I don't think the Steve or I are judging you or are thinking you are a monster. All things come with a cost and when the cost is too high it may just be a no sale.
We learn to accept the unacceptable when there is nothing we can do about it, but that is not cost free.
A friend who came to America as a boat person who had been an ARVN offic…
I don't think the Steve or I are judging you or are thinking you are a monster. All things come with a cost and when the cost is too high it may just be a no sale.
We learn to accept the unacceptable when there is nothing we can do about it, but that is not cost free.
A friend who came to America as a boat person who had been an ARVN officer told me that when he finally went back for a visit with family still there he decided that the emotional wounds of the war would not heal until the last person with living memory of the war was dead.
In Israel/Palestine with never ending war that won't happen. They must accept the unacceptable horror of what is happening, and their part in it.
When I asked if people could kill the little girl as an acceptable pragmatic act of war if you saw her face as she died, it was implicit that you would have to accept her nocturnal visits in your dreams and not see yourself as a monster when you awake.
Not about judging which side is worse in that conflict, but if we were participants we would judge ourselves until we are dead.
I got that you were talking about the emotional cost (anticipated cost inhibiting action in advance, or trauma cost afterward), when asking if I could shoot a young girl in the head while looking into her eyes. I don't know that I personally could, even if in this contrived question that action would save 10 other young girls. But even if I personally couldn't do it, I might still think that 10 for 1 is the better answer if one has the guts to do it (and bear the cost).
I read about people who survive being trapped (eg: fallen tree or rubble) by cutting off their leg - painful but otherwise they die. I don't know if I personally could do that. But my human limitations don't mean that cutting off one's leg is thereby the wrong course of action in the larger picture. Those who do such a thing first need to be able to objectively engage with the reality they face (death if they don't cut off the leg) rather than fantasies, and secondly they need the strength to carry out an action which is bad in the short turn but good in the longer run.
I personally might also have a hard time being a field surgeon or a general. That doesn't mean there isn't a proper role for those who could.
(The above is about the broader concept of judging the rightness of the action, by whether it would be personally incredibly painful, rather than looking at the larger picture - using a deliberately different scenario to facilitate clear thinking. It is NOT meant to be any direct analogy to Israel/Palestine, so please nobody try to pick apart an analogy I was not making.)
You call the question contrived. It is not. Currently Israel is reducing Gaza to rubble and know full well that they are killing non-combatants, including a high number of children. But they do it with thousand-pound bombs where they don't see their victims and the horror is an abstraction.
In the case of the My Lai massacre during the war in Vietnam, Lt. Calley was rightfully prosecuted but the higher lever officers who ordered a preparatory artillery strike on the village were not. They knew the artillery strike they were ordering would be killing of civilians, but they were not looking them in the eye.
The Hamas ghouls certainly saw the faces of their victims and if they were all exterminated, I would not shed a tear for them.
Although rare, Israel has prosecuted IDF ground troops for unjustified killings https://en.idi.org.il/articles/12244 , but the leaders ordering it on a large scale seem exempt.
In the Marine's Hymn there is a phrase, "And to keep our honor clean". "Death before dishonor" was a popular tattoo back in the day. In my view, purposeful killing non-combatant (not collateral but purposeful) is dishonorable. The scale of what is taking place leads me to believe that it is purposeful and dishonorable and even Israel considers it to be a crime, for low level grunts who see those they kill. But just as with the My Lai massacre, that only seems to apply to those who see their faces.
I call that contrived because (1) there is no over-riding reason to do so mentioned. Is the alternative a nuclear war or just some property damage? It's free floating, without the essential context which would need to be weighed. (2) It is incredibly unlikely that I "personally" would ever face such a situation, where I needed to blow the brains of a child out, a contrived thought experiment rather than a feasible real world situation. It's rather unlikely that a burglar will ever say to me (or most people) "if you blow out the brains of this girl, I'll let your family live" or any other scenario, and (3) whether or not I personally would be able to "pull the trigger" is irrelevant to the issue; there are many things I personally would be able or unable to do, but my personal strength or weakness doesn't determine whether they should be done.
By contrast I brought up ordering a smaller military unit into a near suicidal mission in order to allow a larger unit to escape destruction. That's not a contrived, abstract and extremely unlikely-to-ever-occur-in-real-life thought experiment like me personally needing to look a small girl in the face before blowing out her brains in light of some unnamed greater good; it's a very real world situation faced by many.
I hope I've clarified what I meant by "contrived" (in contrast to realistic).
I was not saying it was invalid to consider thought experiments **as such** (I raise thought experiments myself at times), and I proceeded to engage with your scenario in good faith rather than rejecting it out of hand as "contrived" - I just noted as part of my response that your personal questioning of me in that scenario was in fact contrived rather than realistic. My intention in using "contrived" was descriptive, not dismissive.
While it is true that you, or I at my age, will not face that choice, at one time it was a possibility for me. If I had been one of Lt Calley's men, would I have shot on-combatant women and children as they fearfully squatted chanting prayers? I like to think that I wouldn't have.
The cannoneers who fired the artillery into the village didn't know the target. When for mission is called the coordinates are dialed in but they don't have time to get it a map and do the math. Someone higher up did that.
But if I was firing widely spread WP in a city, I would know. If you have no desire to participate in the "thought experiment" as irrelevant to you that's OK. No answer from you required, but at what level is purposefully killing non-combatants justifiable?
(As I said, I did engage with your question already, and only peripherally used "contrived" as descriptive rather than as an excuse not to engage.)
> "at what level is purposefully killing non-combatants justifiable"
Aye, stated that way, it's a much less contrived scenario, and a good question. Thanks.
That's a very real world situation rather than just an abstract thought experiment, with real world consequences. I don't sense any emotional manipulation, but more of exploring together a moral quandary that many humans face.
Your real world experience in related situations is much greater than mine. What is your answer?
Say, if you or your unit were in the open being fired upon (small arms, MG, RPG, whatever) by enemies in a civilian crowd or building, would you shoot back or call in an artillery strike to save yourself or others, even if you knew that no matter how careful you would like to be, civilians would be endangered thereby (and that putting you in that dilemma was exactly the strategy of those firing at you)?
Where and how would you draw the line? Up to how many civilians would you risk death or injury to, before you would decide instead to let the enemy sniper, machine gunner, platoon, or rocket launcher continue to take out your group without firing back?
And if in general it was discovered that your military was unwilling to harm more than whatever number of civilians your answer comes up with, would the enemy adopt more or less of the tactic of placing their attackers within similar civilian contexts?
(Aside: let's take My Lai out of this discussion, as it was not a case of collateral damage in seeking a military target, but more of expressing rage on completely non-military targets. That is, it was just plain wrong by anybody's ethics, and refusing to participate is a moral no-brainer, not a tricky moral balancing issue to explore as we are doing in this thread)
In thinking about this it occurred to me that the issue pertains to individuals and to nations. My question related to the individual, which I will drill down into a bit, but the discussion was about nations. While I will continue with the individual, because it is deeply relevant to me, I will roll it into the context of the original issue of Israel-Palestine.
When I was in bootcamp, one of my drill instructors told us that if we thought an order was unlawful, we could refuse to carry it out, but we would have to defend that choice at our Court Martial. If it was lawful, while distasteful, we could end up behind bars.
The distasteful. Upon realizing the reality of the war, we are in, moral objections could rise to the surface. We "could" petition for conscientious objector status which we may or may not be able to obtain. Do we wish to not carry a rifle or not participate in any way, even in a non-combatant position?
There is a gray area between, this is war and it's what we do, and I don't want to do this. The questionable things that haunt veterans for the rest of their lives and can be as debilitating as PTSD or lead to suicide.
For the ones at the bottom, the scenario that I mentioned, the enemy pops up in the crowd of children at the bridge where the choice is a rifle, as precision as possible with the possibility of the unintended deaths of non-combatants or a frag which will without a doubt have non-combatant casualties. Everyone makes their own choices based upon their personal sense of morality.
Taking that scenario in the direction of your train switch example, is that threat likely to result in casualties of your comrades? Is loyalty to my fellow Marines of higher importance (to me) than the lives of the non-combatant children? Both would be haunting. The highest priority for most would be our brothers in arms.
That is tempered by time and urgency. Being under fire is urgent, the enemy that might be (we think he is) in that hospital is a bit different. Are hey actively launching rockets?
Those situations are all a bit different with different decisions to be made, some by reflex. In one case in my platoon that make the decision now situation resulted in a fratricide. Considering the circumstances, the man that was killed screwed up and got himself killed, but the fact remains that the man who shot him had to live with that. Sometimes there are no good choices.
That brings us to Gaza. Is the idea that killing all of Hamas a viable strategic objective? Since that quest is creating more enemies, probably not. So, when should they stop? What is a reasonable stopping point? When Hamas quits fighting? Is it a terror campaign carried out for revenge? To some degree I think that is probably true. Moral? Most of the dead are non-combatants who live there and can't do a thing to stop Hamas. A bit like tossing the frag into a group of children because an enemy "might" be in the crowd.
Is Israel fighting a counter insurgency against Hamas where it is both morally and strategically correct to minimize civilian deaths, or is it a war on the Palestinian people where they are all thought to be the enemy? Laying waste to Gaza+ makes it look like the later, but I was only an NCO, not a General so it's above my pay grade.
I don't know if that answers you question to your satisfaction or not.
I don't think the Steve or I are judging you or are thinking you are a monster. All things come with a cost and when the cost is too high it may just be a no sale.
We learn to accept the unacceptable when there is nothing we can do about it, but that is not cost free.
A friend who came to America as a boat person who had been an ARVN officer told me that when he finally went back for a visit with family still there he decided that the emotional wounds of the war would not heal until the last person with living memory of the war was dead.
In Israel/Palestine with never ending war that won't happen. They must accept the unacceptable horror of what is happening, and their part in it.
When I asked if people could kill the little girl as an acceptable pragmatic act of war if you saw her face as she died, it was implicit that you would have to accept her nocturnal visits in your dreams and not see yourself as a monster when you awake.
Not about judging which side is worse in that conflict, but if we were participants we would judge ourselves until we are dead.
I got that you were talking about the emotional cost (anticipated cost inhibiting action in advance, or trauma cost afterward), when asking if I could shoot a young girl in the head while looking into her eyes. I don't know that I personally could, even if in this contrived question that action would save 10 other young girls. But even if I personally couldn't do it, I might still think that 10 for 1 is the better answer if one has the guts to do it (and bear the cost).
I read about people who survive being trapped (eg: fallen tree or rubble) by cutting off their leg - painful but otherwise they die. I don't know if I personally could do that. But my human limitations don't mean that cutting off one's leg is thereby the wrong course of action in the larger picture. Those who do such a thing first need to be able to objectively engage with the reality they face (death if they don't cut off the leg) rather than fantasies, and secondly they need the strength to carry out an action which is bad in the short turn but good in the longer run.
I personally might also have a hard time being a field surgeon or a general. That doesn't mean there isn't a proper role for those who could.
(The above is about the broader concept of judging the rightness of the action, by whether it would be personally incredibly painful, rather than looking at the larger picture - using a deliberately different scenario to facilitate clear thinking. It is NOT meant to be any direct analogy to Israel/Palestine, so please nobody try to pick apart an analogy I was not making.)
You call the question contrived. It is not. Currently Israel is reducing Gaza to rubble and know full well that they are killing non-combatants, including a high number of children. But they do it with thousand-pound bombs where they don't see their victims and the horror is an abstraction.
In the case of the My Lai massacre during the war in Vietnam, Lt. Calley was rightfully prosecuted but the higher lever officers who ordered a preparatory artillery strike on the village were not. They knew the artillery strike they were ordering would be killing of civilians, but they were not looking them in the eye.
The Hamas ghouls certainly saw the faces of their victims and if they were all exterminated, I would not shed a tear for them.
Although rare, Israel has prosecuted IDF ground troops for unjustified killings https://en.idi.org.il/articles/12244 , but the leaders ordering it on a large scale seem exempt.
In the Marine's Hymn there is a phrase, "And to keep our honor clean". "Death before dishonor" was a popular tattoo back in the day. In my view, purposeful killing non-combatant (not collateral but purposeful) is dishonorable. The scale of what is taking place leads me to believe that it is purposeful and dishonorable and even Israel considers it to be a crime, for low level grunts who see those they kill. But just as with the My Lai massacre, that only seems to apply to those who see their faces.
I agree with everything you said, except that the question was not contrived. The question:
> "𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐤 𝐚 𝐧𝐨𝐧-𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐚𝐭𝐚𝐧𝐭 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐞𝐲𝐞𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐛𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬 𝐨𝐮𝐭?"
I call that contrived because (1) there is no over-riding reason to do so mentioned. Is the alternative a nuclear war or just some property damage? It's free floating, without the essential context which would need to be weighed. (2) It is incredibly unlikely that I "personally" would ever face such a situation, where I needed to blow the brains of a child out, a contrived thought experiment rather than a feasible real world situation. It's rather unlikely that a burglar will ever say to me (or most people) "if you blow out the brains of this girl, I'll let your family live" or any other scenario, and (3) whether or not I personally would be able to "pull the trigger" is irrelevant to the issue; there are many things I personally would be able or unable to do, but my personal strength or weakness doesn't determine whether they should be done.
By contrast I brought up ordering a smaller military unit into a near suicidal mission in order to allow a larger unit to escape destruction. That's not a contrived, abstract and extremely unlikely-to-ever-occur-in-real-life thought experiment like me personally needing to look a small girl in the face before blowing out her brains in light of some unnamed greater good; it's a very real world situation faced by many.
I hope I've clarified what I meant by "contrived" (in contrast to realistic).
I was not saying it was invalid to consider thought experiments **as such** (I raise thought experiments myself at times), and I proceeded to engage with your scenario in good faith rather than rejecting it out of hand as "contrived" - I just noted as part of my response that your personal questioning of me in that scenario was in fact contrived rather than realistic. My intention in using "contrived" was descriptive, not dismissive.
While it is true that you, or I at my age, will not face that choice, at one time it was a possibility for me. If I had been one of Lt Calley's men, would I have shot on-combatant women and children as they fearfully squatted chanting prayers? I like to think that I wouldn't have.
The cannoneers who fired the artillery into the village didn't know the target. When for mission is called the coordinates are dialed in but they don't have time to get it a map and do the math. Someone higher up did that.
But if I was firing widely spread WP in a city, I would know. If you have no desire to participate in the "thought experiment" as irrelevant to you that's OK. No answer from you required, but at what level is purposefully killing non-combatants justifiable?
[edited typing on a phone errors]
(As I said, I did engage with your question already, and only peripherally used "contrived" as descriptive rather than as an excuse not to engage.)
> "at what level is purposefully killing non-combatants justifiable"
Aye, stated that way, it's a much less contrived scenario, and a good question. Thanks.
That's a very real world situation rather than just an abstract thought experiment, with real world consequences. I don't sense any emotional manipulation, but more of exploring together a moral quandary that many humans face.
Your real world experience in related situations is much greater than mine. What is your answer?
Say, if you or your unit were in the open being fired upon (small arms, MG, RPG, whatever) by enemies in a civilian crowd or building, would you shoot back or call in an artillery strike to save yourself or others, even if you knew that no matter how careful you would like to be, civilians would be endangered thereby (and that putting you in that dilemma was exactly the strategy of those firing at you)?
Where and how would you draw the line? Up to how many civilians would you risk death or injury to, before you would decide instead to let the enemy sniper, machine gunner, platoon, or rocket launcher continue to take out your group without firing back?
And if in general it was discovered that your military was unwilling to harm more than whatever number of civilians your answer comes up with, would the enemy adopt more or less of the tactic of placing their attackers within similar civilian contexts?
(Aside: let's take My Lai out of this discussion, as it was not a case of collateral damage in seeking a military target, but more of expressing rage on completely non-military targets. That is, it was just plain wrong by anybody's ethics, and refusing to participate is a moral no-brainer, not a tricky moral balancing issue to explore as we are doing in this thread)
If you have time for reading, I recommend this book. If you don't, take a look at the sample. It could go a long way toward understanding.
https://www.amazon.com/Fields-Fire-Novel-James-Webb-ebook/dp/B000SEFH74/
I've ordered the book, thanks.
I'd still be interested in your own answers, if you have time.
In thinking about this it occurred to me that the issue pertains to individuals and to nations. My question related to the individual, which I will drill down into a bit, but the discussion was about nations. While I will continue with the individual, because it is deeply relevant to me, I will roll it into the context of the original issue of Israel-Palestine.
When I was in bootcamp, one of my drill instructors told us that if we thought an order was unlawful, we could refuse to carry it out, but we would have to defend that choice at our Court Martial. If it was lawful, while distasteful, we could end up behind bars.
The distasteful. Upon realizing the reality of the war, we are in, moral objections could rise to the surface. We "could" petition for conscientious objector status which we may or may not be able to obtain. Do we wish to not carry a rifle or not participate in any way, even in a non-combatant position?
There is a gray area between, this is war and it's what we do, and I don't want to do this. The questionable things that haunt veterans for the rest of their lives and can be as debilitating as PTSD or lead to suicide.
For the ones at the bottom, the scenario that I mentioned, the enemy pops up in the crowd of children at the bridge where the choice is a rifle, as precision as possible with the possibility of the unintended deaths of non-combatants or a frag which will without a doubt have non-combatant casualties. Everyone makes their own choices based upon their personal sense of morality.
Taking that scenario in the direction of your train switch example, is that threat likely to result in casualties of your comrades? Is loyalty to my fellow Marines of higher importance (to me) than the lives of the non-combatant children? Both would be haunting. The highest priority for most would be our brothers in arms.
That is tempered by time and urgency. Being under fire is urgent, the enemy that might be (we think he is) in that hospital is a bit different. Are hey actively launching rockets?
Those situations are all a bit different with different decisions to be made, some by reflex. In one case in my platoon that make the decision now situation resulted in a fratricide. Considering the circumstances, the man that was killed screwed up and got himself killed, but the fact remains that the man who shot him had to live with that. Sometimes there are no good choices.
That brings us to Gaza. Is the idea that killing all of Hamas a viable strategic objective? Since that quest is creating more enemies, probably not. So, when should they stop? What is a reasonable stopping point? When Hamas quits fighting? Is it a terror campaign carried out for revenge? To some degree I think that is probably true. Moral? Most of the dead are non-combatants who live there and can't do a thing to stop Hamas. A bit like tossing the frag into a group of children because an enemy "might" be in the crowd.
Is Israel fighting a counter insurgency against Hamas where it is both morally and strategically correct to minimize civilian deaths, or is it a war on the Palestinian people where they are all thought to be the enemy? Laying waste to Gaza+ makes it look like the later, but I was only an NCO, not a General so it's above my pay grade.
I don't know if that answers you question to your satisfaction or not.