A guest post

One of the Philosophy 310 students asks the following question to you cadets. Lauren asks:

"After our a close examination of just war theory with the legalist paradigm, jus ad bellum, jus in bello, Westphalia, The Moral Warrior, the focus on why you serve the state, is killing ever justified, etc. etc., it seems that a considerable amount of moral reasoning plays into the military on both a legal and personal level. As a class we go through scenarios on how to defend our position and explain the greater good we’re trying to accomplish as military leaders to, say, a hippie. It all seems pretty rational and reasonable to me. But why is it, then, that a considerable amount of the cadet and pilot population seems to have no grasp of the morality of the issues at hand. You’ve seen it, maybe you even get wrapped up in it and join the fun. One of the more popular (outside of Captain Strawser’s 310) responses to “why do you want to be a pilot” is “so I can blow shit up” and I’ve heard on more than one occasion from peers things like “I can’t wait until I graduate and can go kill people”. I’m not exaggerating, this is a real quote. Most of the time these people can’t even attempt to justify what they’re saying but sometimes I get the ‘but they’re not people they’re terrorists’ responses. I’ve talked to fighter pilots on ops and here for career day and many of them brag about killing people on the ground and in the air and dropping bombs on large targets. In a Law class last year a retired fighter pilot guest speaker complained about LOAC to the class saying that the proportionality laws merely got in their way. The best example I can think of if you don’t believe me is the video clips. They show them in a-hall. It’s a fighter and bomber clip with the most hardcore, heavy metal background music demonstrating air power with endless buildings blowing up left and right or pilots taking out people running around on the ground. And what do we do? We get excited, pumped up and start clapping or even cheering. In basic training on the fourth of July they showed a clip of bombs going off in the desert with that ‘brought to you courtesy of the red white and blue’ country music hit. People cheered. It seems like fighter pilots and cadets never even think about someone being inside that other airplane or that building or that truck. At the Academy we are in large distanced from the weight of killing. Most cadets don’t take killing people seriously because they’re ‘terrorists’ or civilians in the close proximity of terrorists. Initially, I was disgusted with the military for being so eager to kill people and not even weighing the seriousness of dropping bombs on cities. It is too easy to think of blowing up a truck as being a video game with today’s technology. I wrestled the idea of my commitment to serving the state because I didn’t want to be on a team with people like that. I see it as being a feeding frenzy for blood thirsty wanna-be hard core soldiers because they get so excited about killing people. I might be missing the point here and these people are just excited about the greater good and helping their country. But please, tell me what you think is ging on here and explain why it’s so easy to miss the point."

An ethical dillema... selling out to help the needy?

You work in a decision-making role in a community organization that works with deprived children. The organization faces a serious financial shortfall due to cuts in government funding it previously relied on and may need to cut back on its important work.
However, the organization has been approached by a major corporation offering to provide funding in support of its work. As part of the deal, the corporation has asked that it be arranged for some of the children to appear in a series of advertisements highlighting the 'good works' of the corporation.
The funding would be enough to not only overcome the current funding shortfall, but would also enable more work to be undertaken to help needy children. But to get the money your organization will have to put the children in the advertisements of this large corporation.

What do you do?

Horses... cows... is there a moral difference?

So check out this article from earlier in September.
Here.

Basically, the House passed a bill to stop the slaughtering of Horses in the US. What is curious is that no where in the article is the justification for such a ban ever even given. One can only assume that the writers (and passers) of the bill think that there is something wrong with slaughtering horses. But then I have to ask: What is the difference between slaughtering a horse and a cow?? Is there really any significant moral difference? I can't imagine there could be. Any takers?

Logic question

Check out this funny clip from the Daily Show
Here.

At one point Jon Stewart shows a Bill O'Reily clip and then mocks Bill's reasoning ability. From what I can tell, Jon's right: Bill's comments on the torture situation with Abu Ghraib constitute a logical fallcy... can you see it? I believe there is actually a formal fallacy and an informal fallacy in his argument. See if you can point it out.

It happened again...

More Retired Generals came out against Rumsfeld yesterday.
See here.

What do you think? Is this any different than when the slew of them came out against the SecDef earlier in the Spring? It seems a bit different in this respect at least: it was at a Senate Committee meeting... but it was a Democratic Policy meeting... so is this just election cycle politics? More of the disgruntled Generals voicing legitimate complaints? And, of course, what implications does this have for on-going tough questions like the breakdown of trust between the civilian authority and military leadership?

Should we change our torture laws?

So check out this interesting animated political cartoon regarding the current debate going on in DC regarding US ratification of international laws (and the US's own laws) regarding war crimes and torture.
Here
If you disagree with the argument, first clarify what point you think the cartoonist is trying to make, then tell us why you disagree.

While you are at it, here's another one this same cartoonist did on the genocide in Sudan and how the slow pace of the UN only makes the situation worse.
Here

See what happens when you have a standing military?

We've got a coup on our hands...
Thailand's constitution just can't seem to hang around for very long at a stretch.
This raises the intriguing question... how come the U.S. constitution persists?

Why not UAVs?

Here's a question?
Why don't we just move our Air Force technology to all remotely-manned planes? If a remotely controled plane is shot down, no pilot dies.... We could (with the proper investment in the research) improve the present technology to the point where the pilot flying the plane remotely could have the full range of visual awareness & control he/she would have in the cockpit (perhaps even better!).

Read this short piece on the debate:
Here.

What do you think? Do UAVs raise any ethical issues that a manned plane does not?

The Cold War, the GWOT, and a "long war" perspective

Here's a good read. It certainly relates to our discussions lately and issues surrounding US war policy more generally.

The (HUGE) US Nuclear Arsenal

It's a well known fact that the US has a massive nuclear arsenal -- still very much armed and active today. In light of the recent concerns over Iran's nuclear threat, perhaps we should pause and examine our own nuclear program. Here are some brief notes on its current strength:

See here and here.

Since the end of the cold war, there have been repeated calls for a major standdown of the large US nuclear arsenal.

See here, here, and here's another one.

My questions for you are:
What justifications do we have for having a nuclear force?
Why do we feel entitled to possessing nuclear arms yet we scream that Iran (and other such nations) cannot possess similiar weapons?
If you can find an argument for why we should be so entitled, can you offer any justification as to why we need a nuclear force of this massive size?
Do we really need such a monstrous nuclear arsenal?