Would you accept the death of a few innocents if it meant taking out a potential mass killer?

[Bonobo]

If the police could somehow identify a future mass killer, like the one in Connecticut, and take him out in a spray of gunfire --would you accept the loss of a few innocent bystanders?

Let's say it might save 50 potential victims. Would the death of one or two innocent bystanders be acceptable?

I think we all would agree that the answer is no.

So how is that situation any different than what the US is doing on a daily or weekly basis in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Yemen through the use of drone strikes?

Innocent people are being killed, knowingly, for the very same justification and the only difference is that they are not Americans. Are their lives worth less because they are not Americans?

[Arctic Dave]

1. We would have to kill half our politicians

and military.

[Comrade_McKenzie]

2. To save 50? Yes. nt

[Bonobo]

3. Well, I at least admire consistency.

I don't agree, but at least you are willing to be consistent about it.

[flvegan]

7. Until it's your kid. n/t

[Nuclear Unicorn]

17. What if his kid was to be drafted to fight a battle that a drone could pre-empt?

Honest question.

[liberal_at_heart]

8. Would you be willing to be one of those one or two to save 50? How about your spouse or child?

Last edited Thu Apr 4, 2013, 02:21 AM - Edit history (1)

Would you be willing to sacrifice them to save 50 strangers? I'm sorry but this is where I have to be a little selfish. If a stranger were holding both of my children hostage and told me I could only save one of them, I could not choose. I would most likely die trying to save both of them, and they might both die as well. But I would not just say okay take that one so that the other may live. Every life is precious. 50 lives are not more precious than 1.

[Cleita]

4. Never. Because it's a fallacy to ever believe the ends justifies the means.

There is always a catch to it, a thing you didn't anticipate that complicates what should have been simple. Americans of a certain class status do tend to dismiss the importance of those they feel are inferior to them and it seems it has always come back to bite them in the ass somehow. I don't know what our karma is going to be after this genocide we are part of but I don't think it will bode well for us.

[Llewlladdwr]

5. What if it was 500 potential victims?

Or 5,000 or 500,000? Is it really better to let 500,000 innocent people die when you could stop that from happening at the cost of one or two innocent lives?

Ethics are hard, and often there are no good choices. Just a series of less bad ones...

[Flying Squirrel]

6. The key word is potential.

Come on, do you really believe what you're saying here? Nobody can predict the future. Nobody can know what a person is really capable of or really will do in advance. In retrospect, knowing what Hitler did most of us would accept the death of a few innocents to kill him - but only if there were NO other way, (which was not necessarily the case back then and is not necessarily the case now) and ONLY in retrospect since we know without doubt what he would do. No, I don't agree that the killing of innocent people is ever justified in order to take out a POTENTIAL threat.

Furthermore, it's not a simple equation because the killing of those innocents CREATES more potential mass murderers due to the nature of human beings who tend to think emotionally and seek revenge upon those who killed their loved ones. Wars end. Blood feuds carry on for centuries.

[Llewlladdwr]

9. In my defense, the OP is a little vague on "potential".

That word is used in the title, but in the body the situation is that the police have the means to positively identify a killer before he is able to act. In that case, would it be justifiable to kill an innocent person in order to avert the killing of multiples?

Or how about this hypothetical. A radical separatist group has set up a training base for "soldiers". This base is also being used for weapons assembly and mission staging. There is absolutely no doubt, due to satellite observation and HUMINT, of what is going on at this base. However, there are wives and children of several of the group's leaders also residing at the base, and these individuals are not active in the group's activities. Would it be ethical to bomb this base in order to destroy the group's ability to commit violence even though the innocent people on the base would be killed as well as the militants?

[Flying Squirrel]

10. The OP is vague, yes..

And it says we MIGHT save 50 POTENTIAL victims, so apparently our clairvoyance is not perfect. My main point here is that we're NOT clairvoyant, and there may be other means of preventing these potential attacks. Drone strikes would be my very last choice, because of the potential for killing innocent people as well as the aforementioned point about creating new enemies with these attacks. It is a never-ending cycle with a possible snowball effect. We appear to be using the strikes as a first choice, with the justification that it's easier, cheaper and
doesn't risk American lives. Well it might not risk lives right then and there, but creating additional enemies DOES risk American lives. It's an extremely shortsighted strategy. Your example of a compound is not what's going on today, and would have to be fleshed out in more detail but my initial feeling is, it sounds like a David Koresh type situation and I definitely didn't approve of our response - which, in hindsight, did greatly influence Timothy McVeigh and thus led to further deaths of innocents down the road (not defending him, just pointing out how human beings are not rational and the killing of innocents can motivate them even when they are not directly related to those killed.) For another wonderful example, look how the killing of nearly 4,000 innocent people on 9-11 turned out for certain Arab countries. When is enough enough? How many times must the cannonballs fly before they're forever banned? How many deaths will it take till we know that too many people have died? The more enemies our country has (and the fewer friends), the less secure we will be - regardless of our military might - and I see us making far more enemies than friends lately.

[LittleBlue]

11. Agreed, Bonobo

It's the brown people thing. Their lives are worth so little.

Imagine if they had to justify taking out innocent French or Norwegians children to "stop terruh". There would be a worldwide outcry, mainly because they're white.

I think when you see people dismissing tragedies in Africa, or murders in the Middle East, it's done with the idea that their lot in life is to suffer and die. They are merely experiencing the results of being uncivilized and poor. Newtown is a tragedy, the poor browns are collateral damage.

[RobertEarl]

12. We should not be using drones.

We should not be killing people in Pakistan. Or Afghanistan. Or any any Stan.

But we are. We are empire. Lets get rid of empire. How? IDK.

We can get rid of Nukes. Easy. For the benefit of a few volts here and there, the support of nukes is a deadly burden on many many people, not just today but decades from now. Coal is bad too. Cars kill people, etc.

As a pacifist the answer to your tough question is easy: NO.

But as someone who believes in Everlasting life, the individual's daily skirmishes upon a 4 billion year old planet seems a bit inconsequential unless it has something to do with long term life destruction. Like nukes.

[WonderGrunion]

13. If I could go back in time and kill li'l Hitler at his playground with 4 or 5 of his friends

Absolutely.

Godwin for the win!

[Cleita]

14. If you went back in time, you wouldn't have to even kill Hitler.

You could make sure he got into the The Vienna Academy of Fine Arts, instead of being rejected twice. He would have gone on to be an artist and maybe a mad artist in the tradition of Van Gogh. He might have cut off one of his body parts and history would have been different. No one would have to die.

[Nye Bevan]

15. I love alternate history. (nt)

[sarisataka]

16. You are standing outside an elementary school in Leonding, Austria...

March 1900. A man points out a child about eleven years old sitting alone after choir practice while the other children play.
The man explains, that boy just lost his younger brother to measles last month. Likely you express sympathy for the boy.
The man explains that the boy will never completely recover from this. He is irrevocably on a path that will push him away from religion and art and eventually into politics, though none can possibly see it now. One day he will start a war that will cost tens of millions of lives and change the world forever; evil will be redefined using his image. You would probably want to stop this and ask what can be done to stop it.

The man hands you a pistol and says there is only one way. Do not let anyone stop you. If someone tries you must kill them to save those millions.

What do you do?

[Cleita]

18. Empty the pistol and give it back to the man.

Even if you shoot this potential loose cannon, there will be others. The fact is that Germany was in dire straits at the time because of the reparations for WWI and they were looking for a hero. Any number of wackos could have filled that role. Are you going to kill all of them? Can you kill all of them?

[sarisataka]

20. Good answer

whether talking potential dictators or mass murders their crimes are only potential. we cannot kill innocents to guarantee saving more innocents.

[JVS]

19. Is this some kind of trick question where I end up shooting Wittgenstein?

[sarisataka]

22. No trick...

In 1898 the family returned permanently to Leonding. The death of his younger brother, Edmund, from measles on 2 February 1900 deeply affected Hitler. He changed from being confident and outgoing and an excellent student, to a morose, detached, and sullen boy who constantly fought with his father and teachers

Payne, Robert (1990) [1973]. The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler. New York, New York: Hippocrene Books.

at one point even Hitler was a sad little boy. How would the world be different if someone took notice of him, if him father allowed him to go to art school instead of sending him to technical school later that year, if...

Or would anything be different today? Would we instead speak of Rudolf Hess, Ernst Rohm or Alfred Rosenberg as the most evil person of all time?

[Sadiedog]

21. The answer of course is No, and American lives are of no more value than theirs are! I hate that our

government is doing this!

[Cleita]

24. It's not really our government anymore. It's the government of corporate America

who is doing this with our money (tax dollars) and all we can do is sit back and watch while wringing our hands in despair.

[One_Life_To_Give]

23. Walking with someone carrying an RPG in a combat zone isn't smart

Innocent possibly, but certainly not smart. Similarly if someone "innocently" walked up to that school next to Lanza.

Depends alot upon the rules of engagement. Taking out a wedding part that just happens to be in the same restaurant as a suspected terrorist is one thing. While taking out a meeting of many terrorists to plan strategy may have individuals for whom it can't be proven they are terrorists, is another. To me there are many shades of Gray in between being a Terrorist in the Act and being an Innocent.