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Moral aspects of military action
Topic Started: Friday, 10. June 2011, 17:51 (2,022 Views)
Rose of York
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trying hard
Monday, 13. June 2011, 22:49
As far as the Arch bishops statement it was unwise as far as I.m concerned as what exactly was to be gained from it?
Which one, the Archbishop of Canterbury or Westminster?
Keep the Faith!

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tomais

and so we and many many others continue shouting into dark corners where shadaows alas bleed.
All that is there is a silence of anguish and hurt.
Everyhting is reduced to a X on ascrap of paper; rise up against it? Cuffed or pushed,fall and die.
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Clare
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
Patrick
Saturday, 11. June 2011, 13:36
Yeah I wonder just how many soldiers are thinking of "Love thy neighbour" and the other things quoted when they're pulling the trigger, or firing a missile.
I've heard that, when my grandfather fired his gun in the First World War... he hoped he missed.
S.A.G.

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Clare
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Putting the "Fun Dame" into Fundamentalist
This, by Cardinal Ottaviani, seems germane to this thread.



S.A.G.

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trying hard

Nichols
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Mairtin
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Clare
Wednesday, 15. June 2011, 17:13
This, by Cardinal Ottaviani, seems germane to this thread.

When did Christianity become concerned with the "rights" of nations? I didn't even think that Christianity was even concerned with the "rights" of individuals, I always understood it to be about duty rather than rights.
Edited by Mairtin, Wednesday, 15. June 2011, 18:14.
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trying hard

interesting one could argue that by talking about Rights it takes away from the gift of loving your neighbour; its like your neighbour has the right to your loving actions so there is no merit for an individual for doing it. But we live in a political arena so one way of expressing our love is to ensure our neighbour is protected from harm by ensuring the law protects them ; hence our interest in rights. :fire:
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Derekap
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Cardinal Ottavianni's essay is idealistic.

I wonder if, by chance, he had gone to negociate with Herr Adolph Hitler in Autumn 1938 he would have been more successful than Mr Neville Chamberlain. The latter returned after negociating a non-aggression pact and waved it on the tarmac of Croydon airport saying: "Peace in our time!!!". I was 14 at the time and admittedly relieved that the labourers could now stop digging the trenches in the (dried) moats of York's City Walls for the air-raid shelters. However, somehow I felt war was inevitable and 12 months later it was so and the air-raid shelters were needed. After the German army had conquered and occupied most of Europe how could we have liberated it without warfare? I am not a lover of warlike casualties nor destruction and I will admit I sometimes wonder if allied bombing was too destructive but had we not invaded and liberated millions more people might have been worked to death or gassed. Fortunately I never needed to fire my rifle in defence or attack but the officers in my unit sent commands to artillery to fire on the enemy. Sixty seven years ago about this time I was on a freighter being tossed about in a severe storm off the coast of Normandy which was in danger of causing another Dunqerque - living on tea, tinned meat and army biscuits (probably baked [I learned recently] in a dog-biscuit factory!)

Meanwhile in the late 1930s Signor Benito Mussolini strutting proudly on the balcony overlooking a packed Piazza del Populo having conquered Abyssinia and invaded Albania on Good Friday 1939 thoroughly enjoyed the crowds adulation and their cries of: "Nice, Corsica and Tunis".

Finally, it was not the two atom bombs that caused to Japan to surrender it was the news that Derekap was on embarkation leave to go out there. Instead, I finished up in Deolali (Pronounced doolali) in India and that is why I am a cynical, intransigent wind-up merchant on Catholic forums. (It wasn't arf hot at times!)
Edited by Derekap, Friday, 17. June 2011, 13:55.
Derekap
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tomais

What ever the use and cause of killing in any war- why is it that civilians need to die?
Killing civilians is-despite any other incentive to go to war-is evil and anti all beliefs.
See this motjs " Open House".
Yes surprise surprise, I can offer a quote.
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tomais

Source; surprise surprise,me offering a source to support my post
Open House;June July:
Book review by,Willy Slavin.
Bombing Civilians,a twentieth cesntury history.
by
Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B Young.
(New York: The New Press 2009)
Reagrds.
Tom
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Rose of York
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tomais
Friday, 17. June 2011, 19:17
What ever the use and cause of killing in any war- why is it that civilians need to die?
Killing civilians is-despite any other incentive to go to war-is evil and anti all beliefs.
See this motjs " Open House".
Yes surprise surprise, I can offer a quote.
The intention to kill civilians is evil and anti all beliefs. What is to be done if a few dozen civilians are inside a factory that is making weapons of mass destruction intended to kill hundreds of thousands? The intention is to disable the factory production. A civilian supporting the military is as much a part of the war effort as a soldier.

Military commanders have to make hard decisions. I can sit here, safe and comfortable and condemn those whose actions kill civilians whose houses are to close to a naval dockyard they get killed when the dockyard is bombed.

The solution for the civilian is to have lots and lots of money and live up in the mountains far from danger. Few have that luxurious choice. It is the poorer civvies who are most likely to be killed. They get in the way of the bombs and guns because they live near the target.
Keep the Faith!

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OsullivanB

Rose of York
 
The solution for the civilian is to have lots and lots of money and live up in the mountains far from danger.
That describes Osama bin Laden just after 9/11 - and just look what happened there!
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer
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Penfold
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tomais
Friday, 17. June 2011, 19:17
What ever the use and cause of killing in any war- why is it that civilians need to die?
Killing civilians is-despite any other incentive to go to war-is evil and anti all beliefs.
See this motjs " Open House".
Yes surprise surprise, I can offer a quote.
The term, civilian is a misnoma in conflict situations their are combatants and non-combatants. In the case Rose refers to about the factory is a classic case. The workers while in the factory are combatants in that they are contributing to the fight by producing materials necessary to sustain their country/nation/cause, however when they are at home with their family they are non-combatants. The difficultly is that in many towns and cities the places of work are so close to the factory that collateral damage and inaccurate targeting or delivery of the "Bomb/warhead" can result in the non-combatants being killed or injured. That is why in modern conflict great care is taken by commanders to ensure the correct choice of targets. There is a scale by which the priority of each target is gauged and there is a team of people who discuss all these before passing the information down to the troops on the ground, as in Derricks example of the orders being passed forward to the RA.
One of the problems the UK military is facing at the moment is that the Politicians, with no experience of military command and control, cut items from the budget which are not part of the forward "Fighting Force" and this is eroding the support arm where the skills and equipment needed to identify a target are embedded thus we become reliant on "Intelligence" provided by less reliable sources.

The old and infirm, medics, chaplains, prisoners of war are all considered non-combatants even though medics and chaplains wear uniform and are part of the armed force it is recognised their roll is protected but if, for example, a chaplain picks up a weapon he looses his protected status and becomes a combatant.
The ploy used often in the Middle East and elsewhere is to place artillery in residential areas or hospitals so targeting a legitamate target such as a rocket launcher or a radar guidance system presents the commander with a dilemma and they have to balance the risk of leaving the weapon in place with the collateral damage that may be caused if it is targeted, the modern guidance systems can place a warhead within cms of the designated target where as in 1939 5 miles was a common margin of error, by the end of the war it was down to a few hundred yards, but look outside, what is 100 yards from your house.
NATO and UK in particular are bound by various conventions to abide by the "Rules of War" many of the opponents being fought abide by no rules.
"The Rules of War" have changed little since they were defined by Thomas Aquinas such adaptations as have occurred were necessitated by the change of weaponry available in modern arsenals. But chemical and biological warfare have been used since records began and Henry V followed the common practice of executing prisoners who were not worth a ransom but to well trained to be allowed to set free.
With hind sight and the passing of time most decisions taken in the heat of battle are reassessed and re-evaluated often by people who have little or no understanding of what was actually happening at the time the decision was taken. I spend much of my time dealing with people who made those decisions and who days, months, years later re-examine their part in what occurred and how if they had known or been aware of certain things they may not have acted as they did, most accept that they did what they did with the information at their disposal at the time, but many ask questions such as"Could I have done more.. could I have waited...?"

Armchair warriors sit in judgement of the warriors in the field, in my view that classifies the armchair warrior as a legitimate target

Posted Image though maybe giving them a stern talking too :megaphone: would be a more proportionate response. However we can and should all pray for peace, for the best rule of war is, "Enter into it only as a last resort when all else has been tried."
Edited by Penfold, Sunday, 19. June 2011, 14:39.
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Derekap
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Well said Penfold. I fully agree.
Derekap
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Poesy
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So called precision bombing and laser and other guidance systems increase the deadly power of explosives and the harmful effects of them, many times over the power of more convensional bombing of say 50 or more years ago. We see this very clearly in Iraq when uranium shells were dropped or fired onto military and other targets , they released clouds of deadly radiation in great concentric circles going outwards for 50 and a 100 kilometres from the blast. The radiation has caused many deaths of completely innocent civilians and there are some truly shocking images of deformed babies born as a result of what we have been doing. NATO commanders were perfectly aware of what they were doing. They are quite simply criminal acts from an organization that has got form. Pretty much the same tactics are being used in Libya and there have been numerous cases like the link posted below.
Cameron/Clegg juvenile grandstanding , they belong in a cell with Mladic.

Here is an example of abiding by the rules of war, a war by the way, that is completely illegal, and again like Iraq has nothing whatever to do with the people of this country and is further enraging moderate Arab opinion and people throughout the world.

http://arabnews.com/middleeast/article458039.ece



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Domine Jesu, noverim me .
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