Killing in a War: Murder?
 

Before you read this: if you're offended at all by this, please feel free to tell us why or go enjoy the rest of TFP. This thread isn't intending to call any TFP member a murderer, but rather explore what "murder" means in the context of war (which I see as a political question).

Murder:
Law. the killing of another human being under conditions specifically covered in law. In the U.S., special statutory definitions include murder committed with malice aforethought, characterized by deliberation or premeditation or occurring during the commission of another serious crime, as robbery or arson (first-degree murder), and murder by intent but without deliberation or premeditation (second-degree murder).
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/murder

Legally, war usually isn't murder, but what if laws were passed that allowed killing your wife for cheating or killing your children for not obeying? Would those cease to be murder just because they were legal?

I don't think so, and expanding that concept, I'd say that killing in war should be questioned as murder. At what point does killing become murder, or more specifically, at what point does killing become wrong?

I am a firm believer in St. Augustine of Hippo's concept of a "just war" (and that includes killing) and the four conditions that must be met:

1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

3. there must be serious prospects of success;

4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.

IMO, no war in which the US participated or initiated since WW II have met these conditions.

Very interesting, and I agree with the comment about wars since WWII.

So, in your opinion, it depends on how just the war in question is? So WWII would not qualify, but Grenada (for example) might.

Armed combat that meets those conditions is acceptable to me for the "greater good"...Granada was pure theater for the neo-cons and was probably an impeachable offense. WWII certaintly met the first three conditions...some might argue the use of the atomic bomb violated the fourth condition. I have always been troubled by that.

The invasion and occupation of Iraq meets none of these conditions.

The issue of innocent victims in just wars..."collateral damage" is far too sanitary a description of some atrocities of war....the millions who suffer the gravest consequences of war, both during and after the military action (land mines, depleted uranium....), but these would be violations of the fourth condition as well.

I suppose it's all murder when you get down to the semantics of the word itself, whether it's a crime of passion, self-defense, or wartime.

So I think essentially your thread comes to "is killing murder", which seems to be a bit like an obvious tautology.

I do think that despite being murder, there is a legal and ethical concept of "justifiable homicide."

Killing someone in self-defense, for example, is something that I will deign is murder with the side note that it's a justified murder.

I think the concept of murder is mostly a legal concept. Given it being a legal concept it is defined by those who make laws, common law precedents and community standards.

From a religious point of view, murder is defined by one's religious view.

For the purposes of war, ultimately the winner decides what was murder and what was not murder. Organized military entities should have defined standards of conduct, including defining the difference between murder and combat, including the consequences of murder. We can not expect all military organizations to have the same standards.

I think killing is killing. I'm sure many (if not most) soldiers who have killed in times of warm convince themselves that it was not murder, but I would certainly be haunted by it forever

Reminds me of a song off the most recent Drive-By Truckers album:

THAT MAN I SHOT

That man I shot, He was trying to kill me
He was trying to kill me He was trying to kill me
That man I shot I didn’t know him
I was just doing my job, maybe so was he

That man I shot, I was in his homeland
I was there to help him but he didn’t want me there
I did not hate him, I still don’t hate him
He was trying to kill me and I had to take him down

That man I shot, I still can see him
When I should be sleeping, tossing and turning
He’s looking at me, eyes looking through me
Break out in cold sweats when I see him standing there

That man I shot, shot not in anger
There’s no denying it was in self-defense
But when I close my eyes, I still can see him
I feel his last breath in the calm dead of night

That man I shot, He was trying to kill me
He was trying to kill me, He was trying to kill me
Sometimes I wonder if I should be there?
I hold my little ones until he disappears

I hold my little ones until he disappears
I hold my little ones until we disappear
And I’m not crazy or at least I never was
But there’s this big thing that can’t get rid of

That man I shot did he have little ones
That he was so proud of that he won’t see grow up?
Was walking down his street, maybe I was in his yard
Was trying to do good I just don’t understand

what is it called when under conditions NOT specifically covered by law??

The war is irrelevant to weather the killings are murder or not. In the end it comes down to each and every kill. If a marine is defending his unit or himself and has to kill an aggressor then it is not murder. If a marine goes to his friend watch me get this raghead and shoots someone for no reason it is murder. Our troops are in a very dangerous place, one I wish they were not in. In order to survive in this place they have to defend themselves with deadly force. Yes if they were not there there would be no killings but they are there. If you want to pin the murder tag on someone put it on the people that put them there in the first place.

Murder is just the term for illegal homicide. Therefore, any time you have open, armed conflict killing an enemy combatant isn't murder. Killing a villager through malice or neglect would be.

what if the armed conflict was never a declared war?

Not relevant. Open armed conflict is my statement.

Just for the record, it doesn't matter if it's an official war or a police action, IMO.

Agreed, though I do tend to fall in line with just war theory at the same time. I think we'd have to get some vets in here to shed more light on the question... Sorry for this interruption, but you like Drive-By Truckers?!!! :thumbsup: You're the first TFP'er I've met (hell, the first person outside of my anthropology department, where I was introduced to them) who even KNOWS who Drive-By Truckers are. Nice one! They are one of my long-time favorite bands.

Hey, I like the Drive-By Truckers too! They were a frequent choice of my coworkers at a former job--The Dirty South was one of our favorite albums to play.

/threadjack

I would tend to agree that there is such a thing as a just war-- although I might not necessarily define it or limit it in quite the ways St. Augustine does. I tend to think just wars are fairly few and far between, although a number of wars that ended up being just weren't entered into for just reasons.

But even in a just war, there can be murder. World War II, in my opinion, was a just war, and yet there were murders and even atrocities committed by Allied troops as well as Axis troops. The big difference between these war crimes and crimes committed by soldiers of the Western Powers in later wars is that the ones in WWII were most often prosecuted when discovered. To some degree, these kinds of war crimes are inevitable. Wars can be just, in the sense that a nation may have no other choice but to fight, or else be destroyed, or be party by silent acquiescence to the destruction of other innocents, and yet, for all the necessity of such a war, wars are simply never a good thing.

I have known and respected a number of men who have served their country in armed combat, and whether they felt the wars they fought in were just or not, none of them thought that war was a good thing, or anything but a last resort, that-- if effective-- was nonetheless detrimental to all who fought in it.

What I would say is that, since we know that war inevitably breeds excessive violence and inhumanity-- even within the parameters of its own context-- it falls to the responsible nations to:

1. Enter into wars as infrequently as possible, being certain to exhaust all other options before resorting to all-out armed conflict.

2. Prepare for responsible combat: do everything possible to avoid the killing or injuring of civilians. This includes formulating strategies and developing technologies designed to win with minimum civilian casualties, even at the cost of prolonging the conflict.

3. Arrange intensive oversight: military police should be given wide latitude to investigate complex or suspicious incidents, such as those involving civilian deaths or injuries, death or injuries of captured enemy soldiers, or of imprisoned non-military combatants. Military authorities should be constantly vigilant to discourage unethical unit behavior or command patterns.

4. Soldiers should be frequently given psychological evaluations and support, in order to help them deal with what they experience, and to ensure that soldiers who are overly traumatized, inclining to random rageful behavior, or prone to cruelty, are rotated out of front-line service or duties placing them in proximity to enemy civilians.

Those are only a few key points, of course. And in the end, we can strive to take the murder out of war, but we can never entirely succeed. The only thing we can do is, at the same time we are researching better battle technology to minimize unintended casualties, and implementing strategies to ameliorate the destructive impact of war on the lives both of civilians and soldier, we must devote equal energy and resources to trying to eliminate war altogether from practice on earth.

Killing. Or homicide.

there's laws on this. Soldiers have combat immunity, but don't have immunity outside combat. At least that's my recollection of how it works.

This is more about political and ethical theory, not law. Legally, it's not murder unless they breach the rules of their country (for the US, the UCMJ).

I suppose deadly force during war-time is technically sanctioned killings managed under military codes of conduct (ideally). Outside of war or militarily sanctioned engagements, isn't murder considered to be the willful or illegal taking of life under civil law?

Often it just comes down to basic survival for those under fire.

Sure, it's all murder really, though separated by varying degrees. Let's not dance around the issue and just call a spade a spade. Whether killing for sport, self-defense, war, robbery etc, it's all murder.

So Jorge, it's the same to you if you kill a man who's wielding an axe trying to kill a 2year old girl... than the guy who kills because he enjoys it?

Sorry there Kant, there is no moral imperative.

So you wouldn't consider the intervention in South Korea to be justified according to those laws?

1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
Compare North vs. South Korea. There is a certain, lasting, and grave difference in quality of life for those living there


2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
There were extensive peace talks and negotiations, North Korea opened the war Blitzkrieg style. It's hard to stop a tank with 13months of talking

3. there must be serious prospects of success;
We won.

4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.
The evil was not eliminated, but it was at least contained. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives, but this is much less than innocents who have died from starvation/torture/executions on the Northern border alone. Imagine the carnage if they had taken the entire peninsula.

Seems worthy to me.

Was it difficult ignoring "Sure, it's all murder really, though separated by varying degrees."?

No, I saw it. His statement of "it's all murder" was incorrect. It's all killing would be a correct statement, not murder.

It's a good question Seaver. Yes, in the sense of action, as in the act of murder or killing. But no, because there are varying degrees of intent or motive which would lead us to things like justifiable etc.

But on principle, I feel that all killing is murder. Note that I am not saying if it's right or wrong or if it's good or bad. There is no value judgment here. Only defining an act or series of acts.

Murder, by the word is extremely malicious. Killing, is neutral.

I've killed plenty of animals, for food mainly (Venison is nutritious and delicious). However I love nature and animals. I've killed bugs, but I feel no anger towards them (I even find them pretty interesting).

I have never murdered anything. Nothing in the heat of passion wanted that thing to exist from this plane of reality. Nothing killed simply for my amusement, nothing for my shear thrill of killing. Nothing malicious.

That is where the line is disjunct. You say it's all murder to you, well that's great but you're changing the meaning of the word to fit your argument. I can't say any color in the spectrum is the same as the color red. Yes red is a color, and shades get extremely close to shades of other colors. However, as close as red and yellow can get to each other they are distinct colors.

I hope you get my analogy.

I don't think killing can ever be neutral. One who kills is either malicious, apprehensive, or ignorant, etc. Even the axe child-murderer feels pain and suffering, and perhaps wishes not to die. How can killing him or her be neutral? It might not be murder to kill in this case, since it wouldn't necessarily be malicious. But neutral? I think not. [EDIT: Even on the microbiological level, organisms live and die based on the human body's essential functions. Even this isn't neutral. There is a function being filled. The same goes for agriculture, where millions of living things die just in the production and harvesting of grain. Much of this I would classify as ignorant, as we don't tend to think of these things. To be neutral would imply that we want nothing to do with the process at all, which isn't the case.]

In wartime, I think it's the same. As a soldier in combat, it's often "kill or be killed." Following orders, defending yourself, securing an area, etc., isn't necessarily malicious, but it very well could be. This is a moral quagmire. I doubt it would be useful to call into question whether a nation's entire army are murderers.

But this thread seems to me to be more about understandings legalese. Is this more a legal question or a philosophical one? Once I get a better feel, I'll change my tack.

So when you pull weeds out of your lawn, you feel malicious?

I'm not saying soldiers feel nothing when they kill, so don't get me wrong. I'm saying there are varying degrees within the word kill, it can be resentful/angry/regretful/remorseful/etc.

If a loved one was going to die a long, slow death and asked you to kill them is that equal to murder? I say no, it's a loving act to end the pain and therefore kill is a better term.

Clearly this is about killing human beings, Seaver.

Yeah, but homicide, manslaughter and murder each mean something very different - not just legally but morally. That's why we evaluate each one differently. It's not "all murder." It's all homicide, but there are accidental blameless homicides, negligent homicides and intentional homicides. We think of each one in a different way - and we should.

Well then, to start again, according to the definition of murder in the op, no, not all killing could be construed as murder, at least in the legal sense.

I will amend my previous post from murder to killing.

I may not have made it clear in the OP, but I'm asking about whether or not it's murder from a moral standpoint, and the political and social relevance of that opinion.

Okay, see, you need to provide a list of wartime scenarios. There is no single or simplified signifier for "war."

How about every war over the past 100 years? Would it apply to France in WWI? Would it apply to Nazi Germany? Would it apply to the US in Grenada? The third Persian Gulf War?

You are being too universal, Willravel. You are treating armies as single entities when instead they are made up of individuals. The actions of each individual is what matters here, not the collective action of the group. We could talk about the group, but it would be a difficult approach.

What is at issue is whether an individual act of killing during a war is murder. Well, not everyone in a war is killed under the same circumstances. You're not clear on how we should approach this.

If we get too specific the thread becomes too big. Estimate.

If we stay too vague, the thread goes nowhere.

But going back to your OP, there is the legal definition of murder (killing unlawfully) and there is the moral definition (killing brutally or inhumanely). The latter suggests that there might be other ways to kill. Perhaps the swift death of aggressors given by someone defending themselves or others?

Is there such thing as an illegal war? Is there such thing as a legal one?

What is the pretext for this thread, Will? Are you willing to go as far as to say that the Iraq "war" is illegal and therefore wholesale murder?

Killing becomes wrong when the ends are for something other than the support and/or restoration of harmony, or for the defense of human rights and dignity.

This is really a matter of personal philosophy, I reckon. Personally, I figure all killing is wrong; sometimes it's necessary, but that doesn't make it right.

For evidence that this isn't true, see Martian's post right before mine.

There are differences within the war.

If two pilots are engaged in air-to-air combat, one kills the other in said combat it is killing.

If the pilot ejects is alive floating down in a parachute, and the other pilot strafes said 'chuter it probably constitutes murder.

It gets hazy when you then include if a pilot strafing combatants on the ground. They are all armed, and can fire back at the plane, but the parallels are clear when you look at the parachuter.

The devil is in the details. You wish to be black/white on this issue, in which Guru is absolutely correct... the discussion goes no where.

But, you see, we avoided compete vagueness. :)

Moreover, we haven't quite gotten far enough.

Martian, killing can be considered an act that is always wrong (think karma), but it doesn't mean it is always murder. What do you think of the legal/moral distinctions?