Killing Soldiers

Ethics and International Affairs

Volumn 20, Issue 4, 2006, Pages 455-475

  Øverland, Gerhard ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 57749128208     PISSN: 08926794     EISSN: 17477093     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1747-7093.2006.00045.x     Document Type: Article

References (31)

1. A recent example was presented by Michael Walzer in Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument with Historical Illustrations, 3rd ed. (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
2. According to Walzer, the “first principle of the war convention is that, once war has begun, soldiers are subject to attack at any time (unless they are wounded or captured)” (p. 138). This represents the standard view of the modern just war tradition, and it corresponds well with current international law.
3. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 41.
4. According to Walzer there is no license for war-makers, yet he maintains that “there is a license for soldiers, and they hold it without regard to which side they are on; it is their first and foremost war-right” (p. 36).
5. This accords with what Jeff McMahan has labeled the “Orthodox View” in “Innocence, Self-Defense, and Killing in War,” Journal of Political Philosophy 2, no. 3 (1994), p. 195.
6. For the view that rights are claims against others, see Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 188, who argues that “most cases when we say that someone has a ”right’ to do something, we imply that it would be wrong to interfere with his doing it, or at least that some special grounds are needed for justifying any interference.”
7. For a treatment of rights as claims and privileges, see Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, Walter Wheeler Cook, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 35–50.
8. McMahan, “Innocence, Self-Defense, and Killing in War,” p. 198.
9. See, for example, McMahan, “Innocence, Self-Defense, and Killing in War”
10. Jeff McMahan, “The Ethics of Killing in War,” Ethics 114, no. 4 (2004)
11. Richard Norman, Ethics, Killing and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
12. David R. Mapel, “Innocent Attackers and Rights of Self-Defense,” Ethics & International Affairs 18, no. 1 (2004).
13. Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 41.
14. David Rodin, “Beyond National Defense,” Ethics & International Affairs 18, no. 1 (2004), p. 95.
15. The right to resort to armed force in the just war tradition has been defined through seven moral concepts: just cause, competent authority, right intention, reasonable hope of success, overall proportionality of good over harm, last resort, and the goal of peace (see James Turner Johnson, Morality and Contemporary Warfare [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999], pp. 27–38). The observation that people can form private armies indicates that the requirement of right authority should be given up. The focus on right intention on the part of the agent is misleading as well, but is not something I take up in discussion here.
16. Jeff McMahan, “War as Self-Defense,” Ethics K International Affairs 18, no. 1 (2004), p. 75.
17. See Jeff McMahan, “Self-Defense and the Problem of the Innocent Attacker,” Ethics 104 (1994), p. 288.
18. Mapel, “Innocent Attackers and Rights of Self-Defense,” p. 81.
19. “Innocent Attackers and Rights of Self-Defense,” p. 83.
20. For an earlier account of this proposal, see my “Self-Defense Among Innocent People,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 2, no. 2 (2005).
21. See Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, p. 127.
22. Just and Unjust Wars.
23. For a similar view, see Mapel, “Innocent Attackers and Rights of Self-Defense,” p. 83.
24. For an opposite view, see David Rodin, War and Self-Defense (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 88–99.
25. Rodin, War and Self-Defense, p. 88.
26. As for innocent threats, there might be reasons for singling out innocent threats who ultimately have become threats through responsible actions-for instance, by taking up driving and thereby taking the risk of becoming a threat to others if one's brakes fail, and those who have done nothing to become a threat to others (see Jeff McMahan, “The Ethics of Killing in War,” and “The Basis of Moral Liability to Defensive Killing,” Philosophical Issues 15 [2005]).
27. For a related discussion, see McMahan, “Self-Defense and the Problem of the Innocent Attacker,” p. 281.
28. See Gerhard Øverland, “Killing Civilians,” European Journal of Philosophy 13, no. 3 (2005).
29. See George Fletcher, “The Individualization of Excusing Conditions,” in Michael Louis Corrado, ed., Justification and Excuse in the Criminal Law (New York: Garland Publishing, 1994), p. 145.
30. Roderick T. Long, “The Irrelevance of Responsibility,” in Ellen F. Paul, Fred D. Miller, and Jeffrey Paul, eds., Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 145,125.
31. Be aware that accepting that soldiers have an equal right to kill does not imply that one holds that soldiers always have a right to kill other soldiers. Necessity and proportionality may very well make it impermissible to do so. Proponents of an equal right to kill may therefore also regret that “the Iraqi army disintegrated in a chaotic retreat from Kuwait, and were mown down by Allied air strikes as they retreated. Iraqi military casualties were estimated by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency to be between 50,000 and 150,000” (Norman, Ethics, Killing and War, p. 202).