is morally right to defend a state against an attacker-because you are protecting the rights of the innocent. And that is why it is presumptively wrong to attack another country-because its government is protecting the rights of its people. However, that is also why it is morally acceptable to intervene militarily in a country where the government is violating its own people's rights (Haiti; Yugoslavia; Iraq?). Remember, governments don't have natural rights; their people do. States and their governments have rights only to the extent that they support their own citizens' rights and they respect other states' citizens rights.

The profession of arms is a noble profession because its Soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen willingly risk their own lives and liberty to protect the lives and liberty of others.

Fight with Honor!
This brings us to the question of what actions are morally right within a war. Just because a war is just does not mean that any military action in that war is just. Soldiers still have to conduct themselves morally.

FM 27-10 (Law of Land Warfare) is a great starting point for discussing moral conduct in war, but it does not address every situation that our soldiers face. It is largely unchanged from its initial, 1956 publication, so it addresses 20th Century warfare more adequately than 21st Century warfare. It is therefore very important that soldiers understand the moral principles that serve as the foundation and inspiration for the written laws of war and even for our rules of engagement. Morality is enduring and universal. Let's focus on assessing the morality of actions within war.

How do we fight morally? By killing only combatants. Who are combatants? Morally, combatants are those who-through some choice of their own-have forfeited their right not to be killed by choosing to engage in an activity that is threatening to others. As such, all soldiers are combatants, and any "civilians" who choose to threaten you are combatants.

Why is this so? All human beings have the rights to life and liberty (or, stated another way, the rights not to be killed or oppressed). But, they forfeit those rights if and when they threaten the rights of another. That is why it is ok to use lethal force against someone who attacks you on the street or in your home. The attacker has forfeited his rights by threatening yours. Likewise, that is why it is morally permissible for you to kill enemy combatants. By participating in a force that is trying to kill you and others, and that violates or threatens the rights of innocent people, enemy soldiers have forfeited their right not to be killed by you. Of course, this applies to all combatants, on both sides of the conflict. By being a soldier during time of war, you are a threat to the enemy, and they do nothing morally wrong when they try to kill you.

In general terms, when is it morally ok to kill someone? When that person threatens someone else, thus forfeiting his own right to not be killed. (See Ethics, Killing, and War by Richard Norman for a full discussion of these criteria.) Think of it in terms of killing in self defense in everyday life. Imagine someone attacking you as you walk down the street. When is it morally permissible to kill him in self-defense? When he:

-is responsible for his actions;
-threatens a value worth killing for (life or liberty);
-poses an imminent threat;
-and leaves you no other option to avoid the threat.

Significantly, these conditions also apply to killing an accomplice of the attacker. For example, if a gang member were chasing you with a knife with the intent to kill you, and you had to escape from a room, and another (unarmed) gang member were consciously blocking your escape, then you would be justified in using lethal force against your attacker's unarmed accomplice. In legal terms, that person would be a conspirator to attempted murder. Morally, that accomplice would have made the choice to threaten your life, and you would have had no other way to avoid the imminent threat.

When soldiers kill enemy soldiers in war, they act in justified self-defense.

Enemy soldiers are responsible for the threat that they pose. At some level, they chose to be soldiers, and they must know that they are at war. Fully informed volunteers, of course, are more responsible than poorly informed conscripts, yet the fact remains that even conscripts chose to become soldiers. They had other options, however unpleasant they may have been. Human beings, after all, are not responsible for circumstances beyond their control, such as whether their nation goes to war. They are, however, responsible for the choices they make within those circumstances. People who make the choice to be soldiers in war are morally responsible for the threat they pose to their enemy.

Soldiers do fight to defend values that are worth killing and dying for, when the war is just.

Soldiers also do face an imminent threat from enemy soldiers. All enemy soldiers are either direct threats or accomplices to direct threats. They all act for the same end-to deny the soldier and/or those he is defending their rights to life and liberty. Soldiers have no recourse to a "higher authority" to defend them. They must fight, or they and other innocent persons will lose their cherished rights.

Finally, soldiers do not have a non-lethal option. If they flee before the enemy, the threat will follow them. Again, there is no "higher authority" to offer protection to soldiers and to those who depend on soldiers to defend their lives and freedom.

Therefore, not only is it morally permissible for us to kill enemy soldiers in combat, but also it is morally obligatory for us to use the force necessary to defend the rights of those who depend on us. We soldiers are the last line of defense for the rights of life and liberty.

How should we treat civilians in a combat zone? We should assume that civilians are noncombatants, and thus they retain their right not to be killed. We should respect their rights. If, however, a civilian chooses to become a threat, then he or she forfeits her right not to be killed. Remember, though, to treat enemy civilians as noncombatants until they give you a reason to believe otherwise, whereas enemy soldiers should be treated as combatants unless they surrender or become incapacitated.

How should we treat surrendering or injured enemy soldiers? When an enemy soldier is no longer willing or able to be a threat, then he regains his right not to be killed. It is morally wrong to kill an EPW or incapacitated casualty.

What should we do when our actions will likely cause collateral damage to noncombatants?
We must never target noncombatants, and we must take actions to limit collateral damage that affects noncombatants.

However, sometimes soldiers face tough decisions that involve attacks against legitimate military targets that will likely cause collateral damage. In such circumstances, we should refer to the framework of the so-called "doctrine of double effect" for guidance. This is laid out beatifully in the best text on the topci of justice in war, Just and Unjust Wars by Michael Walzer.

When a proposed military action has an intended good effect (usually, killing the enemy) and an unintended but likely bad effect (collateral damage), then it is morally permissible to take that action only if:

Your action itself is moral. A war crime (like executing a prisoner) can never be justified.
Your direct effect (the intended outcome) is moral. It has to directly impact combatants or other legitimate targets.
Your intent is good. You aim only at the good effect; the bad effect is not the means to the good effect. In other words, you can't do something bad, like kill noncombatants, to bring about a good result, like the surrender of enemy troops.
You must accept some risks to yourself and your own troops to minimize the risk of collateral damage. In other words, you shouldn't put all the risk on noncombatants just to limit your own risk. At the same time, you may put a level of risk on noncombatants that's necessary to accomplish your mission. It's a judgment call that leaders must make. This, I know, is hard for many of us to accept, because we love our soldiers and want to bring all of them home. Still, as soldiers we must remember our calling-to risk ourselves to protect the innocent.
The good effect has to be proportional to the bad. Accomplishing the mission has to be worth the collateral damage. Don't destroy a village to kill a sniper.

Do you have comments or questions about these ideas? Is so, post a comment here or email me directly at peter.kilner@us.army.mil