War Based Killing Should Be Regarded As Murder

In every American war combined, about 1.2 million soldiers have died fighting in battle. Many look past the effects and consequences that going to war can lead to and every soldier is assumed to be a hero. Others believe that killing anybody, whether they are innocent or on a battlefield, is in no way honorable. Writers who protest war use imagery, irony, and structure to explain the negative effects of battle.

In the 1940’s a series of propaganda films titled Why We Fight were produced for the purpose of defining the enemies of World War 2 to justify the necessity of America’s involvement in war. Hitler needed to be defeated, Nazism had to be destroyed, and tyranny had to be stopped for the sake of the American way of life by any means necessary. How could society argue against America’s role in the world war when freedom was being threatened? As Martin Luther King Jr. said “Injustice anywhere is a threat to everywhere.” No questions asked, Americans mobilized in the name of liberty and freedom. However the 2005 documentary film Why We Fight directed by Eugene Jarecki is not a sequel or war propaganda. The film informs the audience and questions America 's military industrial complex that has since dictated policy since the victory of World War 2. With the help of narration, soundbites, and credible speakers Jarecki shines light on the pernicious impact of the armed industry on our government, army, and citizens.

A universal and unavoidable product of war is that soldiers get killed. Most people accept these killings as a necessary evil and that the ends justify the means. If the war is “justifiable”,the killing of enemy soldiers is deemed as a necessary triumph of what is right. If the war is unjustified, it is seen as honorable to fight for one's country, whether you agree with them or not. But antiwar pacifists do not take the lives of soldiers for granted. Everyone has a right to life and killing on the battlefield is a direct violation of that right. In a standard interpretation of basic rights, it is never morally justifiable to violate a right in order to produce some good. In war, the argument goes, kill or be killed, and that type of killing is killing in self-defense. But, according to anti-war pacifists, killing in the name of self-defense during times of war cannot be justified unless a) they had no other way to protect their

William Calley is a former U.S. Army officer who murdered 22 unarmed citizens. While he was speaking to the public he says, “when my troops were getting massacred and mauled by an enemy I couldn’t see, I couldn’t feel, I couldn’t touch…nobody in the military system described anything other than communist” (Simkin). The U.S. government and citizens made no effort to understand the feelings and thoughts of a soldier until Calley blurred out his and the other soldiers. Everyone should have been more considerate to know the army’s point of view of the situation and their actions before dwelling on the fact that the men killed citizens in the My Lai. Philip Caputo, a US marine, who also was accused of murdering innocent Vietnamese civilians wrote, “in a guerilla war, the line between legitimate and illegitimate killing is blurred. The policies of free-fire zones, in which a soldier is permitted to shoot at any human target, armed or unarmed, further confuse the fighting man’s moral senses” (“My Lai Massacre” History Learning). Since no one really checks in on the “rules and regulation” of what a soldier can do, they make assumptions whether the person is right or wrong based on how one feels instead of looking into what was

Deceased philosopher Bertrand Russell once said, “War does not determine who is right- only who is left”. Those left are the soldiers of the 1-502nd, specifically Bravo Company 1st plt, and the Janabi family and to a greater extent, the ever-changing global world we all live in today. The tragic events that conspired in a small Iraqi village became a microcosm of how leadership failures at every level shaped the actions of a few soldiers who committed atrocious acts. One can also see how a high operational tempo, along with prolonged violence and death, has on a person’s psyche. It is the ugly side of war that the average American citizen may not want to hear or talk about. For a soldier, it is inevitably what they train their

John Wayne was a 21-year-old when he was first drafted into the war. The war at that time seemed scary to him. He was the puny, little weakling on the force. But, who would’ve known that five years into the war, he became one of the strongest people on the force. Now, the war is slowly coming to an end. Both sides barely have any supplies. So, they agreed to do one last battle. A battle to the death. As the teams gathered at the battlefield, they could so the other teams weak force. The troops were injured, hungry, and depressed. But they held on strong. As the sides got ready, a gunshot was heard in the distance, signaling for the battle to begin. Now, John had thought that they had more ammo and weapons, but boy were they wrong.

Equal rights is possibly the biggest issue in the United States. For the common good, people who are drafted are responsible to fight regardless if they want to or not. Sometimes a soldier goes to war for the common good but in return the people may be angry at the solder for doing what they had to do. People should fight for individual rights because everybody deserves to have a choice to go to war or not. One soldier once said “My Country asked me to go, I went. I did what was expected of me as an American(Memories of Vietnam).”

There are other people that argue that, they are fighting for what is right. Which is a great argument to have, but it is one thing to argue that on a personal scale but when whole nations get involved that notion becomes a little more hazy. In Alexander Moseley’s article Just War Theory he quotes Michael Walzer, a American political theorist and author of books such as “Just and Unjust Wars” and “Spheres of Justice”. Walzer’s view of killing and the justification for killing anyone is this: “...Modern warfare dissolves the possibility of discrimination: civilians are just as necessary causal conditions for the war machine as are combatants, therefore, they claim, there is no moral distinction in targeting an armed combatant and a civilian

Therefore, they should be forced to fight to protect their own lives, but to be able to do that, they need to separate “the act of killing” and “the act of murder” from each other during the wars to justify what they are doing. However, after the wars are ended, and they find the private time to think about their pasts, especially their roles in battlefield, they realize what they have done during the war. As Holbrook tells his own experience, “I fought in Vietnam and helped kill dozens of people. A third of the century later, I am still haunted by that experience” (1). Its reason is that they develop empathy with the people they fought in battlefield, and understand the situations that dead people’s families at the opposite side are in, and this makes their psychology to become traumatic which is caused by regret.

As a citizen of the United States, I am part of an institution that has been, and is currently, killing people. Whether or not all or some of these killings are ethically defensible is a difficult question to answer and most people simply never confront the issue. I will evaluate literature on the topic, identify the different justifications for killing in time of war and decide if they legitimize our actions. After describing some compelling arguments, I will defend my own position that pacifism is the only ideal which mankind should embrace.

“War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children. This famous quote is from James Earl “Jimmy” Carter, Jr., who served as the 39th President of the United States. It implies that war can be justified under strict circumstances where it can be necessary, but it is still abhorrent. War is defined as a state of armed conflict between different countries or different groups within a country. Justification refers to the action of showing something to be right or reasonable. War brings many negative and catastrophic impacts not just to the country, but to the people living in the country as well, which this paper

War is many things. It may be many different things depending on each individual. Many soldiers get trained so their mentality is to characterize their opponents as less than human, so their lives lose all worth. Some soldiers however, are not prepared for this, even though they have been trained. One thing is training for it, another thing is actually killing a human being. As they kill more people, it becomes normalized for them. All they have seen changes their mind, while all of their dreams get swept aside by bloody hands of the hypnotized while they carry the cross of homicide. But why kill other strangers? What’s in it for the soldiers? War feeds the rich while it buries the poor. Rich people are power hungry, selling soldiers in human grocery store, using them as their little puppets who obey their master, making them go around killing each other in order to determine who is right, but in the end, war determines who is left. “The Man I Killed” by Tim O’Brien shows how soldiers who commit violence become traumatized and how that changes over time.

War, a horrible and destructive force that has existed since the beginning of man and has been used for a variety of reasons. From petty disputes over land or resources to civilizations based on war and sometimes to protect the innocent. But can a war be truly justified and can it be controlled?

During the 20th century America has been involved in many conflicts that have led to war or the taking up of arms against other humans and nations. Although the vast majority of Americans have blindly accepted these actions throughout the century, more and more people are seeing war as morally wrong. Reasons for this epiphany are based off of a variety of things and encompass many other aspects related to war and killing examples include: due to moral and ethical principles, objection to war due to strong religious beliefs, the objection to violence due to the same ideals above, objection to the government's use of force, and the objection to the use of weapons of mass destruction. Being a conscientious objector is fairly uncommon in the United States military but there are those who have served have identified as one.

Jus in Bello falls between two broad categories of discrimination and proportionality. Discrimination and proportionality are key factors that must be considered when engaging in war. For example, Michael Walzer argues, “war should only occur between combatants – soldier to soldier and noncombatants should be shielded from harm”. 2 Essentially, this means during times of conflict only legitimate targets should be targeted, combatants should distinguish against whom is attacked and should not include innocent bystanders. Furthermore, Alexander Moseley states, “In waging war, it is considered unfair and unjust to attack indiscriminately since non-combatants or innocents are deemed to stand outside the field of war”. 3 Unfortunately, this can be difficult at times since it may be hard to distinguish a combatant from a non-combatant especially since they do not always wear a uniform or carry arms, making it impossible to distinguish between them.