Ethics of War
I had to write a short essay (4 pages) on a contraversial topic for school and decided on the topic of War ethics where I would argue that 'terrorist' acts of war are ethically indifferent from acts of war of the conventional sort. I figured that it might be worth some conversation, so tell me what you think.
It should also be noted that I don't neccessarly believe everything written below.
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The modern age is an age of supposed conflict enlightenment. Now any deliberate targeting of civilians is considered unethical to the core, no matter the cause or end goal the attackers fight for. The only fair game in conflicts is military targets, or more specifically anyone in a uniform. The dividing line between those of the civilized and enlightened world and those of the savage, deplorable and immoral world is based on the conflict means used by the two groups rather than the ideals or causes they may be fighting for. However, this dividing line between moral and immoral means is logically faulty. The ethics of both terrorist acts of war—defined as deliberate attacks on civilians—and the ethics of conventional acts of war—defined as deliberately attacking military targets only—are nearly identical.
To illustrate the ethical background of both strategies, lets imagine a hypothetical situation that is realistic and yet vague enough that it is applicable to many real-life scenarios. Let us say that there is a military force from another country that is enforcing an injustice (let us also pretend that all readers of this essay can agree that whatever this military is doing is unjust), and there is a group of militants that are fighting against this injustice and for a just cause. Within this hypothetical case, the individuals who defend the moral superiority of attacking military personnel over civilians argue that the military are the enforcers of the injustice at hand and since the military personnel choose of their own free will to be in the military they are directly responsible for military actions and this hypothetical injustice. This view is naïve for a number of reasons. It views military personnel as mere tools extensions of the state and/or the ruling elite that decide military action; rather than as the normal human beings that they are who are just doing their jobs.
It also implies that the individuals that join the military are to be considered conscious supporters of the injustice at hand, but really all they did was join the army. Nearly every country views a standing army, even in times of peace, to be necessity; a safe assumption to make would be that the majority of individuals feel the same way too. If supporting your military, through either joining it or supporting its existence politically, makes you directly responsible for its actions, then the majority of the civilian-hood can be held directly responsible for any injustices it may enforce just as the men in uniform are. These rank-and-file soldiers are not able to choose what tours they take and what causes they support throughout the world, just as the majority of the civilian-hood are not, so it seems silly to hold them directly accountable for whatever injustices they are told to enforce. At this point one may raise the argument that the military personnel had the option to refuse duty when posted to a job determined ‘unjust’, but such refusal would have come at the very hefty price of imprisonment or exile. They are coerced into it and have little real choice. Why is the life of a soldier valued less to the point where it is more ethical to kill him than other human beings when really he is normal human beings that made a certain career choice. For all we know, the soldiers could be against the hypothetical case of injustice just as much as any civilian and were simply coerced into directly enforcing it.
On the flip side of the issue, the same defenders of the ethical superiority of conventional warfare often will portray civilians as innocent, not involved, and generally external to any conflicts in the modern world. This is contrasted with the above view that military personnel are directly involved and rarely ‘innocent’ in situations deemed unjust. This view neglects the role of the civilians/citizens of the host to the military plays in any conflict their military is involved in. Military caused/enforced injustices are impossible without funding to support them. This funding comes directly from the taxes of every single civilian in the host country. Furthermore, by applying the economic concept of opportunity cost to this situation, we can also say that by the entire civilian class specializing their skills and interacting through a market enables certain individuals to specialize in military procedures that directly enforce the hypothetical injustice. If everyone made produced only what they consumed themselves and did not specialize and trade through markets, the military personnel would have no choice but to give up their military careers and turn to a similar life of self-substance (since everyone is growing just enough food for themselves and not trading any extra through markets, there will not be enough for soldiers unless they grow their own food as well). Even interaction with the same economy of the military enables them to continue their enforcement of hypothetical injustice. Of course, the civilians could become external to the conflict by simply refusing to pay taxes and avoiding interaction with the market economy, but just like the soldier refusing duty this retaining of innocence comes at a hefty price, potentially including poverty (interaction with the markets generally make you better off), exile (for avoiding taxes) and even imprisonment (for avoiding taxes). Again, the moral position of both the civilians and the military personnel seems to be identical.
Another argument that could be made at this point is that any opposition to injustice has a responsibility to minimize deaths (both military and civilian) while fighting injustice. Since each soldier physically supports/enforces said injustice to a higher degree than each civilian, the opposition can gain more for their cause (eliminate support for the injustice) by killing a soldier than they can by killing a civilian and thus has a responsibility to target military personnel rather than civilians. This argument lacks the acknowledgment of one major point: Injustice is only worth fighting against if the fight can be won. If fighting an injustice violently fails to do away with the injustice, then the fighting simply caused more pain and suffering on top of the original injustice. If there is a case where the enforcers of injustices are militarily-superior (which often seems to be the case) or even just militarily equal, then often the opposition to injustice can do more for their cause by targeting civilians rather than targeting military personnel due to the high cost of targeting the military (they cause more damage back). If the costs of attacking only military targets result in failure, then one could argue that they would be better off, from a military perspective, to target civilians. There are also possible ‘media exposure’ benefits that come with civilian targeting (eg. See media coverage of Israeli-Palestinian conflict compared to Tamil Tiger-Sir Lanka conflict or Nepalese civil war).
This logic may sound cold, harsh, and outright detestable—and perhaps it is—but it is actually widely accepted in most minds within the context of World War II. Most people are able to overlook the Allied bombings of entire German and Japanese cities (sometimes even including Hiroshima and Nagasaki) due to the obviously noble ends of the Allies means. However, if we can accept that civilian targeting is acceptable in cases where it will save millions more than those who die due to such targeting, what is our logical basis for denouncing such means in order to save the same amount of lives killed plus one? This essay is not meant to support total-war mentality, nor is it meant to support pacifism mentality (but most can certainly agree that this mentality is superior to the former), but it does outline the logic that there is no middle ground (except perhaps the middle ground of political assassination, since the political leaders are the only ones with real choice whether to support the hypothetical injustice or not). If we, as a collective entity, choose to undertake a military endeavor, we must also be willing to undertake the collective guilty that may be associated with that endeavor because there is no meaningful difference between the ethics of conventional warfare and terrorist warfare.
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Originally Posted by Lavastein
Re: Ethics of War
