Are there Really any Innocents?

[Thanda]

I've always wondered about the term "innocents" with regard to war.

One always speaks of innocent civilians and how an armed group should avoid harming them. But the question is, if you live in what you consider a democracy, are there really any innocents other than children? Are the innocents not the ones who chose the politicians? Who finance the army? How innocent are they really? Ignorant, maybe. But innocent?

I believe when you become an adult and thus a fully functional member of society your innocence is not merely tied to your ignorance or you lack of doing anything. I believe you actually have to work for your innocence. If your country conducts unjust wars in your name and by the means that you have given them (through the constitution, other laws and regulations, elections, financing through taxes etc.) then your silence or quiet disapproval does not earn you innocence.

Who, if a person came into their house and beats up their child while they did not try to do anything to prevent it, would call themselves innocent? Perhaps by the high standards of a court of law you might get away with calling yourself innocent - but certainly no other right thinking person would regard you as such.

I don't know what all the people in the world are fighting for in the various wars but I find it disingenuous when an aggrieved group of people fight by killing civilians that we find it easy to label it terrorism and say they are killing innocents. Often that group of people who fight by killing innocents don't have the fire power to match the enemy they are fighting against army for army and are doing what they can to shake their opposition.

In connection with this I am reminded of the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa. The ANC (the first liberation movement) was started in 1912. For decades they tried dialogue and other peaceful methods of engaging with the Apartheid government to try get freedom (one of their leaders - Albert Luthuli - even won the Nobel Peace prize). When Mandela came in he realised that this method was not working and started an armed wing of the party (Mkhonto we'Sizwe). Now it was clear that if the ANC gathered it's militia on a plain somewhere and declared war that they would be crushed by the nuclear armed South African defense forces. So what could they do? Well they engaged in guerilla warfare and bombed various places including a bank. Some civilians died - they were terrorists (the US recently removed Mandela from their list of terrorists).
The armed struggle was not intended to defeat the defense force by might of arms. It was meant to degrade the morale of the opposition, to make the lives of white people whose government was oppressing blacks as difficult and uncomfortable as possible so that they start seriously considering the plight of black people.

I do not believe in intentionally killing civilians a group is necessarily killing innocents. Being a civilian does not make you innocent (even if you're ignorant), especially if you live in what can be described as a democracy.

 

[Nietzsche]

I've always wondered about the term "innocents" with regard to war.

One always speaks of innocent civilians and how an armed group should avoid harming them. But the question is, if you live in what you consider a democracy, are there really any innocents other than children? Are the innocents not the ones who chose the politicians? Who finance the army? How innocent are they really? Ignorant, maybe. But innocent?

I believe when you become an adult and thus a fully functional member of society your innocence is not merely tied to your ignorance or you lack of doing anything. I believe you actually have to work for your innocence. If your country conducts unjust wars in your name and by the means that you have given them (through the constitution, other laws and regulations, elections, financing through taxes etc.) then your silence or quiet disapproval does not earn you innocence.

Who, if a person came into their house and beats up their child while they did not try to do anything to prevent it, would call themselves innocent? Perhaps by the high standards of a court of law you might get away with calling yourself innocent - but certainly no other right thinking person would regard you as such.

I don't know what all the people in the world are fighting for in the various wars but I find it disingenuous when an aggrieved group of people fight by killing civilians that we find it easy to label it terrorism and say they are killing innocents. Often that group of people who fight by killing innocents don't have the fire power to match the enemy they are fighting against army for army and are doing what they can to shake their opposition.

In connection with this I am reminded of the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa. The ANC (the first liberation movement) was started in 1912. For decades they tried dialogue and other peaceful methods of engaging with the Apartheid government to try get freedom (one of their leaders - Albert Luthuli - even won the Nobel Peace prize). When Mandela came in he realised that this method was not working and started an armed wing of the party (Mkhonto we'Sizwe). Now it was clear that if the ANC gathered it's militia on a plain somewhere and declared war that they would be crushed by the nuclear armed South African defense forces. So what could they do? Well they engaged in guerilla warfare and bombed various places including a bank. Some civilians died - they were terrorists (the US recently removed Mandela from their list of terrorists).
The armed struggle was not intended to defeat the defense force by might of arms. It was meant to degrade the morale of the opposition, to make the lives of white people whose government was oppressing blacks as difficult and uncomfortable as possible so that they start seriously considering the plight of black people.

I do not believe in intentionally killing civilians a group is necessarily killing innocents. Being a civilian does not make you innocent (even if you're ignorant), especially if you live in what can be described as a democracy.

...

No innocents here, just civilians, right?

 

[LuisDantas]

I suppose at some level people do have a moral duty of storming into the offices of their leaders and ripping their entrails out of them before they order the killing of foreign civilians.

 

[Thanda]

...

No innocents here, just civilians, right?

I'm not sure what this is a picture of - but since it is in black and white and it looks like white people I must assume it is WWII and that these are Jews.
If so then I am sorry that from my whole (long) post all you could think of was a government rounding up its own citizens and executing them. In fact I am surprised that it even crossed your mind when I was clearly talking about groups that are often described as terrorists.

 

[HonestJoe]

One always speaks of innocent civilians and how an armed group should avoid harming them.

I’m not convinced that phrase is commonly used in reference to conflicts between democracies or even about civilians with a direct support and influence on the warring parties. I think it’d be more common in conflicts involving dictatorships or terrorist groups who commonly won’t have the support of all or even most of a given civilian population and therefore actions taken against civilians in general can be said to be targeting innocents, even allies.

I think there is another element, somewhat lost in the nature of modern warfare, that war was fought between armies to resolve disputes without bringing avoidable harm to civilians (innocent or otherwise). The clear distinction between soldier and civilian was made very clear to try to avoid conflicts descending in to all-out anarchy. While that simply doesn’t work as a principle today (and arguably never did completely), I don’t think that’s a valid reason to completely throw away the principle behind it.

Are the innocents not the ones who chose the politicians? Who finance the army? How innocent are they really? Ignorant, maybe. But innocent?

To an extent you might have a point, though no individual has the power to shift government policy so your enemy civilians could well have been people who tried but failed to stand against the actions of their government.

Then you have the question of whether being “guilty” of supporting the politicians or paying taxes that finance and army is sufficient crime for a unconditional death sentence (or worse) at the hands of enemy soldiers? Should even unconditionally enemy civilians but who aren’t taking any kind of action against your forces, be treated in the same way (or arguably worse) than opposing forces actively fighting against you.

Or maybe the better question would be should your civilians, your friends and family sitting peacefully at home, become perfectly legitimate targets for anyone you choose to engage in conflict?

 

[Laika]

I've always wondered about the term "innocents" with regard to war.

One always speaks of innocent civilians and how an armed group should avoid harming them. But the question is, if you live in what you consider a democracy, are there really any innocents other than children? Are the innocents not the ones who chose the politicians? Who finance the army? How innocent are they really? Ignorant, maybe. But innocent?

I believe when you become an adult and thus a fully functional member of society your innocence is not merely tied to your ignorance or you lack of doing anything. I believe you actually have to work for your innocence. If your country conducts unjust wars in your name and by the means that you have given them (through the constitution, other laws and regulations, elections, financing through taxes etc.) then your silence or quiet disapproval does not earn you innocence.

Who, if a person came into their house and beats up their child while they did not try to do anything to prevent it, would call themselves innocent? Perhaps by the high standards of a court of law you might get away with calling yourself innocent - but certainly no other right thinking person would regard you as such.

I don't know what all the people in the world are fighting for in the various wars but I find it disingenuous when an aggrieved group of people fight by killing civilians that we find it easy to label it terrorism and say they are killing innocents. Often that group of people who fight by killing innocents don't have the fire power to match the enemy they are fighting against army for army and are doing what they can to shake their opposition.

In connection with this I am reminded of the anti-Apartheid struggle in South Africa. The ANC (the first liberation movement) was started in 1912. For decades they tried dialogue and other peaceful methods of engaging with the Apartheid government to try get freedom (one of their leaders - Albert Luthuli - even won the Nobel Peace prize). When Mandela came in he realised that this method was not working and started an armed wing of the party (Mkhonto we'Sizwe). Now it was clear that if the ANC gathered it's militia on a plain somewhere and declared war that they would be crushed by the nuclear armed South African defense forces. So what could they do? Well they engaged in guerilla warfare and bombed various places including a bank. Some civilians died - they were terrorists (the US recently removed Mandela from their list of terrorists).
The armed struggle was not intended to defeat the defense force by might of arms. It was meant to degrade the morale of the opposition, to make the lives of white people whose government was oppressing blacks as difficult and uncomfortable as possible so that they start seriously considering the plight of black people.

I do not believe in intentionally killing civilians a group is necessarily killing innocents. Being a civilian does not make you innocent (even if you're ignorant), especially if you live in what can be described as a democracy.

This is very dangerous ground (even if I can agree with you on some point). But it is a debate worth having given how often it now comes up. The position that civilians are not exempt from war is a rationale for war crimes under the Geneva convention. The distinction between civilians and armed forces comes from Christian theology on the just war (I think). This was at a time where warfare was still limited to the battlefield.

Technology has changed since then and industrialisation means that the casualties have shifted from solders to civillans since at least World War I (possibly the American Civil War or the Franco Prussian war in the mid-late 19th century).

(the thirty years war is a notable exception with extremely high level of destructiveness back in the 17th century. Something like 20-50% of people living in what would become Germany were killed due to a combination of warfare famine and disease. This was achieved even with what were relatively limited weaponry by our standards.)

Industrialisation led to "total war" in which the whole population was mobilised for war production. The difficulty in distinguishing between solders and civilians is between the solders with the guns and the civilians who take up arms or put them into their hands by producing them.

World War II took this to its logical conclusion that warfare directed against civilians is a necessary part of the war effort. This is particularly true of the eastern front between Germany and the Soviet Union and probably true of Japan's war in China. The ideologies of these respective systems justified attacks on civillans as if they were combatants.

The Germans did so partly because soviet partisans led a guerrilla war against them in occupied territory and it is simply easier to kill "everyone" than "waste" time and resources trying to figure out who is the civilian and who is the guerrilla fighter. This particualar part of the problem resonate today as you cannot spot a suicide bomber or a terrorist from another civilian in a suffucient time frame.

After World War II, the allies held the Nuremberg trials. This was an attempt to establish international law regarding armed conflict and to enforce it. The trials are however open to criticism because the wording of the laws exempt attacks on civillans on the grounds of "military necessity". This is why the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as allied bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan do not qualify as war crimes. Worse still we tend to forget that the Soviets also presided over the Nuremberg trials, had been involved in various genocides and war crimes in the course of the war and fabricated evidence to blame the Katyan massacre on the Nazis.

By the Cold War, the issue of civilians as targets had gone even further where the use of nuclear weapons had become acceptable against civilian targets and not just military ones. That means cities in whom millions of people would be targeted. It's justified on the grounds of the "military necessity" of winning the war, but in its intent to exterminate whole populations resembles genocide.

One of the legacies of both World War II and the Cold War is that we target groups based on their "intent". This means for example that the distinction between terrorists and extremists is blurred and it becomes acceptable to round up people with "dangerous" ideas or associations. For the U.S. You can look at Japaense interment camps but the same reasoning is also behind the McCarthy with hunts by treating all Communists (including all American ones) as representatives of an "alien" power intent on subverting the U.S. Government and "destroying our way of life".

Fast forward to 2001 and the 9/11 attacks and you have an ideological justification for restricting civil liberties on the basis that you cannot distinguish between subversives and terrorists, between peaceful and law abiding Muslims and Islamic terrorists. The use of drones on suspected terrorists us an example of where civilian deaths are considered more acceptable than higher combative military death tolls if they "put boots on the ground". This same "blurring" also occurred in nazi and soviet dictatorships as the rule of law was replaced by terror. You weren't guilty on the basis of evidence or your actions, but on your thoughts, your race, your class, your family and friends and associations, or any other grounds for suspicion or accusation. In the soviet case they just pulled people off the street and sent them to the gulag as the secret police had quotas for how many "enemies of the people" there were supposed to find. It was more or less an industry built on death and human rights violations rather than a legal process as there was no presumption of innocence.

Strictly speaking you are "right" in that the assumption that civilians are innocents is a highly dubious one (so I am voting No given that in practice that is what I am saying but only in war time)- but a consistent application of the alternative in warfare and dealing with dissent that civilians can be treated as enemies without a trial or due process of law and simply exterminated is...***difficult***... to stomach. It represents a challenge to Christian and liberal humanist morals that man is endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and even if it can be justified on the grounds of expediency in war time as a break down of legal protections due to the absence of a sovereign state, it could not become "normalised" in either war or peace without totalitarian consequences.

 

[LuisDantas]

Surely if is somehow too big a state that which seeks to raise taxes or control firearms, then it must follow that deciding to purposefully destroy lives (military or otherwise) is entirely outside the proper scope of a state as well?

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

I do not believe in intentionally killing civilians a group is necessarily killing innocents. Being a civilian does not make you innocent (even if you're ignorant), especially if you live in what can be described as a democracy.

Been to Orlando recently?

 

[Thanda]

I’m not convinced that phrase is commonly used in reference to conflicts between democracies or even about civilians with a direct support and influence on the warring parties. I think it’d be more common in conflicts involving dictatorships or terrorist groups who commonly won’t have the support of all or even most of a given civilian population and therefore actions taken against civilians in general can be said to be targeting innocents, even allies.

I'm thinking more along the lines of a group without extensive conventional warfare capabilities (most non-governmental armed groups) who resort to "terrorizing" civilians in order to achieve their objectives (whatever they might be). I am arguing that they are not necessarily killing innocents just because they are killing civilians. If those civilians belong to a democratic country then they share responsibility for whatever crimes the rebel group accuses the government of. Unless of course they actively support the cause of the rebels and do all they can to oppose their government.

In other words, innocence is not the default condition of the civilian in a democracy - by default he is responsible unless he actively fights against what is being done in his name.

Then you have the question of whether being “guilty” of supporting the politicians or paying taxes that finance and army is sufficient crime for a unconditional death sentence (or worse) at the hands of enemy soldiers? Should even unconditionally enemy civilians but who aren’t taking any kind of action against your forces, be treated in the same way (or arguably worse) than opposing forces actively fighting against you.

Or maybe the better question would be should your civilians, your friends and family sitting peacefully at home, become perfectly legitimate targets for anyone you choose to engage in conflict?

The answer to your first question is yes (if they belong to a democracy). Their support (even of only tacit) may well have led to the deaths of the enemy soldiers and possibly even the enemy soldier's family and friends. Therefore since the civilians support has contributed to the death of others their own life is rightly at risk,

 

[Laika]

Surely if is somehow too big a state that which seeks to raise taxes or control firearms, then it must follow that deciding to purposefully destroy lives (military or otherwise) is entirely outside the proper scope of a state as well?

Not sure if this is directed at me but even the most powerful totalitarian government has finite power- including the ability to save the lives of its own people.
War falls outside the scope of normal morality. If the state is the guardian of individual rights by necessity a challenge to its sovereignty either from within or without means that the state can no longer effectively protect those rights. In the anarchy, they cease to exist.

 

[Thanda]

Been to Orlando recently?

I've never been to Orlando. Is there something you'd like to say about Orlando in connection with this thread?

 

[Thanda]

This is very dangerous ground (even if I can agree with you on some point). But it is a debate worth having given how often it now comes up. The position that civilians are not exempt from war is a rationale for war crimes under the Geneva convention. The distinction between civilians and armed forces comes from Christian theology on the just war (I think). This was at a time where warfare was still limited to the battlefield.

Technology has changed since then and industrialisation means that the casualties have shifted from solders to civillans since at least World War I (possibly the American Civil War or the Franco Prussian war in the mid-late 19th century).

(the thirty years war is a notable exception with extremely high level of destructiveness back in the 17th century. Something like 20-50% of people living in what would become Germany were killed due to a combination of warfare famine and disease. This was achieved even with what were relatively limited weaponry by our standards.)

Industrialisation led to "total war" in which the whole population was mobilised for war production. The difficulty in distinguishing between solders and civilians is between the solders with the guns and the civilians who take up arms or put them into their hands by producing them.

World War II took this to its logical conclusion that warfare directed against civilians is a necessary part of the war effort. This is particularly true of the eastern front between Germany and the Soviet Union and probably true of Japan's war in China. The ideologies of these respective systems justified attacks on civillans as if they were combatants.

The Germans did so partly because soviet partisans led a guerrilla war against them in occupied territory and it is simply easier to kill "everyone" than "waste" time and resources trying to figure out who is the civilian and who is the guerrilla fighter. This particualar part of the problem resonate today as you cannot spot a suicide bomber or a terrorist from another civilian in a suffucient time frame.

After World War II, the allies held the Nuremberg trials. This was an attempt to establish international law regarding armed conflict and to enforce it. The trials are however open to criticism because the wording of the laws exempt attacks on civillans on the grounds of "military necessity". This is why the atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as allied bombing campaigns against Germany and Japan do not qualify as war crimes. Worse still we tend to forget that the Soviets also presided over the Nuremberg trials, had been involved in various genocides and war crimes in the course of the war and fabricated evidence to blame the Katyan massacre on the Nazis.

By the Cold War, the issue of civilians as targets had gone even further where the use of nuclear weapons had become acceptable against civilian targets and not just military ones. That means cities in whom millions of people would be targeted. It's justified on the grounds of the "military necessity" of winning the war, but in its intent to exterminate whole populations resembles genocide.

One of the legacies of both World War II and the Cold War is that we target groups based on their "intent". This means for example that the distinction between terrorists and extremists is blurred and it becomes acceptable to round up people with "dangerous" ideas or associations. For the U.S. You can look at Japaense interment camps but the same reasoning is also behind the McCarthy with hunts by treating all Communists (including all American ones) as representatives of an "alien" power intent on subverting the U.S. Government and "destroying our way of life".

Fast forward to 2001 and the 9/11 attacks and you have an ideological justification for restricting civil liberties on the basis that you cannot distinguish between subversives and terrorists, between peaceful and law abiding Muslims and Islamic terrorists. The use of drones on suspected terrorists us an example of where civilian deaths are considered more acceptable than higher combative military death tolls if they "put boots on the ground". This same "blurring" also occurred in nazi and soviet dictatorships as the rule of law was replaced by terror. You weren't guilty on the basis of evidence or your actions, but on your thoughts, your race, your class, your family and friends and associations, or any other grounds for suspicion or accusation. In the soviet case they just pulled people off the street and sent them to the gulag as the secret police had quotas for how many "enemies of the people" there were supposed to find. It was more or less an industry built on death and human rights violations rather than a legal process as there was no presumption of innocence.

Strictly speaking you are "right" in that the assumption that civilians are innocents is a highly dubious one (so I am voting No given that in practice that is what I am saying but only in war time)- but a consistent application of the alternative in warfare and dealing with dissent that civilians can be treated as enemies without a trial or due process of law and simply exterminated is...***difficult***... to stomach. It represents a challenge to Christian and liberal humanist morals that man is endowed with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and even if it can be justified on the grounds of expediency in war time as a break down of legal protections due to the absence of a sovereign state, it could not become "normalised" in either war or peace without totalitarian consequences.

Well I think we are largely in agreement. I never said this would be an easy thing to stomach, only that the facts of the matter point to the conclusions that civilians are not automatically innocent during wartime and that opposing forces have no moral obligation to consider them as such.

 

[LuisDantas]

Not sure if this is directed at me

It wasn't. I mostly meant to address the OP.

but even the most powerful totalitarian government has finite power- including the ability to save the lives of its own people.

True.

War falls outside the scope of normal morality.

Does it? Should it? Why?

If the state is the guardian of individual rights by necessity a challenge to its sovereignty either from within or without means that the state can no longer effectively protect those rights. In the anarchy, they cease to exist.

Not sure I understand this. The way I see it, rights are better called gifts and are given by other people. The state is largely unrelated to the whole matter, except that people often think otherwise.

 

[LuisDantas]

Well I think we are largely in agreement. I never said this would be an easy thing to stomach, only that the facts of the matter point to the conclusions that civilians are not automatically innocent during wartime and that opposing forces have no moral obligation to consider them as such.

That is the very definition of moral bankrupcy.

 

[Thanda]

That is the very definition of moral bankrupcy.

I think you are wrong. Do you really think a war is such a neat thing as two opposing forces choosing a field in which they will kill each other and who ever wins there gets their way? If things were so simple then why don't we just have each army send a "champion" a la David and Goliath and have the matter decided by that duel? That would be even more "moral" no?

But in reality, most of us civilians, if our army was conquered by a hostile opposing force, would mobilise ourselves and fight that hostile force - and by so doing we will show ourselves to have never really been innocent in the first place. In fact even during the war we will provide such support as financing to our armies in order to defeat the hostiles. So wherein really does our innocence lie? In our not having a gun in hand?

 

[Laika]

It wasn't. I mostly meant to address the OP.


True.

Does it? Should it? Why?


Not sure I understand this. The way I see it, rights are better called gifts and are given by other people. The state is largely unrelated to the whole matter, except that people often think otherwise.

Ah, ok. I wasn't sure.

I don't believe in rights being something natural or innate. Rights only exist in reality so far as we have the power to assert them- so the state takes centre stage in terms of the power to protect rights. What we feel and how far we can make the world correspond to our deepest moral yearnings are regrettably not the same.

So in response I would say the question of "could you uphold rights in wartime" in practice takes precedence over "should". To some extent you can but it won't ever be completely so. Even if you should, you probably don't have the power to protect every civillan or stop every atrocity. Justice on this is retrospective and not preventative. You can't save everyone.

 

[LuisDantas]

Ah, ok. I wasn't sure.

I don't believe in rights being something natural or innate. Rights only exist in reality so far as we have the power to assert them- so the state takes centre stage in terms of the power to protect rights.

How can one assert a right at all? Is it any different from simple strong-arming?

I don't think so.

What we call (regrettably) rights are in reality gifts from other people. Or, perhaps more often and more reggretably, spoils taken by force.

What we feel and how far we can make the world correspond to our deepest moral yearnings are regrettably not the same.

So in response I would say the question of "could you uphold rights in wartime" in practice takes precedence over "should". To some extent you can but it won't ever be completely so. Even if you should, you probably don't have the power to protect every civillan or stop every atrocity. Justice on this is retrospective and not preventative. You can't save everyone.

The point is that war is no excuse to avoid morality - normal or otherwise.

 

[LuisDantas]

I think you are wrong. Do you really think a war is such a neat thing as two opposing forces choosing a field in which they will kill each other and who ever wins there gets their way? If things were so simple then why don't we just have each army send a "champion" a la David and Goliath and have the matter decided by that duel? That would be even more "moral" no?

War is an obscenity because it ruins morality.

But in reality, most of us civilians, if our army was conquered by a hostile opposing force, would mobilise ourselves and fight that hostile force - and by so doing we will show ourselves to have never really been innocent in the first place. In fact even during the war we will provide such support as financing to our armies in order to defeat the hostiles. So wherein really does our innocence lie? In our not having a gun in hand?

That is immaterial. The first moral duty in war homicides is to do whatever one can to avoid them in the first place.

 

[Laika]

How can one assert a right at all? Is it any different from simple strong-arming?

I don't think so.

What we call (regrettably) rights are in reality gifts from other people. Or, perhaps more often and more reggretably, spoils taken by force.


The point is that war is no excuse to avoid morality - normal or otherwise.

War is the definition of "strong-arming" as you put it: you can't get what you want by diplomacy so you use force instead. Morality- worthy of the name- is impossible when killing people becomes the norm.its reduced to brute survival.

 

[Thanda]

That is immaterial. The first moral duty in war homicides is to do whatever one can to avoid them in the first place.

I disagree. If you want to avoid homicides don't pick up any weapons. - go to the negotiating table. The only time you should pick up your weapons is when you are satisfied there is no non-lethal way of achieving your objectives.
Having done so (picked up your weapons) your object should then be to be as effective as possible with them in order to end the war (and consequent suffering) as quickly as possible.