If nothing may be obtained by consenting to quiet our conscience and murder enemy civilians all should call it criminal but wherein we can purchase victory or save the lives of our civilians and soldiers there is an exchange rate between sin and gain that virtually all will agree to pay.
Extremists count the blood of the enemy as meaningless and see no sin in spilling it and will do any amount of harm without qualm for instance see the words of an extremist after the death of a terrorist
> Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, in paying homage to Goldstein, told mourners that even 1 million Arabs “are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” And angry voices in the congregation shouted, “We are all Goldsteins!” and “Arabs out of Israel!”
Whereas Perrin's doesn't speak for most Israelis the actions of his entire government and society suggest either agreement or willingness to look the other way whilst someone else pays the price in sin and indeed the attitude far from being historically abhorrent it is fairly normal for all societies to account the blood of the enemy civilian or not fairly cheap or valueless.
Looking at the modern genocide in Gaza and our half assed responses to it makes one wonder if the world has really made any progress whatsoever or if our morality is confined almost exclusively to historical analysis and hand wringing that has virtually no impact on current or future actions.
I think its a great example. If we understand that even folks that voted for and serve what amounts to our generations symbol representation of evil can't simply be murdered without moral cost we might apply that to folks who may have voted for Hamas who are being murdered right now by people who attach no value to their lives.
I'll bite. Yes, I believe that even if you as a civilian personally voted for someone who ended up being a horrible genocidal dictator, that doesn't make it ethical for the other side to target bombs at you; warfare should be directed at combatants, or at least at the industrial base rather than indiscriminately at civilians.
I'm not familiar with any place where civilians vote whether their country will go to war. Who here on this thread voted for the US to go to war against Venezuela?
What are you implying? That the civilians of Germany too were involved in the Holocaust under Nazism? Sure, they hated the 'other' groups. But the Nazis had to suspend the earlier Aktion T4 after it attracted a severe revolt from the public. Learning from that experience, the Nazis took enormous efforts to keep the Holocaust out of public sight. If the German civilians had known well about it, would the allied armies have been so surprised and shocked when they discovered the concentration camps?
Don't get me wrong. The Nazis were evil to the core. What they did to the victims is unforgivable. But grouping the civilians with them is a convenient and nefarious justification for their massacre. How many of the thousands of kids among them were Nazis according to you?
Now talking about targeting the German civilians, check out the massive allied firebombings of largely undefended Hamburg (Operation Gomorrah) and Dresden. The attacks claimed the lives of 34K and 25K civilians respectively in a dreadful sequence of events. Horrific accounts and photos of the incidents exist to this day. The incidents were so controversial that even Churchill challenged it in the Parliament. See if you can stomach those accounts.
War is inherently immoral. You just don't fight one if you can. But if that's not an option, then both sides may end up committing horrible war atrocities. All you can hope for is the least bad outcome. And once it's over, you should be introspecting about what went wrong and how to avoid that in the future. For that, an honest acceptance of the barbarity of such atrocities is needed. If you glorify them instead, you aren't all that better than your enemies and you're just setting up the stage for a repeat of that horrible past. So yes, all civilians should be protected.
The evil of attacking civilians is not determined by their stance on genocide. Even disarmed combatants who pose no threat cannot be licitly attacked. Civilians cannot be legitimate direct and intentional targets, period.
> War is inherently immoral.
That’s not true. War as such is undesirable, but fighting one is not categorically immoral. Just war principles determine when it is morally acceptable or even a duty to wage war. Is it immoral to repel an invading army if you have a reasonable chance of success using licit means? No. Indeed, it might be immoral not to do so.
Absolutely. The mass bombings of German cities during WW2 would be considered a war crime today.
If nothing may be obtained by consenting to quiet our conscience and murder enemy civilians all should call it criminal but wherein we can purchase victory or save the lives of our civilians and soldiers there is an exchange rate between sin and gain that virtually all will agree to pay.
Extremists count the blood of the enemy as meaningless and see no sin in spilling it and will do any amount of harm without qualm for instance see the words of an extremist after the death of a terrorist
> Rabbi Yaacov Perrin, in paying homage to Goldstein, told mourners that even 1 million Arabs “are not worth a Jewish fingernail.” And angry voices in the congregation shouted, “We are all Goldsteins!” and “Arabs out of Israel!”
Whereas Perrin's doesn't speak for most Israelis the actions of his entire government and society suggest either agreement or willingness to look the other way whilst someone else pays the price in sin and indeed the attitude far from being historically abhorrent it is fairly normal for all societies to account the blood of the enemy civilian or not fairly cheap or valueless.
Looking at the modern genocide in Gaza and our half assed responses to it makes one wonder if the world has really made any progress whatsoever or if our morality is confined almost exclusively to historical analysis and hand wringing that has virtually no impact on current or future actions.
Not any more they wouldn’t. The precedent for getting away with these war crimes is precisely why Gaza and Mosul and so on keep happening.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46452376.
I think its a great example. If we understand that even folks that voted for and serve what amounts to our generations symbol representation of evil can't simply be murdered without moral cost we might apply that to folks who may have voted for Hamas who are being murdered right now by people who attach no value to their lives.
It IS deliberately provocative for a reason.
I'll bite. Yes, I believe that even if you as a civilian personally voted for someone who ended up being a horrible genocidal dictator, that doesn't make it ethical for the other side to target bombs at you; warfare should be directed at combatants, or at least at the industrial base rather than indiscriminately at civilians.
Ya let's only engage in war the 18 year olds sent to die, musnt engage in war against the senders.
Voting for war should have consequences.
I'm not familiar with any place where civilians vote whether their country will go to war. Who here on this thread voted for the US to go to war against Venezuela?
We should attach moral value to our enemies lives because we thereby retain our own decency.
This is a gravely immoral and frankly psychopathic stance, as well as an incoherent one.
Or is also immoral to attack disarmed combatants who pose no threat. Civilians aren’t even combatants.
[dead]
What are you implying? That the civilians of Germany too were involved in the Holocaust under Nazism? Sure, they hated the 'other' groups. But the Nazis had to suspend the earlier Aktion T4 after it attracted a severe revolt from the public. Learning from that experience, the Nazis took enormous efforts to keep the Holocaust out of public sight. If the German civilians had known well about it, would the allied armies have been so surprised and shocked when they discovered the concentration camps?
Don't get me wrong. The Nazis were evil to the core. What they did to the victims is unforgivable. But grouping the civilians with them is a convenient and nefarious justification for their massacre. How many of the thousands of kids among them were Nazis according to you?
Now talking about targeting the German civilians, check out the massive allied firebombings of largely undefended Hamburg (Operation Gomorrah) and Dresden. The attacks claimed the lives of 34K and 25K civilians respectively in a dreadful sequence of events. Horrific accounts and photos of the incidents exist to this day. The incidents were so controversial that even Churchill challenged it in the Parliament. See if you can stomach those accounts.
War is inherently immoral. You just don't fight one if you can. But if that's not an option, then both sides may end up committing horrible war atrocities. All you can hope for is the least bad outcome. And once it's over, you should be introspecting about what went wrong and how to avoid that in the future. For that, an honest acceptance of the barbarity of such atrocities is needed. If you glorify them instead, you aren't all that better than your enemies and you're just setting up the stage for a repeat of that horrible past. So yes, all civilians should be protected.
The evil of attacking civilians is not determined by their stance on genocide. Even disarmed combatants who pose no threat cannot be licitly attacked. Civilians cannot be legitimate direct and intentional targets, period.
> War is inherently immoral.
That’s not true. War as such is undesirable, but fighting one is not categorically immoral. Just war principles determine when it is morally acceptable or even a duty to wage war. Is it immoral to repel an invading army if you have a reasonable chance of success using licit means? No. Indeed, it might be immoral not to do so.