David Underhill – 01 Nov to 05 Nov 04 (Week
10) – Honor on the Battlefield
Monday: 275-292
The
Moral Code of the Warrior (275)
- A priest speaking to
students at a Spanish university in the 1500s condemned the Spanish army
- Denounced the military
for their treatment of the natives
- Disagreed with both
their legitimacy and especially the way the military handled the natives
- Even soldiers in war
are constrained by natural law
- The Code of the Warrior
distinguishes the soldier from the murderer
- The theory that “war is
hell” and in hell one can do anything is denounced by most modern cultures
(inc. US)
War
Crimes: Soldiers and Their Officers (Walzer) (279)
- The War Convention –
there are moral constraints on the military during war
- All combatants are
morally equal
- Combatants: forfeit the
right not to be target; gain the right to be treated humanely as a POW;
gain the responsibility to fight justly and use only the force needed to
achieve the mission
- In the Heat of Battle (280)
- Two soldiers each
shoot Germans as they surrendered
- Officer tells CO they
were in a killing frenzy and it was hard to discern the difference
between combat and murder
- This is like a plea of
temporary insanity
- Allowances may be made
for certain situations – if a group has been attacked by soldiers
feigning to surrender before, they may be less sure of when killing is
“extra”
- In the Thin Red Line,
the men continue to kill after overrunning the Jap position from the rear
and the CO says nothing
- He should not allow
the men to improve themselves at the expense of the enemy
- Furthermore, killing
is more a sign of hysteria than toughness
- Command Responsibility
– CO must take action to prevent such immoral killings in the future
- When combatants are
ordered to kill innocents, the liability for their immoral acts is divided
up
- Combatants
responsibility for their actions is diminished
- Superior Orders: The My Lai Massacre (282)
- Soldiers may not be transformed into mere instruments of war
- Two defenses argued by those who followed immoral, superior
orders
- Ignorance – didn’t know what they were doing was wrong
(especially true with long-distance weaponry and bombs – impossible for
a soldier to know if what the commander says is true)
- Duress – stress forced the following of the immoral action
(holds true if the harm is not disproportionate)
- Command Responsibility (286)
- Military commanders have morally crucial responsibilities:
- When planning, they must limit civilian casualties to a minimum
- When organizing forces, they must ensure their men are held to
the standard
- The Case of General
Yamashita (288)
- US forces disrupted his chain of command
- His troops committed atrocities during this time (except those
with which he could still communicate with)
- The US executed him for not maintaining control (two Supreme Court
justices dissented loudly)
- The Nature of Necessity
(290)
- Killing civilians purposefully is always murder
- Murder can rarely be done for a good cause (under proportional
duress, or some other special condition)
- The Dishonoring of
Arthur Harris (290)
- Harris was the commander of the British Bomber Squadron during
WWII who led the bombing against German cities and civilians
- After the war, he was not recognized and those lost under his
command were not remembered
- It was a big slap in the face and showed the British people’s
new commitment to just warfare
Wednesday: 313-318; CSME: 17-24,
45-46
Is
the Combatant-Noncombatant Distinction Morally Defensible?: Ethics for
Calamities (Reiman)
(313)
- Reasons in Favor of the
Combatant-Noncombatant Distinction
- Innocent people should
not be harmed
- Combatants are trained
and equipped for war and are prepared to be targeted
- Minimizes overall
casualties
- Creates more promising
conditions for peace
- Reasons for Doubting
the Moral Validity of Combatant-Noncombatant Distinction
- Biased in favor of
larger powers - larger powers have an air force which can kill indirectly
(civilian casualties called collateral damage) while smaller forces
attack directly (civilian casualties called murder)
- Moral responsibility
should be dependent on both consequences and intent
- Walzer criticizes the
doctrine of double effect for not
imposing a duty to minimize harm to civilians
- The
combatant-noncombatant distinction does not line up with the
guilty-innocent distinction
- Noncombatants are
often the guilty ones (producing war materials, driving capitalism if
that’s the other side’s ‘enemy’, etc) and combatants are often innocent
- Justifications for
Abandoning the Combatant-Noncombatant Distinction
- Most people are
Kantian, except when it comes to large-scale thinking (then they become utilitarianism)
– large-scale makes Kant inappropriate
- Combatants and
noncombatants are both members of the enemy, eroding the distinction
between them
- Noncombatant civilians
have some responsibility for what their gov does
- People with special
relationships with susceptible people are responsible for their care
- As the harmfulness of
an action goes up, more sacrifice is expected to prevent it
- Principle of calamity
ethics – citizens have an obligation to stop the gov from committing
large-scale harm
Interdiction
in Afghanistan (Schoultz) (17)
- Spec Ops asked if they
can do a mission the next morning to stop a convoy of al-Qaeda leaders
driving to the Pakistan border
- There is little time to
prepare but they get ready and go after the targets
- Helos and SEAL/Ranger
teams engage two vehicles and take them out (filled with terrorists and
weapons)
- LCDR Reynolds thinks he
sees a woman in the car and has his helo gunner hold his fire
- Puts the bird at risk
(SA-7 could have taken out the entire team and helo)
- Lands a few hundred
yards in front and stops the vehicle
- Turns out he is right
- Back at base MAJ Wyatt
was upset about the risk
- Reynolds claims it was
the moral thing to do based on his observations
- Wyatt says it was
extremely dangerous and a poor decision and says they were very lucky
Incident
at Roadblock
(ed. Shannon French) (45)
- Soldiers have to move
through a city after parachuting in the night before
- All inhabitants had to
be off the streets by 8PM
- The soldiers setup up
barriers and stationed guards with loudspeakers and native speakers at
intersections
- Tanks are also present
to ward off anyone venturing nearby
- A bus comes driving at
the barrier and refuses to stop despite warnings
- The occupants are
dressed like the opposition forces and are firing shots
- When it comes across
the barriers, the soldiers open fire, killing all but the driver
- They turn out to be
joy riders, not opposition forces
- The officer asks the
driver why they didn’t stop; says they just wanted to see if the soldiers
would actually open fire
Friday: 307-312
Winning
and Fighting Well (Walzer) (307)
- Battle of the River Hung
- The Duke allowed the
other army to completely form up before attacking
- His army was weaker
and lost
- “I will not sound my
drums to attack an unformed host”
- Mao Tse-tung said “we
have no use for his asinine ethics”
- Argued guerrillas
could not take prisoners
- Either disperse or
execute – a tactical decision
- If rules can be broken
for the sake of cause, then rules have no standing in any war worth
fighting
Sliding Scale
Argument (309)
- Sliding Scale (extreme
form) – soldiers who fight a just war may do anything useful to fighting
- General Sherman held
this view
- Soldiers won’t kill
civilians for the sake of killing, but will kill them if it advances
their mission
- Deciding against the
sliding scale requires a position of moral absolutism according to many
- Requires one to do
justice even if the heavens fall
- Another alternative –
do justice until the heavens are about to fall
- Utilitarian extreme –
restrains military action to usefulness and proportionality
Dealing with
the tension between the rules of war and the theory of aggression (310)
- War convention is set
aside in favor of utilitarianism
- Convention slowly gives
in based on the moral urgency of the cause
- Convention is overridden
only in the most extreme circumstances
- Convention holds and
right are respected regardless of consequences