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If, say the President orders an airstrike that kills dozens of people, even if they are all terrorists, should he still be viewed as a killer/murderer?
Why? It's for "the good of the people", right?
Someone - you think - prawls into your property, you call police, police shows and shoots the guy. Are you the one who has to be blamed?
Yes. If you kill you are a killer by definition. You can rationalize it but it doesn't change the fact. Like in the Bob Dylan song, everyone who fights a war thinks God is on their side. Even if you kill in self defense or to protect others, you are stil a killer.
If, say the President orders an airstrike that kills dozens of people, even if they are all terrorists, should he still be viewed as a killer/murderer?
This is my opinion based strictly on the one example you have given above. If he orders it as a result of his malice towards them it is murder. If he orders it as a result of their malice towards others it is not murder, it is execution.
If, say the President orders an airstrike that kills dozens of people, even if they are all terrorists, should he still be viewed as a killer/murderer?
You can not use the terms interchangeably when using languages like English or Hebrew which have distinct words for killing and unlawful killing. With murder being only a subset of the many actions which result in the killing of humans by another human. So a President would definitely be a killer but probably not a murderer in this scenario.
If, say the President orders an airstrike that kills dozens of people, even if they are all terrorists, should he still be viewed as a killer/murderer?
If there is a reasonable belief that these terrorists are about to come and kill us, then it is self-defense. But it must be reasonable, this means they have to have done violent things and there must be reason to think we are likely a target they'll have.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Aleister Crowley
It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets. Voltaire
Not even in self-defense? If someone were about to kill, or even rape or torture (or even just after I caught him red-handed immediately after actually completing those acts) against family, friends, or even random strangers; I would definitely kill the perpetrator if necessary. In that case, the person forfeited his right to a conscious existence when he committed the act.
Even in capital cases in which there is no doubt about the perpetrator, any right to life the convicted has is still derivative, not intrinsic. Not intrinsic because strictly speaking, they forfeited their right to live when they committed the acts mentioned above; derivative because their right to live comes ONLY from the possibility of executing a wrongly convicted. Thus it's from the lives of others (i.e. wrongly convicted) that the perpetrator (assuming no witnesses or no 100% positive identification) has a right to live.
Extending the philosophical underpinnings of the question, may be of-interest to watch the documentary on Robert S. McNamara: "The Fog of War" (2003). It's quite watchable and well-done for mature teens to adults. Best Documentary Academy Award® winner, too.
McNamara needs no introduction for those over 60, and/or aware and active during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations. Us Gen X didn't hear much about him, we lived through Casper Weinberger and Lt. Colonel Oliver North instead.
He's sometimes vilified as the architect, enabler, facilitator, endorser, and more (or less) of the Vietnam War. No one man drives such things, but McNamara was a big influencer of policy. I know the very question posed by the OP bedeviled the man in his later years and he wrote on it extensively, changing his views gradually over the decades. I had the distinct impression, watching Fog of War, he was carrying a LOT of baggage around those decisions made w/LBJ (mostly) and the ramifications therein to thousands of deaths on both sides. By letter of the law, he, Kissinger, and others were probably guilty of war crimes. A philosophical point for another thread, perhaps.
I could never feel sorry for the guy, even at 85 years old when interviewed for the documentary he was self-evidently a 99.9% intellect. He knew what he was doing, using statistical methods to maximize bombing efficiency and achieve other goals (which turned out to be spurious). But I do think he obfuscated the morality of influencing and ordering military escalation until he was much older and more-reflective, running war like a "business" and only later seeing the outcomes up close and personal.
If, say the President orders an airstrike that kills dozens of people, even if they are all terrorists, should he still be viewed as a killer/murderer?
Yes...especially because they are not "all" terrorists. Many times bombs are dropped on families sitting having dinner and orther innocents. We rationalize it by calling it collateral damage but it is still murder.
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