War? Is it still murder?

Will

note to mods - if you are going to move it I would rather you lock it instead of moving it as I'm interested in what people in this forum have to say about the topic. Thank you


When in a war, is it still murder if you kill someone from the opposing army? Does it make it any less wrong/right to do so?

I'd rather not get into the religious side of things, just really the facts and laws around it with some ethics thrown in for good measure.

will come back to this later in the day with my opinion, it's too late to be thinking anything coherent.

AlmightyCushion

I'd say no. War is a do or die situation. Killing someone for no reason is one thing but killing them in the heat of battle for the sake of your friends/family/country/etc is something very different. It all depends on the situation though so in my opinion there is no catch all yes or no answer.

watty

After the war leaders on the losing side are tried for War Crimes.

On the Winning Side, generally only the odd soldier is tried for War Crimes.

(Dresden, Horoshima, Nagasaki etc)

Napalm & Agent Orange in Vietnam is interesting as US "lost", but Winner not in a Position to prosecute as they didn't conquer the USA.

It's probably impossible to fight a major war without both sides technically committing War Crimes.

Ostrom

Will wrote: »

note to mods - if you are going to move it I would rather you lock it instead of moving it as I'm interested in what people in this forum have to say about the topic. Thank you


When in a war, is it still murder if you kill someone from the opposing army? Does it make it any less wrong/right to do so?

I'd rather not get into the religious side of things, just really the facts and laws around it with some ethics thrown in for good measure.

will come back to this later in the day with my opinion, it's too late to be thinking anything coherent.

What exactly do you mean by war? There are internationally accepted standards for conduct during war, so to the extent that actions are conducted by a sovereign nation within established guidelines, killing during conflict is not considered murder unless the conditions of killing contravene an established convention (war crime).

Certain conflicts may not conform to accepted definitions of 'war' - revolutionary activity, civil conflict - all of which bring issues of accountability and policing.

Depending on context, definitions of acceptable aggression change - religion (fitna or jihad - ambiguous terms themselves within Islam), culture (pre-empitve defense). You could argue also that ideology distorts entical standards (neoliberalism and Iraq).

Begin with the meaning of 'war' I suppose....?

CelticTiger*

I think that no it is not murder because the soldiers don't WANT to kill them, they have to.
The people who start the wars are the ones that should be held accountable.

--amadeus--

I think that this boils down to the theory of the Just War. If teh war satisfies the criteria of a Just War then no it is not murder. WWII in Europe is the classic example of a Just War - no matter the casualties Hitler had to be stopped.

That doesn't excuse all acts within teh Just War though - I would consider Dresden to be a war crime for example and Bomber Harris to be a war criminal.

I'm not sure I would consider the bomber pilots themselves murderers though. They were just following orders. But then that's what the guards in Auschwitz said too and teh women and children killed by Allied bombing of cities were just as dead even if the pilots never saw them face to face.

Gillo

What about killing people involved in the war but not fighting, a lot women in world war two worked in factories which made the "tools" of war, surely a factory making tanks, bombs, gun etc is a legitimate target in a war?
And if bombed the employees fun the risk of being killed.

Khannie

CelticTiger* wrote: »

I think that no it is not murder because the soldiers don't WANT to kill them

What makes you think that?

Sea Sharp

I think an interesting interpritation of the initial topic "War? Is it still murder?", with modern warfare most of the killing is not done directly from gun to gun battles.
Is it still murder when you call in an air-strike on a target that is known to contain enemies? Is it murder when you use an rpg?
In modern warfare killing does not involve one man targeting another it means one group targeting another. Is it still murder in that sense?

florio

Well firstly, if they're under conscription and it's kill or be killed then no, they're more pawns in a game than murderers. As for career-orientated modern day soldiers, I think most also escape the charge as well. If they're serving a democratic government then they can argue that even if they're sent to kill in an unjust war, they're only executing the will of society through the government's order, and that avoiding unjust wars that put them in the situation of murdering undeservers is the responsibility of the voters, not the armed forces, and it must be that way as an effective army can't tolerate individual freedom to dissent, and the public wouldn't support it.

Personally, I think morals are a personal thing, and not very resistant to pressure in people. As the soldier is only doing what society expects him to do in his job, I'd class most of them as morally disengaged rather than morally good or bad.

hatrickpatrick

Personally (and this is just me), I regard absolutely all killing of human beings as wrong and abhorrent. I can understand the debate over say abortion (where the issue is where you draw the line of when someone is actually alive as an invidual etc, so I don't get into that) but intentionally killing someone against their will is wrong and evil. Ergo all war is wrong. And in general, when war is a chain reaction, although I would regard killing by both sides as wrong, I would heap the responsibility for the overall event on whoever fired the first shot or took the first step towards war, since starting a conflict is always an unprovoked action where no conflict existed before. And while all killing is utterly wrong, unprovoked killing is still much worse.

hatrickpatrick

--amadeus-- wrote: »

I think that this boils down to the theory of the Just War. If teh war satisfies the criteria of a Just War then no it is not murder. WWII in Europe is the classic example of a Just War - no matter the casualties Hitler had to be stopped.

That doesn't excuse all acts within teh Just War though - I would consider Dresden to be a war crime for example and Bomber Harris to be a war criminal.

I'm not sure I would consider the bomber pilots themselves murderers though. They were just following orders. But then that's what the guards in Auschwitz said too and teh women and children killed by Allied bombing of cities were just as dead even if the pilots never saw them face to face.

I'll take that example to explain what I was talking about. While every human death in World War II was wrong, Hitler started the war by invading Poland, so even though both sides behaved disgracefully (the two atomic bombings were totally outrageous in my opinion, deliberately targeting packed cities full of civillians) the blame must mainly lie with Hitler, since if he hadn't taken the first step the war would never have happened. Everyone else was reacting to him, and while their actions may on occasion have been disproportionate, he bears the responsibility for creating the conflict in the first place.

Morphie

CelticTiger* wrote: »

I think that no it is not murder because the soldiers don't WANT to kill them, they have to.
The people who start the wars are the ones that should be held accountable.

They don't have to kill anyone. They have the choice of killing or not.

Choice is, if you don't kill, you'll most likely be killed yourself.

So, presented with such a scenario, I'd be willing to bet the majority would kill.

So it's quite a "If the only way to live is to kill, then I want to kill".

Choices, they don't have to kill, they could simply not kill and be killed.

---

I'd consider it murder. I can't place the killing of another person as anything but murder. Actually, if you were in a plane and you accidentally managed to drop an elephant out of it, and it landed in the middle of the ocean on a boat carrying someone. Then I wouldn't think of that as murder, since it wasn't intentional. But if you're in front of a man and you aim at his person and pull the trigger, it's an intention kill, I don't think "war" changes that.

I think the real question is, is the murder committed in war justified by cause?

People can use the excuse of war as a way of avoiding prosecution. It still doesn't deny they killed someone intentionally, only since it was done during a war, nothing is done about it.

GaNjaHaN wrote: »

I think an interesting interpritation of the initial topic "War? Is it still murder?", with modern warfare most of the killing is not done directly from gun to gun battles.
Is it still murder when you call in an air-strike on a target that is known to contain enemies? Is it murder when you use an rpg?
In modern warfare killing does not involve one man targeting another it means one group targeting another. Is it still murder in that sense?

I'd say yes. You don't have to be on a one to one basis with someone to commit murder.

If you're flying a plane and you drop out bombs on an area where your enemies are, then you do so with the intention of killing them, right?

If you call you were the one calling in the planes, then you would be assisting with the murder of your target, not committing the murder.

--amadeus-- wrote: »

I'm not sure I would consider the bomber pilots themselves murderers though. They were just following orders. But then that's what the guards in Auschwitz said too and teh women and children killed by Allied bombing of cities were just as dead even if the pilots never saw them face to face.

Lets remove the scenario as being "in a war".

Think of a gang leader, who tells one of his followers to go and kill a man. Would you allow the follower to excuse him committing murder with the excuse of "I was only following orders" ?

War or not, people have a choice. They didn't have to drop those bombs. Orders indeed, but orders can be disobeyed, if someone chose to act upon those orders and drops bombs with the intent of killing people (knowing it'll kill people) then it's murder. I can't excuse it.

I'm just thinking, how can we excuse someone during a war, when the same wouldn't be done for someone out of it? People aren't controlled to follow orders, they choose to do so.

Overheal

Theres always an aggressor in a war.

Somewhere at some point, or even at many points, animosity comes into play. And its not for survival, self defence, or any of that. Its for selfish reasons, often justified to themselves in ways that our brains contort for us.

Its killing. But its killing that involves a chain of command, and opossing sides in a conflict, that makes it that much harder to ascertain where the malice of the death originated.Not all deaths in a war are malicious but the wars themselves almost always are.

silverharp

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Personally (and this is just me), I regard absolutely all killing of human beings as wrong and abhorrent.

I think your premise is false, there are any number of situations where if an individual's only response to aggression is to kill the aggressor then no moral blame can fall back on the intended victim or the person who is protecting a victim

Feadpool

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Hitler started the war by invading Poland, so even though both sides behaved disgracefully (the two atomic bombings were totally outrageous in my opinion, deliberately targeting packed cities full of civillians) the blame must mainly lie with Hitler, since if he hadn't taken the first step the war would never have happened. Everyone else was reacting to him, and while their actions may on occasion have been disproportionate, he bears the responsibility for creating the conflict in the first place.

Did Hitler start the war? would Germany have become so politically polarised if they hadn't been hurt so bad by the Armistice, but that was because of world war one, does that mean that Kaiser Wilhelm was to blame? or whoever tied Germany into an alliance with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, or is the assassin Gavrilo Princip who killed the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to blame for all the Deaths caused in both world wars?

I'd also like to know how Hitler could be blamed for the war in the Pacific? Do you really think he forced the Japanese to fight to the death? And personally I believe that the use of the Atomic bombs saved deaths on both sides, if America had to invade the home Islands Japan would have fought on far more fanatically than Germany or Russia, killing tens of thousands on both sides, with Japanese Civilians taking at least the same casualties caused by the Atomic Bombs.

A soldier is no more responsible for his actions than his rifle is, his training and programing turns his military unit into a family, disobeying an order and going against what the pack are doing becomes a huge Taboo.
Imagine all your friends are cliff diving, you know it's stupid and dangerous but everyone is doing it and egging you on to do it too, now imagine that the effect of all that pressure is multiplied a dozen times over (by the military training regime) do you honestly think you wouldn't jump?

recedite

You need to look at what murder actually is. Generally it is a premeditated, unlawful killing, with malice of forethought. Without the premeditation, it could be manslaughter, such as hitting a pedestrian while driving. The unlawful V lawful bit lets soldiers off the hook, if they are on the side with the judges.
Notice how Tony Blair and successive UK governments spend a lot of time talking about whether the Iraq war was lawful, while nobody else is too interested in that aspect of it.
IMO that is BS because war and law are like apples and oranges. War starts when law finishes.
Also IMO there are times for killing people. For example; someone trying to kill me. Similarly a whole army trying to kill "my" army. That's why the politicians starting wars, setting armies against each other, carry such a huge responsibility.