Is a Soldier or Civilian's life more valuable?

[Kuan]

In WWII, the U.S. opted to drop the atomic bombs on Japan. I remember being taught in elementary school that this was done because it was going to cost too many American soldiers lives to invade Japan. This has never set well with me though and can correlate to our day.

The U.S. is using drone strikes to gather intelligence and to assassinate terrorists, but these are known to have civilian casualties. Now civilian casualties are impossible to eliminate, sadly, in any combat situation.

Now, these are the questions I pose:
1. Isn't it ethically and morally better to do all in your power to protect civilians as much as possible? Or does this only matter based upon their nationality?
2. Is it better for a soldier from your country to die, or a civilian from a different country?

[bluethread]

Great post, its a hard choice. Using that to analyze the drone strikes, I think I would choose, the innocence of the bystander is greater than the execution of the perpetrator. Instead of using drones, we should use soldiers.

Ah, but the innocence of the bystander is not always clear. Do you really think that the residence of Dresden were not aware of what the munitions that they were manufacturing were used for? There is also the knowledge of the ghettos and the concentration camps. This latter is not as strong of an argument, since those things were not part the calculations in the bombings of the munitions factories. However, that is also a separate point. Along with "collateral damage", there is also collateral information with regard to the bystanders. Therefore, what one is talking about when making these decisions is not innocence, but the presumption of innocence.

[Darias]

[Replying to post 11 by bluethread]

Do you think all Americans prior to 9/11 had no knowledge of US involvement in the Middle East up to that point? They were still paying taxes and in other cases voluntarily contributing to serve. Does that justify 9/11? It's how bin Laden rationalized it.

Funny enough, Ayn Rand also rationalized murdering innocents in wartime because she wanted to collectively blame them for what their governments "deserved" to have happened to them -- a completely incompatible view with her so called consistent stance on individualism.

Murder is wrong. Murdering lots of people doesn't make it heroic or noble. And for the cosequentialist, it's not like the ratio of civilian deaths to "bad guy" deaths is 1:1 -- civilians deaths far outnumber the others who are supposedly insurgents (they don't know, that's what the double taps are for). The US has bombed a few weddings so far... it's kind of hard to call that an accident, that's gross negligence.

Do you really think the residents of Dresden who worked in factories could choose not to make bombs. Everything they did was monitored by government agents and by their neighbors. They had to pay taxes too -- not much choice in that. They served in the military too, thanks to public school indoctrination. Their children saluted Hitler as American children saluted the flag (until, they changed it so it wouldn't be the same gesture because that makes all the difference in the world). Hitler was inspired to create his eugenics programs based off the American model.

Do you really think Amercians working in the factories and paying their taxes were innocent of the atomic and fire bombings on Japan? There was propaganda everywhere. If you questioned the war, good things would not happen to you. You went to work, you paid your taxes, and that's that.

Would you say that Americans deserved to be bombed for that? Did Americans deserve Pearl Harbor because their government antagonized Japan's with an embargo? Did the Japanese people deserve a nuclear holocaust because their militant Bush like government wanted to attack Pearl Harbor?

No, no one deserves to die for these pointless, retarded wars states initiate.

Justifying bombing population centers is grotesque and anyone who does it partakes in the rationalizations of bin Laden.

[bluethread]

[Replying to post 11 by bluethread]

Do you think all Americans prior to 9/11 had no knowledge of US involvement in the Middle East up to that point? They were still paying taxes and in other cases voluntarily contributing to serve. Does that justify 9/11? It's how bin Laden rationalized it.

It is always a calculation. I personally do not consider the citizens of these United States innocent with regard to 9/11. However, the trust of the western world in the financial system of it's own creation, does not absolve Bin Laden & Co. The Tanakh(OT) shows a pattern of one nation being used to discipline another, only to be disciplined themselves for their activities.

Funny enough, Ayn Rand also rationalized murdering innocents in wartime because she wanted to collectively blame them for what their governments "deserved" to have happened to them -- a completely incompatible view with her so called consistent stance on individualism.

My understanding of most libertarianism is that they resist corporate authority, but do not reject the concept of corporate responsibility.

Murder is wrong. Murdering lots of people doesn't make it heroic or noble. And for the cosequentialist, it's not like the ratio of civilian deaths to "bad guy" deaths is 1:1 -- civilians deaths far outnumber the others who are supposedly insurgents (they don't know, that's what the double taps are for). The US has bombed a few weddings so far... it's kind of hard to call that an accident, that's gross negligence.

That's why I have a bit of a philosophical problem with the concept of "rules of war". It is generally the winner that sets the rules and often retroactively.

Do you really think the residents of Dresden who worked in factories could choose not to make bombs. Everything they did was monitored by government agents and by their neighbors. They had to pay taxes too -- not much choice in that. They served in the military too, thanks to public school indoctrination. Their children saluted Hitler as American children saluted the flag (until, they changed it so it wouldn't be the same gesture because that makes all the difference in the world). Hitler was inspired to create his eugenics programs based off the American model.

People always have choices. That is not saying that I always have the courage to make the right choices. For the record, I think that Hitlers' "final solution" was a result of the scientific age and the application of evolutionary theory to the psuedo-sciences of psychology and sociology. At that time fascism and eugenics were all the rage. They were also being enacted in these united states, but they were cloaked in patriotism and called by different names, because they were our policies and not theirs.

Do you really think Amercians working in the factories and paying their taxes were innocent of the atomic and fire bombings on Japan? There was propaganda everywhere. If you questioned the war, good things would not happen to you. You went to work, you paid your taxes, and that's that.

Would you say that Americans deserved to be bombed for that? Did Americans deserve Pearl Harbor because their government antagonized Japan's with an embargo? Did the Japanese people deserve a nuclear holocaust because their militant Bush like government wanted to attack Pearl Harbor?

No, no one deserves to die for these pointless, retarded wars states initiate.

Justifying bombing population centers is grotesque and anyone who does it partakes in the rationalizations of bin Laden.

Yes, that is easy to say, as we eat chips watching the Superbowl. Conflating the issue into determining who deserves what presumes that we are somehow above the fray. Did the peoples England deserve to be bombed because their Obama like government decided to seek "peace in our time", early on. I do not think stating things in those terms is very productive. As I stated above, it makes people feel superior sitting safely in their homes. However, life is full of tradeoffs. One can not just sit around blaming others for terrible things happening. Even though we do not have perfect knowledge, we have to make decisions. Then, after everything is said and done, it is usually the winners that get to place the blame and write the history. I have little doubt that had the Nazi's won WWII Churchill would have been one of the ones tried for war crimes.

[pixelero]

[Replying to post 1 by Kuan]

To be quite honest, I'm not surprised at the appalling lack of ethical standards in U.S. foreign policy. Michael Sandel, supposedly the foremost "moral philospher" in America today, wrote:

In June 2005, a special forces team made up of Petty Officer Marcus Luttrell and three other U.S. Navy Seals set out on a secret reconnaissance mission in Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border, in search of a Taliban leader, a close associate of Osama bin Laden. According to intelligence reports, their target commanded 140 to 150 heavily armed fighters and was staying in a village in the forbidding mountainous region.

Shortly after the special forces team took up a position on a mountain ridge overlooking the village, two Afghan farmers with about a hundred bleating goats happened upon them. With them was a boy about fourteen years old. The Afghans were unarmed. The American soldiers trained their rifles on them, motioned for them to sit on the ground, and then debated what to do about them. On the one hand, the goatherds appeared to be unarmed civilians. On the other hand, letting them go would run the risk that they would inform the Taliban of the presence of the U.S. soldiers.

As the four soldiers contemplated their options, they realized that they didn’t have any rope, so tying up the Afghans to allow time to find a new hideout was not feaslble.The only choice was to kill them or let them go free.

One of Luttrell’s comrades argued for killing the goatherds: “We’re on active duty behind enemy lines, sent here by our senior commanders. We have a right to do everything we can to save our own lives.The military decision is obvious. To turn them loose would be wrong.� Luttrell was torn. “In my soul, I knew he was right,� he wrote in retrospect. “We could not possibly turn them loose. But my trouble is, I have another soul. My Christian soul. And it was crowding in on me. Something kept whispering in the back of my mind, it would be wrong to execute these unarmed men in cold blood� Luttrell didn’t say what he meant by his Christian soul, but in the end, his conscience didn’t allow him to kill the goatherds. He cast the deciding vote to release them. (One of his three comrades had abstained.) It was a vote he came to regret.

About an hour and a half after they released the goatherds, the four soldiers found themselves surrounded by eighty to a hundred Taliban fighters armed with AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades. In the fierce firefight that followed, all three of Luttrell’s comrades were killed. The Taliban fighters also shot down a U.S. helicopter that sought to rescue the SEAL unit, killing all sixteen soldiers on board.

Luttrell, severely injured, managed to survive by falling down the mountainside and crawling seven miles to a Pashtun village, whose residents protected him from the Taliban until he was rescued.

In retrospect, Luttrell condemned his own vote not to kill the goat-herds. “It was the stupidest, most southern-fried, lamebrained decision I ever made in my life,� he wrote in a book about the experience. “I must have been out of my mind. I had actually cast a vote which I knew could sign our death warrant. . . . At least, that’s how I look back on those moments now. . . . The deciding vote was mine, and it will haunt me till they rest me in an EastTexas grave.�

Part of what made the soldiers’ dilemma so difficult was uncertainty about what would happen if they released the Afghans. Would they simply go on their way or would they alert the Taliban? But suppose Luttrell knew that freeing the goatherds would lead to a devastating battle resulting in the loss of his comrades, nineteen American deaths, injury to himself, and the failure of his mission? Would he have decided differently?

For Luttrell, looking back, the answer is clear: he should have killed the goatherds. Given the disaster that followed, it is hard to disagree.

(My emphasis.) When I read that, I was amazed that any "moral philosopher" would actually consider it "hard to disagree" with what would unambiguously be a violation of international law. When a nation's professors of "morality" advocate the summary killing of unarmed civilians, that nation's credibility as a civilized society is absolute zero. Yet, the American administration, (and the majority of patriotic citizens apparently,) still seems to think that the United States serves as a model for the rest of the world. The disconnect with reality is stunning.