MILITARY ETHICS

• Related question:
  •   Killing in warfront for a soldier is murder. Critique this assertion under military ethics.
  
  
  What is Military Ethics?
  In the military, there are ethics and standards that military members are expected to abide by. The ethics often represent values that are core beliefs. These beliefs should motivate the actions and attitudes of military members and help them to carefully consider their behaviour at all times. For example, in the United States Army, the core values or ethics that members abide by are loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage; these ethics form the acronym “LDRSHIP”.
  In most cases, servicemen and women learn about military ethics as soon as they enroll in the military. During military training, or “boot camp”, there are certain ethical guidelines that are reinforced and instilled in service members. Some of the most common military ethics include concepts that involve responsibility, honor, trust, accountability, and loyalty. During basic military training, service members learn what these ethics mean to the military and are required to abide by them to remain in the military. Eventually, military ethics becomes a part of military life and becomes habitual standards that servicemen and women live by.
  One of the main reasons that military ethics are established is to help servicemen and women adhere to a high standard of integrity, to ensure that their conduct is ethically and legally correct, and to promote trust among service members. To reinforce military ethics, solders are often forced to memorize creeds. These creeds are poetic sayings that repeatedly remind the soldiers of their necessary duties. Military creeds are considered indoctrinated dogma, which means that the creeds are considered authoritative and are not to be disputed. Creeds are also meant to serve as a reminder that military members have an obligation to never disgrace their “uniform” or country.
  When military ethics are violated, there is often a price to pay. The military member that has violated the ethic will likely incur a reprimand or other consequence such as being subject to administrative actions. If the ethic that was violated has resulted in criminal misconduct, disciplinary action may extend into the military justice system and military members will be held accountable for criminal activities and misconduct.
  
  
  Our Critique: killing in warfront for a soldier is not murder
  War is a peculiar human activity, in that it can bring out some of our best traits, such as courage and self-sacrifice, yet also elicit tremendous cruelty and suffering. It’s therefore a prime candidate for ethical reflection. Also, soldiers are what they are, “soldiers”; and what will go on the battlefield is treated with what is necessary at the moment. Therefore, war and ethics are just too hard to intermarry on the battlefield. Nevertheless, can killing in warfront for a soldier be tagged as murder?
  At the most fundamental level, there is an ancient and enduring question about the ethics of killing. Can it ever be right to use deadly force against people intentionally? We tend to think that killing can be justified in defense of the innocent against unjust attack, whether the victim is oneself or someone one could help. All people have a basic, prima facie right not to be killed. But that right is not absolute; someone can forfeit that right if they willfully threaten or take the lives of innocent people. Hitherto, if killing in such cases can be morally justified, it seems both prudent and morally permissible for societies and nations to train and equip a special class of professional warriors to do and be prepared to defend them with force. These assumptions form the foundation for what is known as the “just-war” tradition.
  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.
  •   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. This is commonly referred to as the “right to life”, but the term “right not to be killed” is more precise. Our rights, for example, are not violated when we die of heart disease, cancer, or a lightning strike; but our “right to life” is violated only when another person intentionally or negligently acts to kill us.
  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. Hence, one person’s right has priority over another person’s freedom. For example, my right “not to be killed” overrules my angry neighbor’s freedom to kill me over our land dispute. If he kills me, he would have committed 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 overrule 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 when 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. Therefore, killing in warfront for a soldier is not murder.
  
  
  Talking With Our Soldiers about the Morality of Killing
  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.
  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.
  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.
  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. 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.
  
  
  The Cons of Military Training
  But there are moral risks inherent in training officers and soldiers to be effective killers on our behalf. (That's a crude way of putting it, but we need to recognize what we're doing when we authorize the creation of a military force.)
  Firstly, when multiple countries enlarge their military forces ostensibly to deter others or defend themselves in case of invasion, that alone can increase the chances of them going to war against each other, even when there is no rational basis for such conflict; consider the origins of the First World War.
  Secondly, discipline in obeying orders is vital in making groups of soldiers effective in achieving military objectives, or even in protecting themselves. But what if they are ordered to do something immoral, such as to destroy a whole village or shoot prisoners?
  And thirdly, commanders often deem it necessary to induce rage against their nations' enemies, to increase their soldiers' motivation to fight when extreme dangers might otherwise produce overwhelming fear. But that makes them unlikely to show mercy to enemy soldiers who surrender in combat, or to avoid killing civilians.
  These are credible risks, but in practice soldiers can be trained and led in ways that minimize their occurrence. So, soldiers need not be encouraged to hate the enemy in order to be effective in combat; but they can and must be encouraged to disobey immoral orders.
  
  
  
  
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