According to your ethics, is violence against civilians ever justified?

[ZombieHorde]

I don't mean a person defending against attackers, I mean states and terrorist groups targeting civilians. Examples would include nuking Japan in WWII, the Holocaust, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, etc.

For the purpose of this poll, the violence against civilians is intentional, as opposed to accidental.

This poll was inspired by the following thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x1652774

Which way does your moral compass point?

Violence against civilians is against my ethics because I believe that mentality leads to the most destruction, even if we can think of isolated scenarios that involve killing few to save many.

Posting your religious affiliation along with your vote may be fun.

[muffin1]

1. No

Atheist

[LaurenG]

2. No, no violence.

edited to add I don't have a religous affiliation but I am bit woo, love Buddhist teachings, find common ground studying the worlds major religions, agree with much of what athiests say and was raised a Christian by the grandson of a Nazerene tent preacher and a Chritian Scientist mother.

[ZombieHorde]

3. No. Atheist. nt

[ananda]

4. However, I consider it a matter of universal ethics...

... something like the golden rule or Kant's categorical imperative.

[emulatorloo]

5. No.

[lumberjack_jeff]

6. Yes. Pirates, for instance, are civilians. n/t

[ZombieHorde]

10. I was including them as attackers. The people you are killing are trying to kill you.

Unless you sink their boat full of children. That would be targeting attackers and civilians.

[lumberjack_jeff]

18. Okay. Different example.

What would you have done, if anything, about the Tutsi/Hutu genocide?

"Civilians" <> "innocents"

[mike_c]

7. No. Atheist.

eom

[sinkingfeeling]

8. No. And I'm also an atheist.

[chrisa]

9. I voted yes, given certain circumstances.

For example, if a civilian picks up a gun and aims it at you.

Another example - Management of an enemy / terrorists' country or army that are working towards attempting to destroy you.

If this thread is talking about innocent people who just happen to be trying to live their lives, then no.

[ZombieHorde]

11. I mentioned that in the first line of my OP. I just underlined it hoping more would notice it.

Maybe I should bold as well.

[chrisa]

17. How do you feel about collaborators?

Example: Nazi Germany, where a civilian is actively giving the names of their fellow citizens for arrest. This can be stopped by taking them out.

Which would you support?

[ZombieHorde]

22. I would not take them out. I would work on defeating the German army.

Take over the government, and they will have no one to report to.

[chrisa]

25. How about if you knew that this person was about to give up the names

and locations of a group of people that you could save. This person is unarmed, and you can take them out before they give the names up, thus saving those families from a certain death. You cannot arrest this person, because not only would this endanger you and possibly draw unnecessary attention to you, but there is nowhere to hold this person. In this instance, would it be okay to kill a civilian?

Or, how about in another way, you're in Nazi Germany (or, if you want, some other horrible regime), and someone is going to give your name up as being one of the hated groups that are marked for death by the regime. Do you kill this civilian collaborator to save yourself?

[ZombieHorde]

37. If I was really frightened, I may commit an act of murder.

I am not a man of great courage, but I do believe a kill-civilian mentality has caused more harm than good.

[Llewlladdwr]

32. I'm not sure I buy that.

Are you really saying that if a collaborator was identifying resistance members, knowing that they would be hunted down and killed, they should still be treated as a civilian?

Would you feel the same if the collaborator was taking soldiers to people's doors?

[ZombieHorde]

38. How would the collaborator know, and how would we know the collaborator knew? nt

[BNJMN]

12. So you're asking if people here support 'nuking Japan in WWII, the Holocaust, & Pol Pot'?

Brave stand you're making here.
:D

[Aerows]

13. I hate to say it, but yes

I also think that many people who think they WOULDN'T commit an act of violence would under the right circumstances.

I'm probably going to sound like a horrible person, but I'm going to voice my opinion regardless. If there is a choice between the survival of my country and my family or the survival of some other country and some other family, chances are, I'm going to place the survival of my family and my country over the survival of some other one.

Is that an enlightened view point? Maybe not, but it's an honest one. I despise war, and I think we are involved in too many for all the wrong reasons, and that we are destroying our own country with the military spending. Nevertheless, I'm still going to be far more concerned about my family, my neighbors and my country than someone else's. That's why it pisses me off that we are more concerned about nation-building abroad than we are about nation-building at home. I'm sorry people are suffering, but there are plenty of people suffering here, too.

[laconicsax]

14. Hell no. n/t

[hifiguy]

15. No. Hell no. Atheist. nt

[dmallind]

16. Your examples are remarkably skewed

What about bombing German shipyards in WW2, knowing full well civilians were the ones building new U boats, or bombing railway lines to concentration camps knowing that civiliansd were driving thr trains?

[ZombieHorde]

21. I know, but those were the only ones that came to mind. I put the nuking of Japan first for that

reason. Many people believe nuking Japan was the most ethical thing to do in that situation.

I did not think of bombing German shipyards when I made my poll, but that is another good example of killing civilians.

I probably shouldn't post on DU before my first cup of coffee. I apologize for the skewed examples.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

19. “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy.” - Mohandas K. Gandhi

[readmoreoften]

26. +1

[Llewlladdwr]

29. It matters not at all to the dead...

but I would think that it might make a great deal of difference to the orphans and homeless whether the victors were totalitarian or democratic.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

30. I think that democracies have their fair share of orphans and homeless.

And, in some totalitarian regimes they are better looked after than in democracies.

[Llewlladdwr]

33. Please identify one. Thanks. NT

[PVnRT]

20. Only aggressive drivers and people who chew with their mouth open

[TriMera]

23. No. Agnostic. n/t

[AngryAmish]

24. In a total war yes

You have to break their economy and have to break their will.

It has been a long time this nation was in a total war.

[a la izquierda]

28. I think that's pretty much what US policy...

towards Latin American countries was between 1954 and 1996. But we weren't at total war, we just lent technical support, money and a hell of a lot of training to the military governments.

[readmoreoften]

27. Violence like poverty and wage theft support by current state policies?

Totally against it.

[ZombieHorde]

41. Awesome. nt

[mwooldri]

31. Generally no. (Anglican Christian)

The violence we're seeing in Syria for example. Heck no.

When a country is at war with another country this does change things. Normal civilians can at any time be considered to be in combat because they're typically all pressed into helping out with the war effort. Should the military target civilians in a war deliberately? Not really. Should civilians in a war scenario expect to be shot at, get bombed, etc? Definitely yes because morals may be different on both sides - it's a war and the sides can play dirty.

So summary: peacetime - never justified. Wartime - must avoid but understand that there will be civilian casualties, because one side or another may just want to bomb each other into oblivion.

[theaocp]

34. As Maddox said,

civil disobedience is STILL disobedience. :sarcasm:

[BigDemVoter]

35. No

Upbringing was liberal Christian/Anglican. Am now nomimally agnostic.

[dmallind]

36. I confess I never knew there were so many atheist deontologists

I suspect it's a political skew rather than theological though. I've been involved in quite a few organized atheist groups and even participated in a few debates on ethics and secularism, so it's not like I haven't looked into this. I've met exceptions of course, but a clear majority of nonbelievers before this poll have favored teleological eythical systems, where the soundness of a moral choice is based on the forseeable results rather than absolute rules. Somewhat ironically I have most often been in the minority because I am an act/rule utilitarian rather than a pure act. IOW I agree that there are general ethical rules that should be very rarely broken and only after considerable indications that breaking them will minimize harm. The more egregious the crime/harm involved, the greater the challenge to break the rule.

So for example I believe stealing is usually a poor moral choice, but I would steal in a heartbeat to avoid starvation for self or others, or even reduce significant risk of injury (lost in a blizzard in shirtsleeves, I would steal a coat, albeit with every intent of replacing or paying for it later).

Going up the scale I believe murder is usually a poor moral choice, but would reluctantly kill one to save the lives of several, given sufficient certainty of the several deaths.

It is even hypothetically possible to see where rape or child abuse or torture is a sound ethical choice (in fact we do this latter quite routinely to ourselves and our children - a root canal for example, or a quadruple bypass, can often cause pain very much in the realm of torture even under medical anaesthetics).

Killing civilians on purpose falls into this upper level of act/rule utilitarianism to me. You avoid it unless you can be pretty darn sure the harm if you don't do it will be worse. If you ARE sure though, how do you justify not making that choice. How do you tell 100 widow(er)s you could have saved their spouses by bombing the home where their ambushers were hiding, but did not because they had 10 civilians in that home as a human shield? I'm not too keen on the Hiroshima example because I don't think we can know with enough certainty what the alternative would have been. Maybe the Emperor would have called for surrender sooner than we expected. With all honesty I have no clue which way I would have gone then - I simply don't have access to the briefings etc. BUT I will say that if the nuke advocates were correct in saying that it would have been many years of street-by street slog with every able-bodied Japanese person a guerilla, and would have cost the lives of millions of allied soldiers and Japanese civilians, then yes even that many even that horribly lost to the bomb is a good moral choice. Without being much of an expert however I do question the second bomb so soon afterwards. You would have thought a couple of weeks of phone calls threatening to add a new city to the target list for every day of the 14 if he did not surrender would have gotten the attention of even the most unrealistic ruler.

But to say ANYTHING is completely off the table, no matter how bad the alternative and no matter how sure one could be that it would occur if we did not kill/torture/bomb or whatever, to me is abdicating moral agency and coldly refusing to prevent great harm for want of doing lesser harm, just to salve a personal conscience. I just couldn't do that.

[ZombieHorde]

39. My ethical disagreement with targeting civilians is not motivated by deontology,

it is motivated by utilitarianism. I believe history shows kill-civilian mentalities have done more more harm than good.

Microscopes (scenarios) are handy, but we need to step back and look at the whole picture as well.

[awoke_in_2003]

40. No, atheist...

surpising to see 31% have no problem with it.