What War is Really Justified?

The common distinction Nagel and Kagan argue, in terms of war, is the distinction between intending harm and merely foreseeing harm. This argument is held up in the example with two patients dying from the same disease. If the doctor gives the medicine to one patient and the other dies as a result then he [the doctor] did not intend harm. It was a consequence of natural results.

If we take this argument and shift it to Full Metal Jacket, then we see a huge violation of this principle. The soldiers literally pray to their rifles and constantly chant about being killers. This shows that their intent in Vietnam is very clear - kill anyone and everyone they can that they think are the enemies. Later, killing the sniper was not morally justified in terms of war. On page 306, Nagel writes, "hostility and aggression should be directed at its true object." After his friends' death, Animal Mother asks if he wants justice, implying that they should take the sniper out as a result. Joker's frustrations were with the war, not with the sniper, especially when he could have let her go. As for Kagan, when it comes to being morally decisive, intending good and justifying the killing must outweigh the act of intending harm. In this sense, nothing justified killed the sniper for Joker, yet he did it anyways.

Knowing this definition, what type of war would truly be justified? As Nagel strongly mentioned, the Vietnam War was not justified enough to allow the soldiers and government clearance for moral justification. They were killing innocent civilians. This site shows that civilians deaths outweighed the deaths of Vietnamese military personnel. Did the harm of civilians really outweigh the good? There did not seem to be much morality to help defend this. As Nagel says, there is no justification, ever, in killing innocent civilians and the American government would not be allowed to say that they were morally right in their slaughter.

Nagel and Kagan both acknowledge that if intending good outweighs the intending harm, then morality is solved. With that being said, I propose that revolutions are almost always on the justified side of war. It is easy for a government to overthrow its citizens (much like what happened with Syria) by the misuse of weapons. Again, for Nagel, those chemical weapons and bombs violate the morality of war. However, civilian revolutions are more likely to handle things with morality, with their attacks less guided towards other civilians and directed at the perpetrators. For example, in the case of Syria, the Syrian Free Army joined the war without the intent to harm others, but they knew that it was going to be impossible to stay neutral and not contribute to the bloodshed. They only inflicted harm when harm was done to them. Otherwise, they were willing to leave things alone and get their government back via peaceful protests. The Syrian Free Army did not engage in unjustified killing like the president did. When they did kill others, it was certainly justified, and aimed at protecting other citizens around them. In this case, morality seems to be upheld, since it meets both Nagel's and Kagan's justification for war. Much like the patient example used above, they are merely the doctors, distributing medicine to the country of Syria. The soldiers deaths are a natural cause of the war that they originally started. It seems to me that this might be one of the only cases in which war is justified. 

I Kant Understand Sergeant James

In the movie Hurt Locker, we are shown a quote in the opening scene from a best-selling book by Chris Hedges, a New York Times war correspondent. The quote says, “The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction for war is a drug.”

With this quote in mind and watching how the movie unfolds, we are left with two significant questions surrounding the main character, Sergeant Will James:

Is James doing his job/duty out of good will?

Or is he doing his duty, because he is merely addicted to the thrill or the ‘rush’ of it?

When pondering these questions, I think it is important to look at what Kant says about duty and good will in his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. In this week’s reading, Kant uses an example of a shopkeeper. Kant says it is in accordance with the shopkeeper’s duty that he should not overcharge a customer. For instance, this shopkeeper does not overcharge an inexperienced, confused customer, nor does he overcharge the prudent, experienced customer. Kant says that these customers get the honest treatment from the shopkeeper. It is not nearly enough to justify us believing that the shopkeeper acted in this way out of duty or from principles of honesty; his own interest required him to act as he did. He did this action out of solely self-interests.

Let’s therefore compare the shopkeeper example with James in the Hurt Locker. We have James, who has a rogue, reckless work ethic, and he has a duty to serve as a team leader and soldier in a US Army Explosive Ordinance Disposal (EOD) unit. This job/duty, in turn, causes him to be faced with some dangerous and life-threatening situations, not only for him, but his team members. We learn that towards the end of the film, he is allowed to go home having finished his designated rotation. However, he goes home, and realizes that he cannot live with his ex-wife and son. He tells his son his heart and love is somewhere else, and at the conclusion of the film we see him returning to his job working in an US EOD unit.

Sooo..we can look at James as a courageous, honorable man who loves his duty for the right reasons. We can assume that he is a self-sacrificing man, who puts his life on the line so that others may live (this can be evidenced by the way he tries to save an innocent Iraqi civilian who is strapped with bombs..almost getting himself killed in the process). Or we can see a man, who is addicted to the thrill of his duty. In otherwords, we can see him as a man whom is obsessed with the rush he gets from putting himself and others at risk in dangerous, life-threatening scenarios.   

To relate back to the reading, Kant says that a good will is manifested when it is acted out of duty rather than inclination; only such acts have moral worth.

What does this say about James then? Is he acting out of good will? Or is he acting out of inclination?

It would seem to me that Kant would say that James is acting out of inclination. This can be evidenced by James deciding to return to his role as a soldier in the E.O.D, despite being let go. He also is detached from his ex-wife and son, while he is at home. He tries to communicate with his ex-wife about his experiences, but it is apparent they both cannot relate to each other. It would also seem that he is too obsessed and consumed with his experiences as a soldier in Iraq to stay at home and support his family. Consequently, He willingly neglects his role as a father to his son.

It can also be suggested that he is merely obsessed with his role as a soldier, because of the thrill. This is judging by the way he risks his life, as well as his fellow squadmates, in the line of duty. He is extremely reckless like a drug addict.

  

What do yall think? Is James doing his duty out of good will? Or is he acting out of inclination? 

Am I being too harsh on James? 

The Moral Ambiguity of War

Splash. 

Good kill. 

These are the words spoken after almost every confirmed drone strike in Andrew Niccol’s 2014 war drama, Good Kill. The film follows Major Thomas Egan, an Air Force officer who flies UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) in the Middle East from a base near Las Vegas, Nevada. After six tours of combat, Egan struggles with the nature of drone warfare despite the fact that he is one of the most capable and precise pilots when it comes to flying these UAVs. The lines for Egan begin to blur when his unit becomes under the control of the CIA and he begins to doubt the ethics of his role in this war. 

A major problem that Egan has in the film is coming to terms with the disjointedness his feels between his duty to his country and what he believes to be the right thing. His problems begin arising after he is put into situations where civilian casualties die, in some cases a demand to preform a second attack on first responders and in others the result is the deaths of children. In his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Immanuel Kant argues that “the concept of duty includes the concept of good will” and “what makes acts out of duty morally worthy is not their actual or intended results, but the underlying principle on which they are based” (260, 261). A line from the film that really sticks out in this fine line between duty and good will is when Jack Johns states, “Don’t ask me if this is a just war. It’s just war.” For Johns, duty is the most important aspect. He must do whatever he is called upon in this need to defend his nation. For Egan, he begins to see the injustice in the killing of innocents. 

UAVs also pose other ambiguous aspects of morality for Egan. Throughout the film Egan wishes to return to combat. Although he preforms his duty and does it well, he is visibly shaken at times because of these attacks. The use of UAVs bring a component to warfare that is new in the era of advancing technology. Egan and his team is based approximately 15,000 km away from the bombs they are detonating. Are acts of war made more morally wrong when the attacker has no chance of being hurt in the process?