After the Yellow Ribbon Conference

This weekend I attended the After the Yellow Ribbon conference at the Duke Divinity School. 

Put together by OIF-vet, conscientious objector, and Duke Divinity student Logan Mehl-Laituri and fellow Divinity student Alaina Kleinbeck, it was an interdisciplinary event that included ecclesial, medical (mental health) and military perspectives in conversation devoted to helping veterans make sense of the moral reality of war.

I learned something from everyone there. The speakers who inspired me the most were Dr Warren Kinghorn (from the Veterans Admin and Duke) and Dr David Miller, a fair-minded and well-spoken pacifist.  I was privileged to give the keynote address and later have the opportunity to give my presentaton on "the moral justification for killing in war" to the majority-pacifist audience.

The goal of the event was to come together, talk honestly and listen openly, and find common ground so we all can help heal those vets who experienced moral injury in war. IMHO, it succeeded beautifully.  This conference showed me that just warists and war pacifists can come together productively.

BBC article and my upcoming deployment

Life is funny.  On the day that I leave my regular work (at a desk) and begin the process of deploying to Afghanistan, the BBC runs an article that quotes me, resulting in a deluge of emails and comments at a time when I have little opportunity to engage online.

I spoke with the BBC correspondent, Stephen Evans, more than four years ago when he visited West Point.

So, I ask that those who write me to have patience; my internet connectivity will be limited for the next couple months at least.  I will reply to each of you as I am able.  In fact, next year (summer 12-spring 13) I plan on taking a sabbatical to write a book on ethics in war, so I will (finally) have time to focus, think and write, and I will re-read all the good ideas I've received over the years on this blog.

Here at the replacement center at Ft Benning, GA, I've already enjoyed great conversations with an Army lawyer and an Army doctor about moral decisionmaking.  (The doc even shares my interest in exploring complexity theory and ethics.) Within 10 days, I'll be privileged to hear the stories, experiences, and perspectives of our soldiers who are engaged in the fight.  I am blessed to have such opportunities, and I will do my best to use tleverage my experiences to contribute to the wider conversation on war and morality.

Yours in the search for Truth,

pete

Unspoken ethical norms in war

I've had the privilege to interview more than 300 junior officers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I have been very impressed and inspired by their deep commitment to leading their soldiers to fight morally.  Combat requires  moral decisionmaking--there's no getting around it--and our leaders overwhelmingly mean well.

However, I have also observed that many leaders and soldiers feel unprepared for the life-or-death decisions they have had to make in "gray" circumstances.  Their pre-deployment training consisted too often of black-or-white scenarios written by Army lawyers who've never had to make decisions in the fog of war. So, our soldiers learn by doing, trusting their gut instincts and character, and they generally do remarkably well.

The soldiers I interview describe their most uselful preparation for combat moral decisionmaking as being their reading of memoirs or other accounts of battle, and movies.  Band of Brothers, Saving Private Ryan, With the Old Breed, etc gave them a sense of the decisions they would have to make.

Of course, real accounts of battle are descriptive, not prescriptive...and real descriptions of war are full of events that would be war crimes by legal, media, and other dominant but uninformed-about-war parties.

In my interviews, which are one-on-one, confidential conversations in the war zone, I've noticed that soldiers who are doing the fighting have their own set of ethical standards.  In most cases and most situations, their ethical norms are consistent with what is expected publicly of them--be gentle with detainees, do not discriminate against local national civilians even if you know they support (not materially) the enemy, use gov't funds IAW all the regulations, leave interrogations to the trained interrogators, put the mission first, etc. 

Yet there are times and situations in which soldiers judge "what's right" on the ground to be much different than the public ethics.  Sometimes, soldiers "interrogate" detainees whom they are authorized only to tactically question; sometimes they use funds for purposes not authorized; sometimes they put more risk on civilians whom they know support the enemy; on occasion, they insure that someone they've detained will never able to kill the innocent again.

Each of these action violates the "public ethics" of the US military (and some the Laws of Land Warfare)...yet I've heard well reasoned, convincing moral arguments for them.  The problem is, our soldiers cannot ever say publicly what they did, much less offer their reasons, without making themselves liable to legal proceedings.  As a result, the next generations of soldiers will continue to be unprepared for the complex, difficult moral decisions they will face in war. It's a catch-22.

So, the profession of arms has two moral codes--the public one, based on black-and-white legal rules, that work much of the time; and a private code, known only by those who have to do the messy work of war.

It's not healthy psychologically to have made difficult moral decisions that you cannot talk about publicly for fear of being punished.

It's also dangerous to have such "unspoken" rules of war that differ from what soldiers are taught in formal training.  For example,inexperienced young leaders (2LT platoon leaders) can have trouble enforcing standards when they are not confident that they know the true standards.

I am going to develop a paper on this topic that I'll present at the New Mexico Military Institute in October, and I plan to refine it and present it again at the American Society of Military Ethics meeting in January.

More to follow, but I thought I'd put the ideas out there and solicit your feedback.  You can always write me privately at pgkilner@gmail.com  if you want to share your experiences and ideas on this or any topic related to moral decisionmaking in the military context.

Diminished moral responsibility of many enemy combatants

The straightforward examples used in my baseline argument for the moral justification for killing in war are not representative of many of the enemy combatants that we kill in the current wars. Many of those attackingIndigenous Security Forces or Coalition Forces (the good guys) are doing so solely to pay the bills, to put food on the table; others are uneducated and misinformed about the goals of each side in the wars. In other words, many of the attackers are not fully morally responsible for their actions. In terms of domestic self defense, they are more like: a drug addict who commits armed robbery and murder to finance his addiction; or a mentally disabled person who watched a violent movie, came across a loaded weapons, and is now “living the fantasy” by shooting innocent people; or like a man who mistakenly thinks that you raped and killed his mother and is coming to kill you.

In such cases, I think, we would say that using lethal force to stop the attack and protect the lives of innocent people is indeed still morally justified…but it is not satisfying, and is even tragic. When an attacker is not completely responsible for his life-threatening actions, it is sad—but nonetheless necessary and morally justified—to use lethal force in defense of the innocent.

The Justice of the War does matter

The editors cut a couple important paragraphs from the Army Magazine article. The paragraps address the effect that the justice of the war has on the morality of actions within the war.

"As you likely realized while reading the bubble theory, its approach to justifying killing in war requires that the soldier be fighting for a war that is just. This is a stumbling block for many military professionals. The bubble theory rejects the long-held tenet of the Just-War Tradition that soldiers on both sides of a war are “moral equals”—equally innocent of responsibility for the war but equally guilty of threatening each other. This claim of moral equality between unjust aggressor and just defender treats all soldiers as “innocent aggressors,” and thus reduces the “justification” of killing in war to the moral equivalent of gang warfare—no one is wrong because all are wrong, i.e., all soldiers have lost their bubbles. This waiver on soldiers’ responsibility for fighting may have had merit when feudal lords rounded up their serfs and led them into battle, but it does not reflect the educated, informed, morally autonomous citizen-soldiers of today.

We and our Soldiers cannot simply abdicate our responsibility to respect others’ human rights simply because we took an oath. Granted, given the huge responsibility we bear to protect the innocent, I do think that American Soldiers are morally obligated to fight unless they are convinced that a war is unjust. But I also think that an option should exist for selective conscientious objection. I doubt this would undermine good order and discipline. The patriots who volunteer to defend freedom will not abandon their fellow Soldiers without good cause. I have found most conscientious objectors to be woefully misinformed about morality in war. A healthy, ongoing conversation on the subject might actually enhance not only our Soldiers’ well being, but also recruiting and retention."

Ethics of Killing seminar at West Point

Department of English and Philosophy Seminar on “The Ethics of Killing”

Last Friday, 22 Jan, Dr. Richard Schoonhoven led a very interesting discussion on the ethics of killing, especially as it applies to war. This was the first of a series of Departmental seminars on the Army’s Professional Military Ethic. About 60 staff and faculty attended the 55-minute seminar.

Here are a few of my take-aways from the seminar:

First, it was validating. Richard didn’t put forth a theory or an answer to the question of the moral justification for killing in war; that wasn’t his intent. Instead, he laid out the many aspects related to the question—e.g., the problem of the innocent attacker, moral responsibility, “invincible ignorance,” the relationship of citizen and state, the connection (or not) of Jus in Bellum and Jus in Bello, noncombatant immunity. Yet, in almost every area of discussion, I felt confident that my approach to the morality of killing could coherently address the issues.

Second, I realized that much of the difficulty in making moral judgment in war is not a matter of developing a coherent set of moral principles; rather, it’s a problem of information. A soldier in combat rarely has complete situational awareness of the moral situation—the justice of the cause, the motives and intent of enemy combatants, etc. In contrast, we generally have much better information while making our everyday moral decisions. So, my insight was that we can develop a coherent combat ethics that assumes full information, yet we’ll have to deal with the complicating reality that soldiers will often act on incomplete or incorrect information. The category of morally excusable actions—those that are objectively wrong but not worthy of moral blame—is a BIG one in war.

Third, I was reminded of something that I’ve often talked about yet never written about—namely, that the justice of a war (jus ad bellum) is something that must be continuously evaluated. Whether or not a war was morally right to engage in in 2003, for example, is really unrelated to what we should be doing in 2010. A war might be just at its inception yet, as conditions change, become unjust to continue; and vice versa. The question is, “Given the feasible alternatives, should we (continue to) engage in the war?” Moral decisions are necessarily made with the information and circumstances of the moment; we can’t change the past, but we can and should resolve to do what’s morally right now and into the future.

Thoughts?

Why study the morality of killing in war?

Why talk with our soldiers about the morality of killing?

1. Helping our soldiers understand the moral justification of killing is a leadership issue. Many soldiers who have killed in war are wracked by guilt when they should not be. When our soldiers kill justly, they ought to be able to live at peace with themselves. We, their leaders, are responsible for them killing; we ought to do our part to help them live fully afterwards.

2. Our soldiers arrive in the Army without any personal experience of killing another human being. As their leaders, we need to help them prepare for and make sense of the first-in-a-lifetime experience of killing a fellow human being. This contrasts with other, more frequent moral decisions. For example, by the time I turned 18 and joined the Army, I knew that stealing was immoral. Why? Well, when I was an 11-year-old boy, I shoplifted some candy. Almost immediately afterwards, I felt guilty and ashamed of myself. A year later, someone stole my bicycle, and I experienced anger and a sense of violation. So, by the time I became a soldier, I had a well-developed sense of morality about stealing. On the other hand, I had no experience with the morality of killing.

3. When it comes to killing another human being, our soldiers cannot trust their feelings. We human beings appear to be hardwired to feel guilty after being involved in the death of another person. For example, if you are driving a car under the speed limit and paying attention to the road, yet a pedestrian negligently darts in front of your car and is struck and killed, you will feel terribly guilty, despite the fact that you know you did nothing wrong. Apparently, playing a role in another’s death elicits guilt even without any wrongdoing. Sharing this observation alone is comforting to soldiers, who often wonder why they feel a sense of guilt even though they know cognitively that it was right to kill the enemy combatant.

4. Understanding the morality of killing in war empowers our soldiers to talk confidently with family, neighbors, acquaintances, etc., about the things the Army does. Within our military communities, we take for granted that wartime killing is morally acceptable. Other communities, however, do not necessarily share that assumption. All of our soldiers will one day retire or ETS. They will likely be challenged by the ignorant, indolent, and downright hateful towards the military. If we have not prepared our soldiers to respond to questions about wartime killing, we have left them defenseless.

Moral justification for killing in war

This is my latest version of laying out the argument. Feedback is welcomed!

A moral justification for killing in war
By Pete Kilner, 2009

Introduction:
The Army performs many of the same functions as civilian organizations, yet there is one absolutely unique and defining characteristic of our profession—we are organized, equipped and trained to kill people. As company-level leaders, we recruit patriotic young Americans to kill; equip them to kill; train them to kill; develop and issue orders for them to kill; issue fire commands for them to kill; and commend them for killing enemies of our country. We perform our duties well, and the American people sleep safely at night. However, we as a profession generally do not provide our soldiers with an explanation for why it is morally right for them to kill in combat. Consequently, many of the soldiers entrusted to our care suffer needless guilt after killing in war.

The purpose of this article is to offer you a tool—an explanation for the morality of killing in war that you can adapt for use in your units. This is a presentation I have given to units in the 82nd, 101st, 25th, and the Marines, as well as at West Point and ROTC programs. This explanation may not be the answer, but it is an answer to this difficult and oft-overlooked issue. Perhaps the most important outcome of having this conversation with your unit is a command climate in which your soldiers feel comfortable talking about killing and about the thoughts and feelings that killing provokes.

My story
Leader note: I have found it helpful to open the conversation by sharing my personal journey of thinking about the morality of killing. Every soldier thinks about this subject sometime, but relatively few talk publicly about it. If we want to open a healthy professional dialogue on a topic that is still somewhat taboo, we ought to set the example. Your story may be more grounded in personal experience and less academic (after all, I have never killed anyone), and that is probably more effective.

My personal interest in the morality of killing in war was sparked one night years ago when I was a pre-command captain in the 82nd. Rigged for a combat jump, I was waiting to load into a plane that would unload me and thousands of other paratroopers 400 feet above the ground. (The jump was later cancelled.) Amid the nervous chatter, one young trooper’s sincere question to a chaplain caught my attention.

“Chaplain,” he asked. “We’re gonna kill a lot of people tonight. Is that alright?”

“Of course it’s the right thing to do,” responded the chaplain with confidence. “We’re soldiers. The President told us to do it. That makes it right.”

I remember feeling profoundly disappointed in that response. I knew there had to be a better answer than that.

Two years later, I had the opportunity to re-visit the question when the Army sent me to graduate school to study philosophy. To my surprise and dismay, I could not find the answer. No one—not the chaplaincy, the SJA, the Army, the DoD, academia, not even my religion—provided a satisfactory moral justification for looking down my sights and placing two rounds into the head of an insurgent. Having enlisted as an infantryman out of high school and subsequently becoming an infantry officer, I had always assumed that what I was training myself and others to do was a morally justified action. I realized that I needed either to discover the answer or to find another line of work.

What I discovered in my subsequent research was that those who justify killing in war and those who condemn it approach the topic from very different perspectives. The Just-War Tradition justifies the moral permissibility of war at the international, state-to-state level. Although the tradition includes principles for individual soldiers’ conduct in war, it does not provide a moral justification for the combatant-on-combatant killing that characterizes war. In contrast, the War-Pacifist Tradition focuses its lens down at the level of the individual soldier. It argues that killing another human being in the context of war is morally unjustified and therefore wars among states are morally unjustified. I found both approaches to be inadequate. While the top-down justification did not go far enough in explaining why killing in war can be a morally right choice for the individual soldier, the pacifists’ condemnation of wartime killing was based on fundamental misunderstandings about war and soldiers. In my thesis, I combined a war-pacifist framework for justifiable killing with my own understanding of the nature of war to produce a moral justification for killing in war.

While writing my thesis, I happened to read Dave Grossman’s On Killing, which contains numerous anecdotes of soldiers reflecting on killing. Grossman, who has a background in psychology, makes sense of soldiers’ post-killing psychological problems by examining what happened to them in the experience. As an ethicist, however, I read the anecdotes with a different lens—focusing on what the soldiers had done, not on what had happened to them. I realized then that there might be a link between soldiers being able to justify to themselves the morality of killing in war and their post-combat psychological welfare.

Others' stories
Not everyone who kills in war is troubled by the experience, but many are. Because I have written about this topic, I receive many emails from veterans who have killed in war and from their families (more so from the latter). Their pain is palpable; listen in to these excerpts from a few emails.

From a soldier: “The last guy I killed was in a vehicle that came up to my checkpoint during an HVT raid. He tried to evade, I opened up as per ROE at the time, and shortly thereafter a couple soldiers with me began to shoot at the vehicle. I zeroed 28 rounds of a 30-round magazine into the passenger and driver. The driver was hit but not killed immediately, and he managed to back his car back into his driveway 300 meters away. What I’ll never forget about that engagement was listening to the family react when they saw the inside of the car and their loved one without a chest. I saw a counselor for about 6 months when I got back. I quit when I could start sleeping through the night without having to drink a six-pack beforehand.”

From a soldier’s mom: “My son is wrestling with what he did during his deployment. He was raised Catholic and was taught morality and values and we are big on the right to life. I am now trying to help him settle his conscience by explaining that killing in war is not the same as abortion. We, as a family, have been very active in pro-life activities and rhetoric. Now our son is really grappling with the fact that he took a human life, and I don't know exactly how to explain it, excuse it, or justify it. I want him to feel okay with what he did and about himself. I am avoiding the word forgiven, because I don't feel there is anything to forgive. We are supportive of his decision to join the military and are very proud of his accomplishments and ability to do his job effectively. I don't know how to impress upon him that killing in war is justified and not the same as murder and that he did what he was trained to do, and did a good job. Any words of wisdom would be appreciated.”

From a soldier’s wife: “My husband was in active combat in Somalia, Honduras, and Iraq. I think Somalia was the hardest for him. Yesterday I came into our room and saw him staring at the wall. He was pale, diaphoretic, and clenching his fists. I have never seen him like this. I asked if he was ok. This startled him and sort of "woke" him. He said he was fine and didn’t want to talk about it. Later he told me he has been starting to have dreams again and has had a few episodes of feeling charged/panicked, but he is able to regain composure and be fine. We talked at length for the first time about his dreams and his feelings about the people he killed while in combat. He carries so much guilt. He said at the time there was a moving target and he reacted. Now he remembers those same incidences and sees their faces. He is haunted by them. He didn’t want to talk to me or anyone else about it because he didn’t want to be looked at for what he had done instead of who he is. Is there anything you can recommend that I can do or he can do to help deal with his guilt? I love him dearly; he is amazing. I want him to be free. He has carried this for so long. He has been out of the service for 8 years now and it is still with him every day."

Stories like these are a call to arms to improve the way we train our soldiers. We teach our soldiers to kill effectively, so we should also teach them how to live with clear consciences after they have killed morally.

A moral justification for killing enemy combatants in war
Without further ado, here is a rights-based justification for killing. It does not rely on any particular religious belief, but it is consistent with Judeo-Christian assumptions about human rights as well as with principles of American civil law. I refer to it informally as the “bubble theory,” for reasons that will soon be obvious.

Our starting point in justifying wartime killing is the conviction that every person possesses the “right not to be killed.” Some would call this a “right to life,” but we really do not have such a right. If we are struck and killed by lightning or die of cancer, after all, our rights have not been violated. Why not? Because a rights claim is made vis-à-vis another person. No one has wronged us when we are stuck by lightning or develop cancer. Similarly, we do not have a right to speech; instead, we have a right that others not prevent us from speaking on certain topics. In this way, rights claims say something about what others should not do to us.

The ultimate source of our human rights is arguable. Some would say God, others cite human reason, still others refer to implicit social contracts or even man-made laws. But I hope we can agree that all persons do possess rights—whatever their source—and that the most fundamental and basic right is the right not to be killed, followed closely by the right not to be enslaved. Our system of government is premised on the belief that all people are endowed with the rights to life and liberty.

Rights are intangible, so it helps to use a concrete “visual” when we think about them. Imagine, if you will, the “right not to be killed” as a bubble that surrounds each person (see Figure 1). Each of us possesses the right that no one else “violate our bubble” and harm us. By virtue of being human, every person possesses a bubble. This is consistent with our moral intuitions. When we are walking down the street, for example, it would be morally wrong to physically assault a person walking past us. Why? In terms of this explanation, we would be violating that person’s bubble. He possessed the fundamental human right not to be physically harmed.

Yet we also know that someone can forfeit that right—can “burst his own bubble.” A right is a right as long as it does not violate the more fundamental right of another. Thus, we recognize that if a person intentionally violates (or threatens to violate) the bubble of another, he forfeits his own bubble (see Figure 2).

For example, if we are walking down the street and someone confronts us with a gun, we are morally permitted to use violence against the man to protect ourselves. Why? Because by consciously choosing to violate the bubble of another, the man had forfeited his own bubble of rights. The concept of forfeiting rights also applies to situations of coming to the defense of another. For example, if we witness a man pull a woman into an alley and continue assaulting her, we are morally permitted to use violence against that man to protect the victim, just as the victim herself is morally right to fight back against her attacker. Why? Because the attacker, by virtue of violating the bubble of someone who possessed it, had forfeited his own bubble, so our use of violence against him violated no right (see Figure 3).

It’s important to note that a just defender does not forfeit his rights when he attacks an unjust aggressor, as in the scenario above. The following scenario helps to clarify the rights of a defender. An armed bank robber has taken a hostage at gunpoint. By threatening the life of the hostage, the robber has forfeited his right not to be killed. A police officer then arrives at the scene and aims her firearm at the robber. Has the officer done anything wrong? No. Not only has the robber already forfeited his right not to be killed, but also the police officer has an obligation to protect innocent people, including the hostage. Would we say that the police officer, by virtue of “threatening” the robber, forfeits her own right not to be killed? Would the robber be justified in shooting the officer in “self defense”? Of course not, on both counts. The officer cannot violate the rights of someone who has already forfeited them. The moral inequality between the robber and police officer makes it morally acceptable for the officer to kill the robber, but not vice versa.
When fighting in a just war, a soldier is a defender. Soldiers continue to possess their bubbles as long as they direct violence only at those who have already forfeited their right not to be killed. Enemy combatants are the ones who have “lost their bubbles” by threatening the rights of those who possess them—non-combatants and/or our soldiers. Even if they are not personally threatening anyone at the time we engage them, combatants for an unjust cause are still morally permissible targets because they are operating as part of a larger organism—the unjust threat. There is a good reason why military uniforms include both the individual’s name and the organization/state in whose name he acts; soldiers act as both individuals and as elements of a collective.

Consistent with the rules of war, an aggressor’s forfeiture of rights is not permanent. The default setting for a human being is to possess the right not to be killed, so when a person is no longer a threat, he regains his right, his bubble. What constitutes a “threat”? A threat is someone who possesses both the intent and the capability to violate someone’s right not to be killed (see Figure 4). As soon as a person no longer has the intent or the capability to violate the bubble of another, he regains his own bubble and should not be killed. This is why it is morally wrong to kill a detainee or an incapacitated insurgent.

Limitations
That, in a nutshell, is the bubble theory of the morality of killing in war. I’ll be the first to acknowledge its shortcoming as a purely logical approach to an intensely emotional experience. Even soldiers who internalize this theory may still experience sadness, guilt, or shame after they kill in war. I doubt we would want it any other way; killing another human being is not something to be taken lightly or celebrated. Maybe the best we can hope for is that good soldiers’ bad feelings will be tempered by the knowledge that they did nothing morally wrong.
It’s also a fair criticism to say that the killing that takes place in war is often much more complicated than the situations described in this article. As one combat vet said to me, “It is almost never this simple. Very rarely is it a case of a white-hatted good guy shooting down the black-hatted villain who's been terrorizing the town. There are almost always shades of gray.” I agree, but we have to start somewhere. This article is intended to provide a “starter pack” of basic principles that you can utilize to initiate a deeper conversation in your units.

Perhaps the most tragic situations in war occur when well-intentioned soldiers mistakenly kill non-combatants. When unjust combatants refuse to wear uniforms, just soldiers bear the burden of identifying those who have forfeited their bubbles. Determining “hostile intent” is a big challenge for our soldiers, who often have to make split-second, life-or-death judgments with incomplete information. Good rules of engagement provide guidelines to assist that decision-making process. Nevertheless, given the complexity of combat, mistakes happen. The ROE will likely permit some immoral killing and condemn some morally justified killing, and soldiers will make well-intentioned, good-faith errors in distinguishing between non-combatants and combatants. It is critical that our soldiers understand that they are not morally blameworthy when they kill someone whom they thought had forfeited their bubble but in fact had not. Perhaps no argument will assuage their regret, but looking into their eyes and telling them, “You made the right moral decision with the information you had at hand” can only help. The vocabulary of rights and “bubbles” can help our soldiers make and justify their judgment calls, not only to 15-6 investigators but more importantly to their own consciences.

Implications
As you likely realized while reading the bubble theory, its approach to justifying killing in war requires that the soldier be fighting for a war that is just. This is a stumbling block for many military professionals. The bubble theory rejects the long-held tenet of the Just-War Tradition that soldiers on both sides of a war are “moral equals”—equally innocent of responsibility for the war but equally guilty of threatening each other. This claim of moral equality between unjust aggressor and just defender treats all soldiers as “innocent aggressors,” and thus reduces the “justification” of killing in war to the moral equivalent of gang warfare—no one is wrong because all are wrong, i.e., all soldiers have lost their bubbles. This waiver on soldiers’ responsibility for fighting may have had merit when feudal lords rounded up their serfs and led them into battle, but it does not reflect the educated, informed, morally autonomous citizen-soldiers of today.
We and our Soldiers cannot simply abdicate our responsibility to respect others’ human rights simply because we took an oath. Granted, given the huge responsibility we bear to protect the innocent, I do think that American Soldiers are morally obligated to fight unless they are convinced that a war is unjust. But I also think that an option should exist for selective conscientious objection. I doubt this would undermine good order and discipline. The patriots who volunteer to defend freedom will not abandon their fellow Soldiers without good cause. I have found most conscientious objectors to be woefully misinformed about morality in war. A healthy, ongoing conversation on the subject might actually enhance not only our Soldiers’ well being, but also recruiting and retention.

If the argument presented here makes sense, then we ought to do something about it. In addition to opening the conversation in our units, we can embed the ideas in our training. In AARs, we routinely ask questions like, “Why did you flank left?” and “Why did you decide to detain that person?” We can also ask, “Why was it morally right to kill that person?” As with anything else, our soldiers will become proficient through training. Killing is central to our profession, and it is a huge moral issue. We already train our soldiers to kill effectively; let’s train them to live effectively after they kill.

Take-aways for our soldiers
· Professionals of arms are entrusted to defend the innocent by using force.
· Every act of killing is a very serious, permanent action that requires moral justification.
· We kill only those who, by their own rights-threatening actions, have temporarily forfeited their own right not to be killed.
· Killing someone, even justifiably, is upsetting at some level. That’s normal and healthy. If the killing is morally unjustified, the psychological impact will likely be much greater.

Opening the conversation about the morality of killing in your unit
A lot more could be said, but this article covers the basics for launching a conversation in our units around the moral justification for killing in war and the natural feelings that killing stirs. A commander-initiated conversation will make your soldiers comfortable with the topic and provide them a shared vocabulary for talking about it. As Grossman says, “We are only as sick as our secrets.” A professional dialogue among you and your soldiers will be a lot healthier than the tortured internal monologues that so many soldiers are currently experiencing.

If you would like a copy of the full presentation, email me at pgkilner@gmail.com. I may be overseas for a few weeks in February with limited connectivity, so please be patient.

A final thought: It’s helpful to think of killing in war as akin to a doctor amputating the infected limb of a wounded warrior—it’s sad and painful, and it takes training and courage to do right, but is the morally right choice among lousy alternatives and therefore ought to be done.

Some important distinctions

It occured to me recently (while showering, when most good ideas emerge) that much of the discussion about the morality of killing in war is ineffective because important distinctions aren't made clear.

First, there's the essential question. Is it ever morally justified to kill enemy combatants? If killing the bad guys is not morally justifiable, then all participation in war is immoral. I feel very confident that killing combatants who fight for an unjust cause is morally permissible and perhaps obligatory for soldiers waging a just war. In fact, I find that many people who oppose war on moral grounds don't have a problem with killing enemy combatants of an unjust aggressor.

What they they have a problem with is believing that the unjust enemy combatants can be held responsible for their actions. This leads to the question, Does it matter (morally) if the enemy combatants have been coerced (to some extent) into fighting? And what, after all, constitutes sufficient coercion to absolve a person of his moral responsibility?

Finally, there's the question of the unintentional killing of noncombatants. Even if it's morally permissible to kill the enemy combatants (free and coerced), should you do so if you can reasonably foresee that non-combatants will be killed as well?

In short, the issues of moral responsibility and collateral damage are central to almost all discussions about the morality of killing in war, although too often we don't make these distinctions explicit. I think that I make a good case for the morality of killing unjust enemy combatants, given that I hold myself (and others) to a high standard of autonomy and moral responsibility. The collateral damage piece I'm still trying to think, through. Our enemy in the current war uses noncombatants as tools to gain an advantage, so we cannot hope to avoid the issue.

The Good Samaritan arrives early

Among my statements that were included in the film "Soldiers of Conscience," my thought experiment about the Good Samaritan has evoked the most passionate feedback.

Some people have found it very helpful as a metaphor that expresses their moral sense that even good Christians must sometimes engage in violent acts in defense of themselves or others.

Conversely, some have taken offense. A person I'll refer to as TJ, a Methodist pastor, expressed his reaction in an email to me:

"First, please do not continue insult the story of the good samaritan by your interpretation. ...You are as ill-equipped to discuss theology, and especially in such a repulsive way, as I am to discuss military combat strategy...Your profile lists your interests to include faith and ethics. That, sir, may look good on your profile, but you and I both know that ethics and morals go out the window in war. To say otherwise... is insulting to the intelligence of all people who have ethics and morals in their lives...You should be ashamed. I will assume you are not."

For the record, all my work is based on my conviction that ethics and morals do NOT "go out the window in war." They are challenged by war's difficult circumstances, of course, but we must not respond to that challenge by quitting and giving in to evil; rather, we should redouble our efforts to prepare ourselves and create systems that empower moral behavior in combat. But I digress.

My insight on the Good Samaritan emerged from a conversation with a pacifist who was arguing that Jesus calls us to love, not to fight; that He calls us "to be like the Good Samaritan." The pacifist was assuming that someone who would kill someone who was attemping to kill the innocent is not someone who would help a beaten victim along the street, as it it were an either/or proposition.

I responded, "If I found a person left for dead along the road, I like to think that I would stop and render aid, just like the Good Samaritan. But if I found someone being beaten by robbers, I like to think that I would protect him by stopping the attack, even if I had to beat the hell out of the robbers. And I think the Good Samaritan would have done the same."

So, here's the thought experiment. What would the Good Samaritan--an exemplar given to us by Christ of a person who loves his neighbor--do if he had arrived at the scene earlier, while the robbers were assaulting the man?

1. Would the Good Samaritan walk on by?
2. Would the Good Samaritan stop and wait, allowing the beating to continue, and hope that the victim survived?
3. Would the Good Samaritan rush to find someone else to stop the beating?
4. Or, would the Good Samaritan risk his own safety to stop the attack and protect the victim, using violence as necessary?

When we look at it this way, I think it's pretty clear that the loving, decent, honorable, courageous, and Christian thing to do is to stop the attack.

After all, Jesus calls on us to love our neighbors as ourselves. I know that if I were ever being beaten mercilessly, I would fight back, and I would want any passerby to join in my defense. So, I will do the same for others.

I welcome and invite any feedback that focuses on the merits of the argument.

On Conscientious Objectors, Soldiers, and Courage

I posted this on the POV.org blog in response to viewers of Soldiers of Conscience praising the featured conscientious objectors' courage.


A consistent--and, in fact, necessary--assumption of war pacifists is that the soldiers on both sides of a war are not fully autonomous human beings. Aiden reveals that assumption when he states, "the vast majority of Iraqi soldiers and insurgents are really poor, uneducated men with no prospects, forced into a life of violence not by belief, but by economics." I'm sure he would say the same thing about American Soldiers--that we are "forced or fooled" into choosing to serve their country in uniform.

I cannot tell you how many times, during my masters and doctoral work at civilian universities, and at professional conferences on both ethics and education (my fields of study), people have said to me, "Why would someone as intelligent as you ever join the military?" They are dumbfounded when an actual encounter with a Soldier reveals their assumptions to be false.

I have been inside the pacifist, anti-military movement, and it is characterized by a paternalistic disdain for those who choose to serve in the military. This assumption is so foundational, so shared, that anti-military pacifists take it for granted. They simply go about their work of "saving" those "poor, no-other-options-in-life" patriotic Americans from defending the freedoms we all enjoy.

The other point I would like to make concerns the (mis)use of the word "courage." The film and its media outreach present the CO's as courageous. Let's take a minute to examine the nature of the courage they demonstrated.

If courage is defined as overcoming fear, what is the CO afraid of? People thinking of him as a coward? Fear of social rejection by the peer group? Although this is undeniably a form of courage, it's the civilian equivalent to not drinking when your underage peers do, or of telling someone that you didn't appreciate their racist joke. The primary risk is social rejection.

So, a CO's courage is a legitimate form of courage (a type of moral courage), but it hardly compares with the the moral and physical courage exhibited by Soldiers who sign up to fight and then actually risk their lives in battle.

What does a Soldier fear? Death. Dismemberment. Things that are a bit more serious and permanent than social rejection. The civilian equivalent of a Soldier's courage is a fireman who rushes into a burning building to save someone trapped inside, or of a lifeguard who braves a rip tide to rescue swimmers.

Who's the hero--the kid who resists peer pressure or the one who risks his own life and limb to save someone else? Both are heroes, but the latter one deserves greater admiration.

For every 1 conscientious objector who shows courage in the face of peer pressure, there are more than 1,000 Soldiers who show courage in the face of violent death. We should all be thankful for that unseen, courageous majority. No one gives them book deals.

Radio Interview on KQED San Francisco

Wow, I just endured a frustrating interview. The anti-military assumptions and leading questions of the host, Michael Krasny, were the most biased I've ever encountered.

I was just waiting for him to begin a question with, "Given that killing in war is immoral and the war in Iraq is wrong and that the only psychologically healthy people in the military are those who apply for conscientious objection, a process that the military makes unnecessarily difficult, what do you think about...."

Is he that biased on every topic?

The other people on the program were:

Gary Weimberg, the co-director of Soldiers of Conscience, who in the beginning of the interview played along with Krasny's line of questioning but later on challenged some of the host's assumptions;

Aiden Delgado, who is marvelously articulate and a genuine, Buddhist conscientious objector (CO). I'd want to talk war and morality with him over a beer, except that his Buddhist views are ulimately irreconcilable with my core values. He'd let someone be killed, even if he could stop it, so as not to diminish his own life. To the Judeo-Christian worldview, that's plain selfish. To a Buddhist, that makes sense.

J.E. McNeil, executive director of the Center on Conscience and War, a CO advocacy group. She thinks she knows a lot more about war than she does. Her knowledge of warfare comes from conscientious objectors she helps and mass-market books, yet she claims to know what it's like in combat units in war. Ignorance+bias = a waste of the listener's time.

My favorite caller was a psycotherapist who treats veterans with PTSD. She says that EVERY patient she has suffers from the effects of war. From that, she generalized that EVERY veteran of war suffers. Talk about generalizing from a skewed sample. Healthy veterans would have no reason to see her.

I hope my participation did some good; if nothing else, I interrupted a left-wing chatfest against the military.

Slides I use to discuss the moral justification of killing in war

Several folks have asked if I have a paper or presentation I can share that would help them lead a discussion with their Soldiers on the moral justification of killing in war.
I have intended for months to write a concise paper, or at least put notes to the slides, but alas I haven't. So, I post these slides, knowing full well that bullets don't tell the whole story...but I hope that these are at least helpful. Talking openly about the morality of killing with our Soldiers accomplishes a lot on its own. I know that someone out there will take this discussion to the next level. Please share back with me the insights you discover.

A Challenge to "Pacifists"

I received an email today from someone who objected to my reference in "Soldiers of Conscience" to the Story of the Good Samaritan.

Here is part of my response to him. I welcome feedback on my challenge. Am I off base?

My point in offering the hypothetical about the Good Samaritan is to point out that it's easy to oppose the use of violence in the abstract--when one is not personally facing it. It's easier to console victims than to prevent their victimization.

I invite you and any others who share your pacifist beliefs to practice what you preach--to disavow in your own lives both violence and the threat of violence. I challenge you to post on your windows and doors an announcement that you will neither ask nor permit the police to intervene for your protection, nor will you use any violence to protect yourselves or your property. After all, the police accomplish their mission (protecting the innocent) by using force. For good measure, wear a large pin on your shirt announcing your renunciation of any force on your behalf. Let the world know that you will not respond to violence with violence, and you will not allow anyone to do so on your behalf!

Then see what happens.

The great majority of people will applaud your idealism. But others will rob you blind. Sick pedophiles might even assault your daughter or little sister. And you will....watch? Pray for them? Call your insurance agent?

Why, after all, does a Mennonite college employ armed guards?

I don't mean to sound callous, but I've traveled the world a bit as a Soldier, and I have seen the effects of evil. Most Americans never have to face evil--thanks to national and local security forces. I wish it were so for everyone in the world.

Jesus himself was very harsh on hypocrites and self-righteous religious leaders, but he never had a harsh world for Soldiers, despite several opportunities.

I could go on, but I wonder if you will accept the challenge, and invite all your pacifist brethren to do the same. THAT could launch a movement that changes the world.

"Soldiers of Conscience" film screening

Last week I attended a screening for the documentary "Soldiers of Conscience," which addresses the moral question of killing in war. I am one of the people featured in the movie.

It's a high-quality, interesting work that will generate healthy discussion on this overlooked topic.

Some military folks find the film to be too "pro-conscientious objector," pro-pacifist. I agree that it offers (superficially) compelling arguments from several articulate COs from the current war in Iraq, but any imbalance is caused by the more-developed narrative that pacifists employ. The military profession, in contrast, doesn't have an articulated moral justification for killing in war (unless you count my unofficial writings). Consequently, in the film I'm the only military person who offers moral (rather than legal or practical) arguments. Overall, I judge the film to be "fair yet unbalanced."

I recommend it. Its national broadcast premiere is on PBS on Thursday, 16 Oct. I welcome your feedback.

NBC Dateline

I received word this week that the "Dateline" episode this Memorial Day Weekend, on Sunday 25 May at 7pm EDT, will address the guilt that many soldiers experience after killing (justly) in war.

Dateline came by my office last October and filmed an interview. I hope that the show will raise awareness on the issue. A big first step to helping our soldiers make sense of their experience of killing in war is breaking the taboo and becoming more honest about the moral reality of war. A second necessary step is having a shared vocabulary that enables soldiers and citizens to talk about the wrestle through the concepts and experiences. Traditional Just War Theory is woefully in adequate in addressing the moral issues of individual killing. Hopefully my writing has contributed to both goals. More needs to be done. I invite you to join the discussion and the cause.

Killing enemy combatants--a justification

Introduction
The profession of arms talks about ‘morality and war’ using legal terms and concepts. For example, we justify our decision to deploy and fight when the President orders us because we signed a contract to obey the officers appointed over us. Similarly, we consider ourselves blameless when we kill enemy combatants as long as we do not violate the laws of war or the rules of engagement in doing so. These legal rules are so important to our professional identity that all soldiers receive instruction on the laws of war in basic combat training and then annually thereafter, and soldiers at war review the rules of engagement much more often, sometimes daily.

Not everyone in our society, however, accepts these legal answers to moral questions. War pacifists are people who believe that war is morally unjustifiable. They claim that soldiers are morally wrong to participate in war and to kill other human beings, regardless of what’s legally permissible at the time.

Currently, we military leaders do not do enough to prepare our soldiers to understand and justify their actions in moral terms. This not only leads many soldiers to needlessly suffer moral guilt, but it also leaves them vulnerable to the arguments of war pacifists. Our troops deserve better from us.

In this essay, I investigate “morality and war” from a soldier’s perspective without resorting to legal justifications. My intent is to empower our profession to better understand the moral reality of war. What I write here is not doctrine. I speak only for myself—a career officer and Army-educated ethicist—and hope that our discussions around this topic will deepen our commitment to and comfort with our vocation as warriors.

This paper is divided into two sections. The first section puts forth an explanation of why soldiers are morally justified in killing enemy combatants, and it offers a framework for moral decision-making in those tragic circumstances of war when our actions will likely cause unintentional harm to non-combatants (i.e., collateral damage). The second section challenges the age-old notion of the “moral equality of soldiers” and suggests that soldiers’ moral justification for killing in war depends on the overall justice of the war.

Section I: Killing in War

Why killing enemy combatants is morally justified

thesis: When we kill enemy combatants, we are not violating their rights to not be killed, because they have already forfeited that right by their free choice to violate the rights of others not to be killed.

Every person, by virtue of being a human being, possesses the right not to be killed by another person.[1] This is commonly referred to as the “right to life,” but the term “right not be be killed” is more precise. Our rights, for example, are not violated when we die of heart disease, cancer, or a lightning strike. Our “right to life” is violated only when another person intentionally or negligently acts to kill us. [2]

The term “right not to be killed” also makes clear that we possess rights only in relation to other human beings. If a dog bites us, the animal has not violated our rights. Perhaps the dog’s owner has, if she negligently allowed the dog to roam unleashed, but the dog itself cannot be said to have violated our rights. We possess rights only in relation to other human beings who can be held accountable for their choices.

Our rights as human beings put limits on how others can act towards us. One person’s right has priority over another person’s freedom. For example, my right not to be killed trumps my angry neighbor’s freedom to kill me over our dandelion dispute. Were he to kill me, he would commit a moral wrong. To paraphrase the philosopher J. S. Mill, we possess the freedom to choose our actions provided they do not violate the rights of another. Rights must trump freedoms, if rights are to have any meaning at all.

Rights themselves are absolute, but possession of them is not. People forfeit their rights if and while they are engaged in violating the rights of others. This explains the rights of self defense and defense of others. When an attacker violates the right not to be killed of those who possess it, he forfeits his own right not to be killed.

Enemy combatants are people who are engaged in violating and threatening the rights of others not to be killed or enslaved. Thus, when we kill combatants, we do no moral wrong; we violate no rights. In fact, we vindicate the rights of those people whom the enemy combatants were threatening.

The Problem of Collateral Damage
thesis: In war, the least morally wrong option is the morally right choice.

War would be morally less complicated if our enemy would agree to face us on a field of battle away from noncombatants. That way, we could be sure to kill only those who had already forfeited their right not to be killed.

Unfortunately, our enemy is our enemy precisely because he seeks the death of non-combatants, if not by his own guns than even better by ours. Thus, we must fight against an enemy who hides among noncombatants, using them as human shields to create for us a moral dilemma—whether to protect the noncombatants (which is our end, or goal) or to kill enemy combatants (which is a primary means to achieve our goal).

What should a soldier do when faced with a situation in which a proposed plan of action to kill enemy combatants will likely also kill noncombatants? It is impossible to say outside of the context of the particular battle space; the soldier will have to make difficult decisions that involve tradeoffs. The decision, however, should be based on a framework that respects the rights—short-term and long-term—of those who still retain them, i.e., their own soldiers and noncombatants.

A Framework for Choosing a Course of Action

In a situation where a combat action could foreseeably risk the rights of non-combatants, soldiers are morally obligated to choose the course of action that in their judgment best respects the rights of those affected. Leaders must take into account: the mission, their fellow soldiers, and non-combatants.

Mission accomplishment can be understood in terms of rights. In a just war, the overall mission is to defend human rights. The many missions that subordinate units accomplish in support of that overall mission are the means by which the overall mission gets accomplished. These sub-unit missions may vary in how directly and substantively they support the overall mission, but they do contribute. The more directly and substantively they contribute, the more significance they have to supporting human rights. Any mission, then, can be evaluated in terms of its importance to the long-term defense of rights of everyone involved.

Military leaders must also take into account the rights of their own soldiers, who are fighting to defend the rights of others. Although soldiers are volunteers who willingly accept the risks of their profession, their leaders must develop and choose courses of action that accomplish the mission without unduly risking the lives of those entrusted to them.

Finally, leaders must incorporate the rights of potentially affected noncombatants into their course-of-action analyses. To some in our profession, the leadership mantra “Mission First, People Always” is interpreted as “Mission First, Soldiers Always,” thus overlooking our duty as military professionals to protect noncombatants. The fact is, every human being possesses the right not to be killed, unless by his own choice to violate the rights of someone who retains her rights, he forfeits his own right. This is not a binary condition; people can forfeit some of their rights claim, according to their participation in a rights violation. Thus, civilians can lose some of their right to not be killed if they support the rights-violating activities of enemy combatants. For example, a noncombatant who allows enemy combatants to assemble in her house forfeits much of her right to not be killed, so it is less of a moral wrong to take action against morally legitimate targets that results in her death.

Because there are, in combat situations, a nearly infinite number of possible situations involving varying levels of risk to mission, soldiers, and noncombatants, it is impossible to develop a flow-chart-like algorithm that would produce morally justified courses of action. Leaders have to assess their particular situations and use their professional judgment. As a guideline and to foster discussion on this important topic, I offer the following two examples to demonstrate how the Mission-Soldiers-Noncombatants framework can inform leaders’ decisions.

***
Situation 1: a water-supply convoy that is moving through a built-up area in a town receives poorly aimed small-arms fire to their flank at 250 meters.

Analysis 1: in this situation, accomplishment of the mission (water re-supply) does not require the soldiers to kill their attackers. In the big story of the war, the ambush will not even be a footnote. Also, given the distance of the ambush, the safety of the soldiers is not a major issue as they continue their mission. Finally, there is no evidence that the noncombatants who may be in the line of fire to the ambushers have forfeited their own rights not to be killed.

One reasonable conclusion: the soldiers would NOT be justified in returning large volumes of un-aimed fire. The risk to the rights of noncombatants would not be balanced by a commensurate benefit to mission accomplishment (long-term rights) or force protection (soldiers’ rights).

***
Situation 2: an infantry unit that is deliberately attacking a fortified urban area is receiving effective fire from an enemy strongpoint that is adjacent to the occupied homes of non-combatants. Civilians in the area had been warned about the attack and given opportunity to relocate. The enemy fire has halted the main effort of the operation.

Analysis 2: in this situation, accomplishment of the mission does require destruction of the enemy. Our own soldiers are already at great risk; their loss of momentum is likely providing the enemy time to maneuver. Moreover, other soldiers in adjacent units are relying on the soldiers’ continued progress to protect their flanks. Finally, the civilians had the opportunity to escape the situation, so they must bear some of the risk; they have compromised some of their own rights not to be killed.

One reasonable conclusion: destroy the enemy position with direct tank or fighting-vehicle fires. Respect for noncombatant rights should limit our use of less discriminating systems such as unguided field artillery and close-air support. Respect for our own soldiers’ rights impels us not to attempt a dismounted assault.
***

There is much more that could be said about these examples—much more information that leaders should take into account. What is important morally, though, is that military leaders’ course-of-action analyses and decisions give due respect to the three relevant categories in such situations—the mission, friendly soldiers, and noncombatants.

Section II: The Supposed “Moral Equality of Soldiers”

Traditional Notion of the Soldiers’ Moral Equality
thesis: Those who defend rights do not forfeit their own rights.

My argument thus far has assumed that we are the “good guys” and enemy combatants are the “bad guys”; that we retain our right not to be killed while they have forfeited theirs. Believe it or not, the long tradition of just-war thought rejects this notion—instead claiming that all combatants, on both sides of a conflict, are “moral equals” (Walzer 1977; Christopher 1999).
Briefly, the argument for the “moral equality of soldiers” states that since combatants on both sides take up arms against each other, then all combatants are both threats to their enemy and threatened by their enemy. Combatants on both sides, by this account, are equally guilty of being threats, so they all forfeit their right to not be killed. Consequently, all combatants are also equally innocent of violating their enemy’s rights. Thus, soldiers on both sides are moral equals, and no moral wrong is committed when one combatant kills another.

The moral equality of soldiers has an obvious superficial appeal to both soldiers and politicians. To soldiers, it anesthetizes them of their responsibility to fight only for a just cause, and it relieves them of any moral responsibility for killing enemy combatants. To politicians, it ensures that their armies will wage the wars they launch. We should not be surprised, then, that the moral equality of soldiers has been written into the laws of war. It makes war more palatable, morally and politically.


Moral Implications of the Moral Equality of Soldiers
thesis: To subscribe to the moral equality of soldiers is to equate soldiers to mafia thugs or gang members, no better or worse than their enemies.

Should we accept the idea that enemy combatants are our moral equals? As a soldier, I am offended at the claim that soldiers who fight for human rights and freedoms have the same moral standing as those who fight for Nazi or Islamist fascism. Moreover, as an ethicist, I am concerned that we would accept an argument that rationalizes killing on the basis that no one is morally wrong because everyone is morally wrong; i.e., all combatants have forfeited their right to not be killed, so none of them is wrong to kill each other. This line of reasoning has implications that we should be unwilling to accept. As we will see in the ensuing paragraphs, it is only the moral inequality among people in a context that gives killing in self defense[3] its moral authority.

Consider, for example, a situation in which someone who has forfeited his right not bo be killed engages in conflict with someone who retains that right. Imagine that an armed bank robber has taken a hostage at gunpoint. By threatening the life of the hostage, the robber has forfeited his right not to be killed. Imagine further that a police officer then arrives at the scene and aims her firearm at the robber. Has the officer done anything wrong? No. Not only has the robber already forfeited his right not to be killed, but also the police officer has an obligation to protect innocent people, including the hostage. Would we say that the police officer, by virtue of “threatening” the robber, forfeits her own right not to be killed? Would the robber be justified in shooting the officer in “self defense”? Of course not, on both counts. Context matters. The officer cannot violate the rights of someone who has already forfeited them. The moral inequality between the robber and police officer makes it morally acceptable for the officer to kill the robber, but not vice versa.

Consider, on the other hand, a situation in which all parties have forfeited their rights not to be killed. Imagine two organized crime “families” that make their money by threatening the lives of businessmen and who compete over the same turf. They are “at war,” ready to knock off their rival extortionists at any opportunity. In this situation, “family members” on both sides who participate have forfeited their rights not to be killed. If a member of one family attacked someone from the other family, there would be no violation of rights. If the body guards fended off the attack and killed the attacker, they would not be morally justified. Nor, by this argument, would they be morally wrong. They would simply be killing in self interest, not justified self defense. In itself, that is not a violation of rights. However, if any innocent bystanders were killed in the exchange, the Mafioso would bear a grave moral burden, because they would have violated the victims’ rights to not be killed, and have done so for no morally worthy reason.

Are American soldiers analogous to the police officer or to the mafia hit men? Are we defenders of rights or amoral mercenaries? To subscribe to the moral equality of soldiers is to equate soldiers to the mafia thugs, no better or worse than their enemies. On the other hand, to subscribe to the idea that soldiers are analogous to the police officer entails that soldiers must act for a just cause. Soldiers must maintain their moral authority by threatening only those people who have already forfeited their rights not to be killed, and they must not do anything that forfeits their own rights. In other words, they have to fight in wars that are just. Is this a reasonable requirement?

The notion of the moral equality of soldiers can be traced to the Medieval Age and the concept of soldiers’ “invincible ignorance.” Invincible ignorance was the claim that soldiers are either too ignorant or uninformed, or both, to determine whether their side is the aggressor or the defender in a war. Thus was born the conditions that gave rise to the moral equality of soldiers. These conditions, however, no longer apply, at least not in the developed world. Perhaps it was once the case that soldiers were invincibly ignorant, when feudal lords rallied their illiterate serfs to battle, but it is certainly not true today. Today’s soldiers are educated and have access to a wealth of information. To assume that all soldiers are “invincibly ignorant” and thus incapable of judging the justice of a war is misinformed, inaccurate, and insulting to soldiers.

Conclusion

War is not a “moral-free zone.” Prosecuted by humans on their fellow humans, it involves the fundamental moral issues of life and death. In this paper, I have argued that every human being possesses the right to not be killed, and therefore, killing in war is justified only when the enemy soldiers have already forfeited their own rights not to be killed. I further argued that combat situations in which the legitimate killing of enemy combatants may potentially risk the rights of noncombatants require that military leaders give due to respect to the rights of everyone involved by considering the mission, their own soldiers, and affected noncombatants. I further argued that this rights-based justification for killing in war requires a moral inequality among soldiers. After all, if the enemy combatants aren’t wrong, then we have no right to kill them. Finally, I claimed that contemporary soldiers are capable of judging the morality of a war, and thus are responsible for ensuring that they are supporting a morally justified cause.

Footnotes
[1] The right to not be killed and the right to not be enslaved are both rights that are worth killing and dying for. For the sake of brevity, in this article I will refer only to the right to not be killed, but the same argument applies to the right to not be enslaved.
[2] For the sake of brevity, in this article I will treat “violate rights” to include “threaten imminently to violate rights.” We do not have to wait for our rights to be actually violated for the violator to forfeit his or her own rights.
[3] The right of self defense and the right to defense of another are distinct but based on the same principles. Also, the justification of killing in war relates to both rights. For the sake of brevity in this article, I will refer only to the right of self defense, but the right to defend another also applies.


References
Christopher, P. (1999). The Ethics of War and Peace: An Introduction to Legal and Moral Issues. Upper Saddle River, NJ, Prentice Hall.

Walzer, M. (1977). Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations. United States of America, Basic Books.

"Good" in war is the lesser of evil choices

Part of the reason that many Soldiers suffer psychologically from combat is that the language we use to talk about war too often fails to capture its moral reality.

There have been "good wars," but war itself is not a good in the same sense that being honest or generous is good. War always represents a failure--of diplomacy, of human cooperation. War can be good only in the sense that waging it is the lesser of bad choices. I.e., it is better to fight than to be enslaved, even though the killing and destruction that war entails is awful, because being enslaved and all it entails is an even worse outcome. At the individual level, it is better to kill some responsible parties than to allow innocents to be killed. Many morally right choices in war would be morally wrong in any other circumstance.

This explains why Soldiers often experience guilt after killing enemy combatants. They made the morally right choice, but it was still a lousy choice for a human being to have to make. There's still something that feels wrong, especially if they have not been educated candidly about what to expect to feel when they kill another human being.

The binary, good/bad language used by our politicians to promote or justify war is not only inaccurate, but it also contributes to the psychological trauma of veterans. A justified war is a necessary evil. Killing in war is a necessary evil. Except for the intense love forged among Soldiers who fight side by side, there is no genuine good created by acts of war.

Our combat veterans should absolutely be commended for exhibiting the physical and moral courage that is required to defend our values, lives, and liberty. A sovereign nation could not survive without them. But we--as a profession of arms, as a nation--need to do a much better job of being honest with our Soldiers about the moral reality of war. Even when war is justified and good in the circumstances, it's still fundamentally bad.

Does this make sense to others?

If you have killed in war...

...I would love to hear from you about how you make sense of the experience, i.e., how you justify it morally.

I asked this same question in 1997 just as I began my study into the moral justification of killing enemy combatants in war, and the responses were fascinating. Now I hope to learn more, and perhaps to develop a taxonomy of justifications that could become part of Soldiers' professional education. I know how I would justify killing (although I have not killed anyone), but I also realize that there may be other approaches that work for other folks.

I would love to hear from you, if you have killed in war. Your information would remain confidential unless you prefer otherwise.

Pete Kilner
LTC, Infantry
pgkilner@gmail.com

Observations from Iraq

Earlier this year, from 21 April --9 June, I had the privilege of traveling around Iraq and interviewing Army junior officers. I pretty much was able to visit a different company each day. In all, I interviewed 142 captains and lieutenants, all of whom were current or past company commanders or platoon leaders in the war. I was so impressed by their competence and commitment; I'm humbled the wear the same uniform as these heroes.

The purpose of the interviews was to gain a deeper understanding of the most demanding leadership challenges that our junior officers are experiencing in the war.

Inevitably, issues of morality came up in our conversations. Here are some of my impressions:

1. Our Soldiers are exhibiting remarkable restraint in the use of violence. Time and again when listening to their stories, I found myself thinking, "Shoot the bastards" or "Just bomb the building!" when in reality the Soldiers on the ground chose not to employ heavy-handed force--despite wanting to emotionally. The attitude in most units is: we're the good guys, so we chose the harder right over the easier wrong.

2. My biggest "aha" discovery was the awareness by many leaders that unjustified killing has harmful effects on the perpetrators. Many Soldiers are on their 2nd or 3rd tour, and they have seen what happens to Soldiers who kill when they shouldn't--they suffer psychologically. As more than one leader told me, "I make sure we do what's right, because someday--win, lose, or draw--this war will be over, and I want all my Soldiers to feel proud about how they conducted themselves." This long-term awareness--leading today in a manner that will take care of my Soldier not only today, but also 10 years from now--is a recent phenomena, as far as I can tell. I think it stems from the increased awareness of the harmful psychological effects of acting unjustly in war.

3. It's a complicated moral universe when the Iraqi Security Forces that we are funding, training, and arming are actively engaged in attacking us. Again, the patience and restraint being demonstrated by our Soldiers is nothing short of remarkable.

More to follow...

Soldiers of Conscience documentary

Soldiers of Conscience (www.socfilm.com) is a feature-length documentary on conscientious objection. I am featured in the film as one of the people who argue for the moral permissibility of participating in war. The producers, Gary Weimberg Catherine Ryan of Luna Productions, did an admirable job of interviewing people on both sides of the CO issue, but I have to admit that the COs they feature are exceptionally articulate.

That makes sense. The COs are folks who had to argue their way out of military service. They can articulate their position. I am really the only person on the "killing in war can be moral" side who had given the issue the thought it deserves, and it showed.

Soldiers of Conscience is a film that will challenge your beliefs. I'm still confident in mine, but I know other military folks who were disturbed by the questions the film raised in their own consciences. For me, this is just more evidence that we in the military profession have to do a lot of hard thinking to think through and to articulate to our members the moral justification for killing in war.

SOC is still on the film-festival circuit, looking for a good distribution deal. It has won awards at the Hamptons and Rhode Island film festivals, and had a week-long run in Seattle, but it still hasn't made the leap to a mass audience.

If you get the opportunity to see the film, I recommend it. It is unbiased (rare for the genre) and very interesting.

Morals in a Combat Zone

Morals in A Combat Zone
Published originally in the Washington Post on Sunday, June 11, 2006, page B07

Earlier this month, folks from The Washington Post invited me to write an op-ed on Haditha. I saw it as an opportunity to communicate to the American people the way military professionals approach morality in war, and thus to raise the level of discussion about it. I sent drafts to many of my fellow Soldiers and received great feedback. In particular, LTC Tony Pfaff and MAJ Dave Barnes, both of whom have taught philosophy at West Point when I did and have since fought in Iraq, provided especially helpful input.

GEN Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, liked the piece and sent a message to all Army commands, recommending that leaders read and discuss it with their Soldiers. I couldn't have hoped for a better response from my fellow Soldiers. Here's the op-ed.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

The differing reactions to the alleged killing of noncombatants by American soldiers in the Iraqi town of Haditha reveal a troubling ignorance about the moral reality of war. Much of the national dialogue about the incident is being dominated by people whose approaches to making moral judgments on wartime actions are fundamentally flawed.

In one corner are those who are so convinced this war is wrong that they see only the bad things soldiers do in it. Such people are blind to all the good our soldiers and the war are accomplishing, and they revel in exploiting any incident of misbehavior by soldiers to smear all members of the armed forces and the entire war effort. By their logic, abuse of detainees by one platoon in one prison in 2003, or the alleged killing of civilians by one squad in one town in 2005, is conclusive evidence that the entire war effort is evil. These people are unable to reconcile the fact that unjust actions can and do occur within a war that nonetheless is morally justified.

In the other corner are those so convinced of the rightness of our cause that they refuse to acknowledge that our soldiers sometimes make choices that are clearly wrong and for which they should be held accountable. These people equate supporting the laws of war with being unpatriotic and disdainful of the troops. What they fail to recognize is that their implicit argument is both insulting to soldiers and corrosive to the foundation of the military profession. My fellow soldiers and I recognize fully that we are responsible for our individual actions, and that our permission to do violence to other human beings is constrained by our obligation to do so only when it is morally justified.

These polar positions are not novel. They are consistent with schools of thought that military ethicists refer to as the war-pacifist and war-realist positions, both of which fall outside the mainstream of the just-war tradition. What is disturbing is the way these competing perspectives have been hijacked by groups with political agendas and thus given a wider hearing than they deserve.

We should all reject such simplistic approaches to judging soldiers' actions in war. A combat zone is not some parallel universe where the nature of human beings or moral judgment is different. Combat is a human endeavor, and like any human activity it can be carried out morally or immorally, and moral judgments can be made on it.

In simplest terms, when soldiers are careful to target only enemy combatants and to limit unnecessary destruction and suffering, they fight morally. If they intentionally or negligently fail to abide by these restrictions, they fight immorally.

A harsh reality of war is that it involves large numbers of people making life-or-death decisions in very stressful conditions. Inevitably, as in all areas of life, some don't always conduct themselves as they should. Those who commit crimes should be held accountable, keeping in mind the extenuating circumstances of combat.

The circumstances of this war's battlefields are terribly complex. Soldiers find themselves conducting a wide range of operations, from war-fighting to policing, often during a single patrol, and those different operations require different principles for the use of force. It is often difficult for soldiers to discern which approach is appropriate and when. Not infrequently, a well-intentioned soldier ends up killing a noncombatant because of mistaken identity or some other factor caused by the fog of war. In such circumstances, we can say that the action is neither justified nor unjustified but that it is excusable. Not every wrongful death in combat is a war crime.

The good news is that well-trained, well-led soldiers can and do overcome the moral challenges of war and conduct themselves with great honor, and the great majority of American soldiers are well trained and well led. Although we fight an enemy who intentionally violates all norms of human decency and goads us to follow him into the abyss of wanton killing, America's soldiers continue to exhibit remarkable restraint.

What explains the difference between units that commit war crimes and units that don't? Leadership. This is the critical factor in ensuring moral conduct in war. When junior officers and senior noncoms train their soldiers to do what is right and when they maintain their composure and lead by example, their soldiers are able to retain their moral bearings despite the temptations and frustrations of battle. American military history reminds us that war crimes can be prevented by small-unit leaders with moral courage and judgment.

The incident at Haditha is not likely to be the last time that we as a nation find ourselves judging the actions of our soldiers at war. All Americans should resist the calls of those who seek to condemn all soldiers based on the actions of a few, just as we should reject any claims that soldiers are immune from judgment. Instead, we should judge each soldier and situation on the merits, paying special attention to the circumstances in which the fateful decisions were made and to the actions of the soldier's leaders.

--------------------------------------------------------------

My only regret with the article is that it can be read to imply that the Marines in Haditha did commit a war crime, and of course we still do not know what happened there.

I'm back

From January through May, I was consumed doing my dissertation work, and thus didn't have the mental space and physical time to keep this blog up to date. My PhD is in Instructional Systems, and my reseach was on online communities, not ethics, so there was no carryover of ideas.

Recent events, such as reports on the alleged incident at Haditha and the conscientious objection claim of an Army LT about to deploy to Iraq have gotten my juices going again.

CO is only half the word

A logical implication of my rights-based approach to justifying war is that selective conscientious objection (CO) must be permitted. The challenge of this, though, is determining when a soldier is a legitimate conscientious objector and when he is just afraid and selfish.

In my limited experience, I’ve found that “CO” is only half the word. The other half is –“WARD”. As in coward. How do we distinguish CO’s who are legitimate (those with real, well thought-out moral convictions against the war) from those who are mere cowards?

My former unit in the 82nd found one way to address this challenge during the Gulf War in 1991. In the days of the air campaign before the ground campaign began, a soldier in an infantry battalion declared that he “could not kill his Muslim brothers” and fully expected to be sent to the rear or sent home. His battalion leadership, however, distrusted the soldier’s motive, and put him to a test. The commander took the soldier’s weapon away (so he wouldn’t run the risk of killing his Muslim brothers) and assigned him to the unit’s forward-most unit, the scout platoon. He told the soldier that he could help with radio watch and medical care—tasks that wouldn’t involve him in killing. Well, to make a long story short, when it came time to initiate the attack into Kuwait, that soldier was BEGGING for his weapon. Once he saw that his cowardly attempt to avoid the risk of combat wasn’t going to work, he was ready to kill rather than be killed.

This worked for one unit, but it’s obviously not an approach that could be used on a large scale. Still, it makes clear the challenge of permitting selective CO, a challenge that I’m still trying to think through.

Anyone have any ideas?

More evidence of the MH "blind spot" on PTSD

A story in today's USA Today reveals that "1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return." As always, the Pentagon spokesperson and mental-health leaders attributed the mental health problems only to what happened to Soldiers, giving no attention to what Soldiers may have done.

“The (wartime) deployments do take a toll,” says Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman. “We send them to austere locations, places that are extremely hot, extremely cold, very wet, very dry … where they may also encounter an armed enemy.”

As if feelings of suicide after a deployment were caused by the weather in Iraq.

The article also included this list from DoD:

Of servicemembers returning from the Iraq war this year:

• 47% saw someone wounded or killed, or saw a dead body.
• 14% had an experience that left them easily startled.
• 6% wanted help for stress, emotional, alcohol or family problems.
• 2% had thoughts of hurting someone or losing control.
• 1% had thoughts that they might be better off dead or could hurt themselves.

Given that we know--anecdotally, from research, and from common sense--that killing another human being is usually a traumatic experience, shouldn't we be talking about the experience of killing and how we can help Soldiers prepare for it and come to terms with it? This "blind spot," this unwillingness to speak about an aspect of our profession that makes many of us uncomfortable, is harming our Soldiers.

Remembering the Battle of Mogadishu

Today is the 12th anniversary of the Battle of Mogadishu, when Task Force Ranger and the 10th MTN fought, killed, and died in what was arguably our first battle against Al Queda.

My thoughts and prayers go out to our brave Soldiers and their families. Battles as intense as that one leave a lifetime mark on those who are involved, for better or worse.

Developing a Coherent Moral Argument

The profession of arms talks about ‘morality and war’ using legal terms and concepts. For example, we justify our decision to deploy and fight when the President orders us because we signed a contract to obey the officers appointed over us. Similarly, we consider ourselves blameless when we kill enemy combatants as long as we do not violate the laws of war or the rules of engagement in doing so. These legal rules are so important to our professional identity that all soldiers receive instruction on the laws of war in basic combat training and then annually thereafter, and soldiers at war review the rules of engagement much more often, sometimes daily.

Not everyone in our society, however, accepts these legal answers to moral questions. War pacifists are people who believe that war is morally unjustifiable. They claim that soldiers are morally wrong to participate in war and to kill other human beings, regardless of what’s legally permissible at the time.

I am concerned that we in the profession of arms do not do enough to prepare our soldiers to understand and justify their actions in moral terms. This allows many soldiers to needlessly suffer moral guilt, and it leaves them vulnerable to the arguments of war pacifists. Our soldiers deserve better.

In the ensuing posts, I investigate “morality and war” from a soldier’s perspective without resorting to legal justifications. My intent is to empower our profession to better understand the moral reality of war. What I write here is not doctrine. I speak only for myself—a career Army officer (infantryman) and Army-educated ethicist—and hope that our discussions around this topic will deepen our commitment to and comfort with our vocation as warriors.

These posts mark the beginning of what I hope will become an extended, coherent, rights-based argument that addresses the fundamental moral questions of war. It is divided into two sections. The first section explains why soldiers are morally justified in killing enemy combatants, and it offers a framework for moral decision-making in those tragic circumstances of war when our actions will likely cause unintentional harm to non-combatants (i.e., collateral damage). The second section challenges the age-old notion of the “moral equality of soldiers” and suggests that soldiers’ moral justification for killing in war depends on the overall justice of the war. Future additions to this essay will continue this rights-based line of argument to its logical conclusion that soldiers are not morally justified if they kill in wars that are unjust. That, in turn, will lead to examinations of the moral justification of war and of the legitimacy and limits of conscientious objection.

I invite and welcome your critique and suggestions for improvement.