Human shields

Goobieman said:

Sometimes, there is no other choice.

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There's always another choice... Dying is one of them. Be killed rather than kill.

Tucker Case said:

Not if the "highest order of strategic significance" is clearly defined. The subjectivity would exist if it's not defined, or during the defining process, but once it is clearly defined, then the situation loses subjectivity.

As it stands, it is not defined except at the subjective level. This is a mistake, because what I described does occur to some degree. It is just not consistent in application.

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Well, OK -- but my contention comes from the use of the term 'strategic'. There are several different levels of conflict and concern, and I am not sure that only the 'strategic' level need apply.

EgoffTib said:

So when the government says it's okay to kill, then we can. Got it.

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All rights have boundaries, deliniating what actions fall under the auspices of a right, and what actions do not. The specifics of these boundaries are defined through varuous governmental interactions.

However, you do not need to ask the government for permission before you ecercise your right to self-defense.

And so, no, that's not how it is.

The individual right to self-defense, expressed collectively, is the basis for the act of war and the act of captial punishment -- to protect the self from those that would harm it.

ricksfolly said:

It's like the age-old... "When did you stop beating your wife?"

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No. Its not.
If all you were going to do is avoid the question, you should not have bothered responding.

Goobieman said:

Well, OK -- but my contention comes from the use of the term 'strategic'. There are several different levels of conflict and concern, and I am not sure that only the 'strategic' level need apply.

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Fair enough. There may be other considerations I hadn't thought of that might be valid mitigating factors. If they exist, they too should be clearly defined.

Goobieman said:

Sometimes, there is no other choice.

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That is pretty hard to imagine. Can you think of a situation where there is no other choice?

LaMidRighter said:

Circumstantially, yes you can be forced to perform a lethal action. People with military, law enforcement, and many with regular firearms/tactical training do have reflexive actions that are second nature, including pulling the trigger under duress.

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It does not remove the action. Until such point as you are physically automated by outside forces, you are responsible for your actions

Goobieman said:

Sometimes, there is no other choice.

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Sometimes you feel there is no other choice. There is always a choice, you can pull the trigger or you cannot pull the trigger. You make a choice.

Ikari said:

No one else but yourself can have your brain send signals to your muscles to have them perform an act. You're not a robot, everything ultimately always comes down to a choice you make.

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I believe we're speaking on an actual responsibility for the killing, as a driver takes when he causes an accident, not when the situation is forced upon you.

EgoffTib said:

There's always another choice... Dying is one of them. Be killed rather than kill.

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That choice goes against the basic instincts of the living being, and no sane house of law would accept such a thing as the required action by the soldier.

Apocalypse said:

That choice goes against the basic instincts of the living being, and no sane house of law would accept such a thing as the required action by the soldier.

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But that speaks to justification of the act, not responsibility of the action itself.

Ikari said:

But that speaks to justification of the act, not responsibility of the action itself.

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That's exactly what I'm saying.
By 'responsibility' the OP means to the take of blame for the result.
The death of the innocent, in case he dies, is of course not the fault of the one who fires back at the target, but of the target, that keeps his life at a deliberate risk.

I wouldn't say the shooter isn't at fault. Through the actions of the shooter, an innocent is killed. Rather, I would say that in some cases the taking of innocent life can be justified in some legal manner. It doesn't take away the action, because the action would have been a measurable quantity. What it would say is that it was "reasonable" or justified action to kill the other person. The shooter still carries causation as they made the decision to shoot.

Apocalypse said:

That choice goes against the basic instincts of the living being, and no sane house of law would accept such a thing as the required action by the soldier.

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I'm not talking about required action or law. I'm saying that if you wish to avoid killing human shields, you do not shoot.

Ikari said:

The point is to learn, the point is to not dismiss the humanity of those we fight. By acknowledging this, we can potentially decrease the frequency and longevity of wars we have to fight.

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To learn what? That our enemy's are dirt bags who use inhumane tactics? I mean realistically we learned that already.

Those we fight have already given up any humanity they had the moment they started hiding in mosques and using human shields. It is not shortening anything as I showed in the article, it is making them bolder.

War itself is inhumane.

We already know this.

Blackdog said:

To learn what? That our enemy's are dirt bags who use inhumane tactics? I mean realistically we learned that already.

Those we fight have already given up any humanity they had the moment they started hiding in mosques and using human shields. It is not shortening anything as I showed in the article, it is making them bolder.

War itself is inhumane.

We already know this.

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We should learn the follies of dehumanizing portions of the human population to make it easier to kill them. Instead, we should face full on the consequences of our actions and fully bear our sins.

Ikari said:

We should learn the follies of dehumanizing portions of the human population to make it easier to kill them. Instead, we should face full on the consequences of our actions and fully bear our sins.

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That is a bunch of moral huha. It does not work in the real world and does not work in combat with a determined enemy.

This is reality.

Please point out where this hypotheses of yours has worked? Just 1 time.

Because so far as I have shown with proof, it does not work.

Ikari said:

We should learn the follies of dehumanizing portions of the human population to make it easier to kill them. Instead, we should face full on the consequences of our actions and fully bear our sins.

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Ikari, could you elaborate on "face full the consequences" and "fully bear our sins".

Let's say US troops are in a firefight with whomever.

An enemy steps out of hiding with a toddler strapped to his chest. The enemy aims an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade launcher) at a house where three of our troops are positioned, a clear threat likely to result in three deaths if he fires the RPG.

One of our troops shoots the RPG enemy dead. He was trying for a headshot, but he was a little low... he kills both the enemy shooter and the toddler that the enemy was using as a human shield.

What penalty should that soldier suffer for his action?

(My answer is, "None".)

G.

Goshin said:

Ikari, could you elaborate on "face full the consequences" and "fully bear our sins".

Let's say US troops are in a firefight with whomever.

An enemy steps out of hiding with a toddler strapped to his chest. The enemy aims an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade launcher) at a house where three of our troops are positioned, a clear threat likely to result in three deaths if he fires the RPG.

One of our troops shoots the RPG enemy dead. He was trying for a headshot, but he was a little low... he kills both the enemy shooter and the toddler that the enemy was using as a human shield.

What penalty should that soldier suffer for his action?

(My answer is, "None".)

G.

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I'd agree with "none" in this instance. It's a fully justifiable action, IMO.

I'm not talking penalties. But instead of hiding behind scenarios where we either dehumanize the enemy or remove all concept of responsibility, we accept the consequences of our actions. The soldier in your scenario killed an innocent baby. Whether justified or not, that's the end result of the actions. In instead of trying to remove blame or responsibility, we instead took up in full the consequences of our actions; aggregated over the whole you'll end up with an environment where we don't take war so casually. Where we don't just say "war is hell" and shrug our shoulders. But rather understand the human component of war and what our actions have on such.

It's essentially what happened with nuclear weapons. While there has been plenty of threat of use, there has been no usage by countries outside of the first time the weapons were used by America. While you can say there was justification in the use of the war in that it prevented loss on our side and perhaps drove an end to the war quicker; it was still a travesty. They haven't been used since because the whole sale destruction was easy to see and people understood what it was. We have weapons which now can be as effective, if not more, but we don't see in conventional weapons the gore we collectively seem to see in nuclear weapons. By expanding on the human component, understanding the results of our actions, and acknowledging the humanity of our opponents; we can become more reluctant to be so caviler in the use of force and war. While it will never be totally avoidable, perhaps we can learn to not utilize it as some form of offense.

We should always be weary of the consequences of our actions and we should accept in full those consequences.

Tucker Case said:

I'd agree with "none" in this instance. It's a fully justifiable action, IMO.

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Yup, and he's going to have nightmares and PTSD and **** for the rest of his life anyway, most likely.

Ikari said:

I'm not talking penalties. But instead of hiding behind scenarios where we either dehumanize the enemy or remove all concept of responsibility, we accept the consequences of our actions....over the whole you'll end up with an environment where we don't take war so casually. Where we don't just say "war is hell" and shrug our shoulders. But rather understand the human component of war and what our actions have on such.

.... While it will never be totally avoidable, perhaps we can learn to not utilize it as some form of offense.

We should always be wary of the consequences of our actions and we should accept in full those consequences.

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Thank you, I think I understand better the point you were trying to make.

Possibly we are too cavalier about the use of war as a tool of policy, or about the use of force in general... but I think you are already beginning to get your wish. The 24/7 news cycle, "imbedded reporters", people with cameras everwhere, and so on, is making war much more of a "you are there" thing than was the case in, say 1945, or even 1968. I think this has had a lot to do with why we try, very hard, to avoid civilian casualties these days... as compared to the firebombing of Dresden, the carpet-bombing of Tokyo and Berlin, etc... when we were targeting the civilian population deliberately, for reasons that (at the time and under the circumstances) we felt were adequate.

It would be nice if war could be fought cleanly. If we could designate battlefields and require all fighting to be "in bounds" and all combatants to wear uniforms and seperate out all civvy's.

I don't see it happening anytime soon though.

I think we must examine this from the position of the soldier doing the deed.

I would hope that most soldiers would have issues with killing civilians.

Then again, after awhile they might become somewhat immune to the feeling, if only in mental self-defense.

Or so one always hears in war movies/reads in books about wars.

Damn all wars, anyway.

Then again, damn all humans, who are the root cause of war.

/sigh

The Mark said:

I think we must examine this from the position of the soldier doing the deed.

I would hope that most soldiers would have issues with killing civilians.

Then again, after awhile they might become somewhat immune to the feeling, if only in mental self-defense.

Or so one always hears in war movies/reads in books about wars.

Damn all wars, anyway.

Then again, damn all humans, who are the root cause of war.

/sigh

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War is a metaphor for life in a twisted way. There was a local hero here who passed away not too long ago that saved a vietnamese village from a rogue U.S. platoon that was just hellbent on killing anyone asian at that point, then there was one of my dad's cousins who never came to terms with a japanese soldier he killed in WWII, so I think the emotions swing all over the spectrum.

EgoffTib said:

I'm not talking about required action or law. I'm saying that if you wish to avoid killing human shields, you do not shoot.

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But that statement is meaningless to the actual conflict here, that if you do not shoot while you're under attack, every moment is a risk to your life.

Simply allowing the terrorist to kill you is of course not one of the options.

Ikari said:

I wouldn't say the shooter isn't at fault. Through the actions of the shooter, an innocent is killed. Rather, I would say that in some cases the taking of innocent life can be justified in some legal manner. It doesn't take away the action, because the action would have been a measurable quantity. What it would say is that it was "reasonable" or justified action to kill the other person. The shooter still carries causation as they made the decision to shoot.

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You're talking about the most literal meaning of fault.
That the person that pulls the trigger is at fault for killing the innocent, because he has pulled the trigger.

In both the legal and the moral world, that is of course not the assumption.
The person who has killed the innocent is the one who has caused his death.
By taking the person hostage while shooting at another, the humans shield user has created a situation when there is a great risk for the innocent's life, and hence, in the case when the innocent dies, the humans shield user has caused his death.

Since we assume that a person would always try to survive, and that if he's being shot at he'll have to fire back, we do not regard to it as a move that he takes, but a move that is 'naturally' expected to be taken.
When you're walking into fire, expect to be burned.
When you're jumping off a building, expect to be hit by the floor.
When you're shooting at a person, expect to be shot back at.

When a driver who has 3 passengers in his car decides to smash his car into a wall, he is killing his passengers, because he should know that if you smash the car into the wall, there is a risk to the passengers' lives.

From the same exact reason, when someone takes a human shield and starts shooting people in the street, he is pretty much entirely at fault for killing the innocent were he to be shot back by the expected counter-fire.

It should have been an obvious question to begin with.