But in our case the soldier coerced into joining a war of aggression by the fact his family is being held hostage kills an innocent 3rd party in order to save himself and under the “extreme circumstances of war”. The reason he joins the military and the reason he kills are not one and the same.
He is not a willing participant to the war, thus he has the right to defend himself with lethal force even against other unwilling participants of the war.
Most deserters never get caught.
A conscript even if he would rather be somewhere else, still probably takes some pride in serving and being a soldier. There is much less amount of coercion involved than it would take to bound a slave.
Everyone has the reasoning capacity to figure out these thing. The problem is they don’t use it. So how can they claim to care to know, if they don’t try to figure it out?
But it can not be irrelevant which state is burdened with the greater portion of the guilt.
Exactly to the level that the campaign is conducted for the sake of worthy goals it is permissible to be a part of such a campaign. Exactly to the level that the campaign is conducted for the sake of unworthy, unjust goals it is impermissible to be a part of such an effort.
To the extent that the German attack on Poland was about the self-determination of Germans in Poland it was permissible of Germans to take part in it. To the extent that the Polish defence against German attack was about denying the self-determination of Germans in Poland it was impermissible of Poles to take part in it.
A soldier fighting and killing in a campaign can not separate himself from the overall goals of the campaign. He can not aid its every goal, but then claim he was fighting for merely one of those goals. He was fighting for all of them (that means for all of the goals of the campaign he had the means that would enable him to figure them out).
Having to be drafted indicates that he are an unwilling participant in the war, thus he has the right to defend himself with lethal force. I think that there is a wide gulf between someone drafted and one who volunteers.
I dont know how you would know if this is true or not. But whether they get caught or not is irrelevent. They give up everything if they desert. They can never return home (at least for the length of the war). Also when you are in a foriegn country where you dont speak the language… where are you going to desert to? Locals will identify you as an enemy soldier, report you, have you captured, and then most likely imprisoned or executed. Once you are in, your options only get worse. So once again there really is no way out for a draftee that does not include giving up thier lives. Either literally or figuratively.
Many slaves took pride in being their masters best servant. Does that mean that all slaves relished being a slave? How about some slaves? Most? The fact is we cannot tell. The only way we can tell someones intentions is through voluntary action. Once you introduce the threat of violence, we are just guessing at their motivations. Same with the soldier.
I think you give people too much credit and yourself not enough.
Of course he can and he may be fighting for none of the states goals. That is what we have been talking about this whole time. The conditions and situations that would allow an individual to be absolved from guilt. Whether it is completely, a little, or not at all.
It is. The state is made up of individuals. It does not exist. We are examining individual behavior. Whether someone if fighting for the sake of the state (the use of force and violence to acheive a goal), fighting out of self defense (by being force into service by threat of violence), or some mixture of the two.
Of course it is true. Do you know of a single example of a country where comparing the figures for desertion and for people imprisoned for desertion are not hugely in favour of desertions? There are now for example several thousand deserters in the US, but nowhere near that number of people locked up for it.
It does not matter. It is not severe enough to make up for what you say is otherwise murder. Being away from home is less of a sacrifice than what they would exact on an innocent in order to be able to return home.
Do you really believe this? What would you say is the right course of action if you were placed in a position where you either have to kill someone or your finger will be broken? Obviously it is impermissible to kill someone to save your finger.
This is essentially the position the conscript is in. He is under some coercion, so he is permitted to defend himself to some extent. But certainly not to the extent where he commits greater aggression than the aggression perpetrated against him. So lets say that he (of course presuming he is serving the clearly aggressing army in an unjust war) can defend himself up to the point where he wounds the enemy. But if he kills him, then the mitigating circumstances are not big enough to cover for the whole severity of his action.
No, I do not. It is right there in the Bible somewhere. God gave everyone reason. It just needs to be used.
I think you are confusing the “why” and the “what for”. The reason why someone fights is up to him. And it can be a worthy goal even if the person fighting is fighting on the side of the aggressor. But the “what for” is not up to the soldier fighting. It is up to the generals and the politicians.
Let me illustrate. In the Russian Civil War in the Red Army served thousands upon thousands of officers were made up of former officers of the Tsarist Army. The reason why most of them served was because they were forced to. In many cases their families would be in danger if they refused to. However what they fought for was Bolshevism. There is no going around this. Their personal goals - preserving the lives of their families - were worthy but what they fought for and helped bring about was despicable and not up to them. So the soldiers fighting in a campaign can not ultimately be separated from the goals of the campaign they contributed to. Even if they are motivated by just one goal of the state’s war they fight for all its goals, not just the one that they like.
So to judge rights and wrongs you first need to judge the rights and the wrongs of the war itself.
How many? And where are you getting this information? Not trying to be difficult, I would just like to know.
I guess this is where we differ on the conscription issue. You equate this with just being away from home. Its much more than that to the average person. All that someone ever knew is taken away from them. To me and many, many people is only slightly less than losing our lives. But I think we may just have to agree to disagree on this point.
Yes. When someone is coerced into action, we only know that they were forced to act. That the act was involuntary. You veiw the threat of imprisonment, death, or exile as not enough of a threat to justify killing. I do. But it seems that you feel killing to protect others from death or imprisonment (your family) is more justifiable. It is more justifiable to defend others than yourself. I not so sure I agree. But I do understand where you are coming from.
I understand this point. However it is irrelevent to the soldier what the ultimate goal of the campaign is. His action is determined by the “why”. That is the only thing we can put him on trail for. His own action and whether he had good reason to do what he did or he had no good reason. We should do this for each soldier, officer, general, politician. The crimes associated with the “what for” are those of the politicians. Convict them of those crimes not the soldiers that they coerced into fighting thier war.
Convict the Bolshevics of the “what for” crimes and convict the soldiers of the “why” crimes. To hold a soldier accoutable for things outside his control, in my opinion, is unjust.
I disagree. To judge right and wrong we must look at the actions of individuals and the circumstances surrounding the individual action. The sins of a government (or more percisely the individuals that make up government) are thiers and should not be passed on to others.
“Justify” is really the wrong word to use. Even under my conditions aggression is still taking place. It is just recognising that it is a no-exit situation. But yours doesn’t seem like a no-exit situation. The person in question has an option. To let himself be exiled, imprisoned, or to join the army but refuse to defend himself with lethal force.
If threat of imprisonment, or exile is enough to make up for what would otherwise be murder, then why not the threat of stealing a carton of milk in your possession? Surely then the person joining the military has been coerced and is acting in an involuntary fashion, after all he only joined in order to save his carton of milk.
Do you have an answer for this problem? Can you explain without resorting to an arbitrary statement why someone who joined under the threat of having his milk stolen would be guilty of murder to kill someone in an unjust war, but someone who joined under threat of exile is not?
I have a non-arbitrary explanation for what I am saying. The person in my scenario exacts no more violence on others than the violence that would be exacted on him. What about you?
Surely there must be degrees between the fully willing and the fully unwilling combatants in the war? Someone who is taking part in the war under the threat of milk can not claim the same right to defend himself against defending combatants with the same means that somebody taking part in the war under the threat of life.
As a side note you seem to attribute to me something that is not my position. Unlike what you wrote the threat of death is sufficient for me, but it has to be a credible threat. There must be a high likelihood that it will be carried out. Else it counts as some type of lesser threat.
Let us not lose sight of how this branch of debate started out. Professional soldiers in the German-Polish war and to what extent it is permissible to voluntarily serve in a certain army. The answer is only to the extent that the army in question is not engaging in aggression. If one voluntarily joins an army that just by fighting is engaging in some sort of aggression, then he too just by taking lives as a part of this army is partaking in the aggression. A German soldier even if he is merely motivated by securing the self-determination of Germans in Poland is still partaking in the aggression that is the conquest of the whole of Poland. It is true that the Polish soldier likewise is partaking in the aggression of the Polish state against the Germans in Poland, but he actually does not have much of a choice. Because of the unfortunate existence of the Polish state about the only realistic way he can avert a greater evil of his whole country being conquered and subject to an extraordinarily brutal occupation is to partake in this lesser form of aggression. The German soldier on the other hand does not really need to volunteer to help conquer Poland in order to fight for the self-determination of Germans in Poland, no more than the Pole needs to conquer the whole of Germany to fight for the Poles on the other side of the border.
BTW, I really wouldn’t want to argue the Germany-Poland scenario as such, I only introduced it initially thinking it would be a non-controversial example of a war where one side was a clear aggressor and clearly far more guilty than the other. I hope that you will agree that it is possible that such a war occurs and if so you can just read Germany and Poland as state A and state B with the assumption that the state A is the clear aggressor but that the state B is not blameless as indeed by its very definition no state is.
That is not possible. You can not commit somebody for the “whys”. That would be introducing a category of a thought crime. Their motivation is their own. People can only be convicted of what they do, not of why they do it.
The said officers would not be convicted anyway, but someone who was willingly a soldier of that army in that war would be clearly guilty of counts of aggression even if he was personally motivated by notions of a better world, land reform or good wages.
So all unjust killing is murder and should be treated as such? An action performed under duress is treated the same as an action done on your free will?
No. Killing is killing. There is no “murder”. One who kills under duress is still a killer. However, the kind of duress may shift the responsive action against the person who applied the duress. Such as the case that Person A threatens to kill Person B if he does not kill Person C. Person A is the real danger. He wants to kill people. However, that judgement depends on how seriously the threat can be taken and what options Person B had to avoid both outcomes… which Marko said.
“Do you have an answer for this problem? Can you explain without resorting to an arbitrary statement why someone who joined under the threat of having his milk stolen would be guilty of murder to kill someone in an unjust war, but someone who joined under threat of exile is not?
I have a non-arbitrary explanation for what I am saying. The person in my scenario exacts no more violence on others than the violence that would be exacted on him. What about you?”
I agree with your assessment.
“If threat of imprisonment, or exile is enough to make up for what would otherwise be murder, then why not the threat of stealing a carton of milk in your possession? Surely then the person joining the military has been coerced and is acting in an involuntary fashion, after all he only joined in order to save his carton of milk.”
As you described above, because the milk threat is not on par with the threat to one’s life. I think we just disagree on the level of threat imprisonment or exile is. I think it is only slightly less than being killed. It seems you feel it is significantly less.
“As a side note you seem to attribute to me something that is not my position. Unlike what you wrote the threat of death is sufficient for me, but it has to be a credible threat. There must be a high likelihood that it will be carried out. Else it counts as some type of lesser threat.”
I have written that the threat of death doesn’t have to be credible?
“BTW, I really wouldn’t want to argue the Germany-Poland scenario as such”
Agreed, it specifically has nothing to do with my point, which is, that no matter the conflict there are bad guys on both sides. We have to examine each case individually and determine whether their specific circumstances justify their actions completely, partially, or not at all. We have to be careful about convicting people for crimes of the “state”. The state didn’t commit any crimes people did. The state did not aggress, people did. Just because the “state” aggressed doesn’t mean that every individual who is part of the state is guilty of the same.
“That is not possible. You can not commit somebody for the “whys”. That would be introducing a category of a thought crime. Their motivation is their own. People can only be convicted of what they do, not of why they do it.”
The “whys” are not the crimes. They are the mitigating circumstances that we examine to determine if their actions are understandable. Whether they are guilty of murder, manslaughter, or maybe guilty of nothing at all.
“No. Killing is killing. There is no “murder”. One who kills under duress is still a killer.”
Of course there is “murder”. We have terms like “murder” and “manslaughter” for a reason. They would not go away in a libertarian world. They describe the type of killing and by extension the type of restitution due.
However, the kind of duress may shift the responsive action against the person who applied the duress. Such as the case that Person A threatens to kill Person B if he does not kill Person C. Person A is the real danger. He wants to kill people.
Which this whole conversation has been about. So, tell me again how this is irrelevant?
However, that judgment depends on how seriously the threat can be taken and what options Person B had to avoid both outcomes… which Marko said.”
Some. If I am mistaken in some way please enlighten me. So far you have offered very little other than our discussion is irrelevent, killing is killing, and there is no murder.
“No. Killing is killing. There is no “murder”. One who kills under duress is still a killer. However, the kind of duress may shift the responsive action against the person who applied the duress. Such as the case that Person A threatens to kill Person B if he does not kill Person C. Person A is the real danger. He wants to kill people. However, that judgement depends on how seriously the threat can be taken and what options Person B had to avoid both outcomes… which Marko said.”"
Im not sure what you are taking issue with. You outlined in your post exactly what we have been discussing. Where the responsiblity lies when someones life is taken? Are there circumstances in which some, part, or all of the responsiblitiy can be shifted or forgiven?
What about when there are realistic ways of avoiding concription but no attempt is made to take advantage of thereof? Like faking injury, volunteering for the navy, or filling for conscientious objector?
Then it is much less understandable and you would have to bear a greater share of the responsiblility. But these are loopholes available to only a small number, if too many take advantage of the loopholes then they go away. You can volunteer for another branch, but if too many are they will just funnel you to where they need you. You can fake an injury, but if too many are coming up lame they will just change thier policy for injury. You can claim to be a conscientious objector, but if too many file they will just repeal thier policy. If people veiw the war as unjust, then they should do all in their power to avoid being used, but whats under thier control is limited in most cases.
I am curious how far apart we are. I think we agree that mitigating circumstances can lessen, and in some cases eliminate, a soldiers responsiblity, while we disagree on how much those circumstances will mitigate.