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Moral aspects of military action
Topic Started: Friday, 10. June 2011, 17:51 (2,019 Views)
Mairtin
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Penfold
Thursday, 23. June 2011, 01:03
The Atomic bombs were tested in the deserts of America but only two were produced for military use, it was the threat to Japan that a third was available that finely forced the Emperor to order his forces to surrender.
I find it hard to understand why a second bomb had to be dropped, it gives credence to the idea that it was to test a different technology that the boffins and military men knew they would never get the chance to test again - I'm afraid I don't quite share your estimation of military staff, my experience in life has been that experts and specialists too often end up so caught up in their area of expertise that they give little thought to the wider picture.

Anyway, I suppose that we should just be thankful that whereas people 70 years ago accepted without second thought the deaths of thousands of civilians, nowadays they get upset and call military leaders to account about the death of 9 civilians when the wrong house is accidentally bombed.

Bringing the whole idea of justified violence back to a personal level, if some intruder broke into my house tonight and threatened to rape my wife and kill us both, then i would have to hesitation in fighting him with every resource at hand and killing him if necessary. Something niggles me, however, that in doing so, I would be failing in my Christian duty but there is nothing new there.

I think Gerry summed it up well when he said "The way I understand this is that we fall short of the teaching. The "just war" is still evil, but by being in self defense, the evil is less.
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Penfold
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Mairtin
Thursday, 23. June 2011, 19:59


Bringing the whole idea of justified violence back to a personal level, if some intruder broke into my house tonight and threatened to rape my wife and kill us both, then i would have to hesitation in fighting him with every resource at hand and killing him if necessary. Something niggles me, however, that in doing so, I would be failing in my Christian duty but there is nothing new there.
Actually Mairtin in such a case you would be doing your Christian Duty,

Quote:
 
CCC Legitimate defense

2263 The legitimate defense of persons and societies is not an exception to the prohibition against the murder of the innocent that constitutes intentional killing. "The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one's own life; and the killing of the aggressor.... the one is intended, the other is not."65

2264 Love toward oneself remains a fundamental principle of morality. Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one's own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow:

If a man in self-defense uses more than necessary violence, it will be unlawful: whereas if he repels force with moderation, his defense will be lawful.... Nor is it necessary for salvation that a man omit the act of moderate self-defense to avoid killing the other man, since one is bound to take more care of one's own life than of another's.

2265 Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another's life. Preserving the common good requires rendering the unjust aggressor unable to inflict harm. To this end, those holding legitimate authority have the right to repel by armed force aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their charge.66
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trying hard

of course there will not be absolute proof re bombing dresden but just reading wiki will give you some insight about the issue and in the end everyone will have their own view and God will judge ; my view is experiment and I am sticking to it. If it's pontificating to have a view on history and be prepared to state it when a conversation raises the subject then I will continue to pontificate with everyone else on this forum.

my own view on the atomic bombs is mixed but this factor also plays in my thinking again from wiki which again does a decent job of offering both sides of debate.

A further argument, discussed under the rubric of "atomic diplomacy" and advanced in a 1965 book of that name by Gar Alperovitz, is that the bombings had as primary purpose to intimidate the Soviet Union, being the opening shots of the Cold War.[116] Along these lines some[who?] argue that the US raced the Soviet Union and hoped to drop the bombs and receive surrender from Japan before a Soviet entry into the Pacific war. However, the Soviet Union, the US and Great Britain came to an agreement at the Yalta Conference on when the Soviet Union should join the war against Japan, and on how the territory of Japan is to be dismembered at the end of the war.[117]

Others argue that such considerations played little or no role, the US being instead concerned with the defeat of Japan, and in fact that the US desired and appreciated the Soviet entry into the Pacific war, as it hastened the surrender of Japan.[118]

W. Churchill was on vacation on Como's lake, Italy, when the bomb of Hiroshima was launched. Lord Moran, his personal physician, in his memoirs published in 1966 tells a conversation he had had with WSC. He saw the atom bomb as a way to keep Stalin in check.


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Penfold
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Mairtin
Thursday, 23. June 2011, 19:59
Penfold
Thursday, 23. June 2011, 01:03
The Atomic bombs were tested in the deserts of America but only two were produced for military use, it was the threat to Japan that a third was available that finely forced the Emperor to order his forces to surrender.
I find it hard to understand why a second bomb had to be dropped,
It was the threat of the third, non-existant bomb that brought about the Emporer's order to surrender, so the second bomb was needed, thankfully the Emporer did not call the allies Bluff.

However it is good that today we are concerned with the deaths of scores not thousands. Alas untill we learn to value a single life we will always have wars. The value of human life were have I heard that before?... but lets not reopen that debate Mairtin.
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K.T.B.

Rose of York
Thursday, 23. June 2011, 00:20
It is all too easy for we are too young to have followed World War II events at the time, to pontificate on the morality of decisions made and actions taken.
As a matter of interest, my elderly mum was a teenager at the time of the bombing of Dresden and talks about the unease she felt at the time about the action and its consequences, together with a strong feeling that it couldn't be morally right.
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Derekap
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trying hard wrote:

"However, the Soviet Union, the US and Great Britain came to an agreement at the Yalta Conference on when the Soviet Union should join the war against Japan, and on how the territory of Japan is to be dismembered at the end of the war."

I seem to remember USSR declared war on Japan on the day they surrendered to the USA and UK or the day before and promptly occupied some Japanese held islands off its East Coast.
Edited by Derekap, Thursday, 23. June 2011, 21:56.
Derekap
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Penfold
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Quote:
 
Sir Arthur 'Bomber' Harris: We've been accused of murder. What would we have ben accused of had we let Hitler and *his* gang win the war? As for Dresden, it's simple, any psychiatrist can explain it: it's all to do with German brass bands and Dresden shepherdesses! All I can say is that all the German towns *put together* aren't worth the bones of a British grenadier!
A reputed remark by Bomber Harris, Given the bombing of cities and the fact that the V1 and V2 rockets were falling randomly on British towns and cities until near the end of March 1945, most people were suportive of htting back but Dresden did mark a turning point. Harris refused a pearage at the end of the war, the only officer of his rank not to receive one.

It is worth however reminding people that in February 1945 the allies were still realing from the supprise attack by the NAZIs in the Ardenne, known as the Battle of the Bulge 16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945 the bombing of Dresden was 13 February and 15 February 1945. In other words the war was not nearly over, although the NAZIs did surrender on the 8th May 1945.
25,000 victims killed in Dresden 29 890 civillians killed in the Blitz on London, I mention this just to put things in a cetain pespective that we were at war, and in war people die, it is horrible and yes it would be better avoided.

There is an old phrase, unatributed, which goes. "Those who turn their swords into plough-shares work for those who didn't."
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Derekap
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By way of illustrating feelings at the time. My comrades and I of the British army felt very peeved and anxious at the initial success of the German army in the Belgian Ardenne because it was obviously aiming for the Belgian Coast and cut our lines of supply. We may well have become POWs in Germany and the war would have been prolonged. Three colleagues and myself had a relay wireless station (because distance and quality of reception was poor) in a house in a Dutch village within sight of the down road route from the front. To me it seemed that traffic from the front was greater than ever (like homeward traffic on a peacetime Sunday evening from the coast) and I frankly wondered whether we might see the German army at breakfasttimes.

In fairness, on New Years Day 1945 a few Luftwaffe fighter planes suddenly appeared with surprise and attacked the RAF airfields in the liberated part of Holland. Since leaving Normandy we had had almost no bother from the Luftwaffe. We saw one fighter crash and another flew over so low I could see the pilot's face. The dutch family's young children enjoyed the excitement but I was anxiously trying to usher them indoors lest a pilot fired his machine gun. I don't know how successful they were because obviously the RAF wouldn't publish the news.
Derekap
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OsullivanB

Today's Zenit bulletin
 
ZENIT: The Council also changed the attitude to war, no?

Cardinal Cottier: Before the last two World Wars, theologians had a theology of just war, which is a heavy issue, including monstrous things and also the power of the means, such as the atomic bomb, etc. Now we see that war is no longer a solution. I am referring to the modern war. But, what happened? The Council opened and immediately with Pope John XXIII's encyclical Pacem in Terris, and then with Paul VI's great address at the United Nations during the Council, the Church began to develop a doctrine of peace and no more war, which we see in all the [papal] addresses of January 1, [the World Day of Peace]. There is a whole complex of reflections on peace which is beautiful, and this is a modern contribution.[/quote
"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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valleyboy

Penfold
Thursday, 23. June 2011, 22:42
25,000 victims killed in Dresden 29 890 civillians killed in the Blitz on London, I mention this just to put things in a cetain pespective that we were at war, and in war people die, it is horrible and yes it would be better avoided.

There is an old phrase, unatributed, which goes. "Those who turn their swords into plough-shares work for those who didn't."
The numbers are disputed. Right wing groups claim up to ten times your figure, highly unlikely but the truth is nobody knows the number of refugees sheltering in the city on the evenings of the allied bomber raids. What's certain is the key military targets were well out in the suburbs and remained intact. Even the autobahn, highly significant militarily, was untouched while the centre of the town was reduced to ashes.
Liberal, ecumenical, universal and it's my church too.
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Penfold
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The death toll at Dresden was well documented at the time with only a few bodies being added to the count following excavations in the 1960s, and 25000 is the top end allowing for some people unaccounted for.
In 2004 a commission was assembled to confirm once and for all what the death toll in Dresden had been, in 2008 it gave its preliminary findings.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/death-toll-debate-how-many-died-in-the-bombing-of-dresden-a-581992.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/onthefrontline/3123512/Dresden-bombing-death-toll-lower-than-thought.html

http://www.theage.com.au/world/dresden-bombing-toll-far-fewer-20081003-4tjf.html

in 2010 the commission confirmed the death toll as being no higher than 25,000.

Any life is one to many, however in the reality of war Dresden was a legitimate Military Target according to the rules of war that applied at that time. This is the thing that has to be remembered when considering history, what may be condemned and outlawed today was not necessarily outlawed at the time.
War is a horrific but telling untruths and exaggerating the horrors does an injustice to the brave men and women who defended the freedom we now enjoy.
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valleyboy

Penfold
Tuesday, 17. July 2012, 17:25
Any life is one to many, however in the reality of war Dresden was a legitimate Military Target according to the rules of war that applied at that time. This is the thing that has to be remembered when considering history, what may be condemned and outlawed today was not necessarily outlawed at the time.
War is a horrific but telling untruths and exaggerating the horrors does an injustice to the brave men and women who defended the freedom we now enjoy.
Dresden's military installations would indeed have been a military target, unfortunately it was the living quarters of the old town that were reduced to ashes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1994-041-07,_Dresden,_zerst%C3%B6rtes_Stadtzentrum.jpg
There were certainly too many to bury and many of the corpses not already burnt to ashes, were cremated so numbers are hard to discern allowing ideologists to play with them for their own purposes.

The vexed question of terror bombing raged since the 1930s at least, and a number of senior war office figures were squeamish about the tactic. It began in WW2, as you know, when a German raid went astray while attacking Croydon aerodrome and Britain used it as justification to bomb German cities. The Nazis were no strangers to terror attacks, Guernica was in support of Franco's fascists and columns of fleeing refugees were straffed in northern France. The question is whether tit for tat is a moral obligation, or if the military installations and troop bases that surrounded Dresden but remained untouched would have been more effective strike against Nazism than burning civilians to death.

Anyway, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, all hyperbole falls short of the truth.
Liberal, ecumenical, universal and it's my church too.
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Rose of York
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Whatever the historical facts (and disagreements about them) about any particular military action, would anybody else like to discuss them in the light of Catholic teaching?

Group Captain Leonard Cheshire, a devoted Catholic, who founded and spent his post war life building up the Cheshire Homes, for the care of people incurably ill, was British observer of the bombing of Hiroshima. When asked if he felt guilty about it, his answer was that if it had not happened the war in the Far East would have continued much longer than it did and the final death toll of that war would, in his judgement, have been far higher if the Japanese been able to continue fighting that war by convenional means.

Catechism of the Catholic Church
 
III. Safeguarding Peace

Peace

2302 By recalling the commandment, "You shall not kill,"93 our Lord asked for peace of heart and denounced murderous anger and hatred as immoral.
Anger is a desire for revenge. "To desire vengeance in order to do evil to someone who should be punished is illicit," but it is praiseworthy to impose restitution "to correct vices and maintain justice."94 If anger reaches the point of a deliberate desire to kill or seriously wound a neighbor, it is gravely against charity; it is a mortal sin. the Lord says, "Everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgment."95

2303 Deliberate hatred is contrary to charity. Hatred of the neighbor is a sin when one deliberately wishes him evil. Hatred of the neighbor is a grave sin when one deliberately desires him grave harm. "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven."96

2304 Respect for and development of human life require peace. Peace is not merely the absence of war, and it is not limited to maintaining a balance of powers between adversaries. Peace cannot be attained on earth without safeguarding the goods of persons, free communication among men, respect for the dignity of persons and peoples, and the assiduous practice of fraternity. Peace is "the tranquillity of order."97 Peace is the work of justice and the effect of charity.98

2305 Earthly peace is the image and fruit of the peace of Christ, the messianic "Prince of Peace."99 By the blood of his Cross, "in his own person he killed the hostility,"100 he reconciled men with God and made his Church the sacrament of the unity of the human race and of its union with God. "He is our peace."101 He has declared: "Blessed are the peacemakers."102

2306 Those who renounce violence and bloodshed and, in order to safeguard human rights, make use of those means of defense available to the weakest, bear witness to evangelical charity, provided they do so without harming the rights and obligations of other men and societies. They bear legitimate witness to the gravity of the physical and moral risks of recourse to violence, with all its destruction and death.103

Avoiding war

2307 The fifth commandment forbids the intentional destruction of human life. Because of the evils and injustices that accompany all war, the Church insistently urges everyone to prayer and to action so that the divine Goodness may free us from the ancient bondage of war.104

2308 All citizens and all governments are obliged to work for the avoidance of war.
However, "as long as the danger of war persists and there is no international authority with the necessary competence and power, governments cannot be denied the right of lawful self-defense, once all peace efforts have failed."105

2309 The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. the gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
- the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
- all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
- there must be serious prospects of success;
- the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. the power of modem means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.
The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

2310 Public authorities, in this case, have the right and duty to impose on citizens the obligations necessary for national defense.
Those who are sworn to serve their country in the armed forces are servants of the security and freedom of nations. If they carry out their duty honorably, they truly contribute to the common good of the nation and the maintenance of peace.106

2311 Public authorities should make equitable provision for those who for reasons of conscience refuse to bear arms; these are nonetheless obliged to serve the human community in some other way.107

2312 The Church and human reason both assert the permanent validity of the moral law during armed conflict. "The mere fact that war has regrettably broken out does not mean that everything becomes licit between the warring parties."108

2313 Non-combatants, wounded soldiers, and prisoners must be respected and treated humanely.
Actions deliberately contrary to the law of nations and to its universal principles are crimes, as are the orders that command such actions. Blind obedience does not suffice to excuse those who carry them out. Thus the extermination of a people, nation, or ethnic minority must be condemned as a mortal sin. One is morally bound to resist orders that command genocide.

2314 "Every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."109 A danger of modern warfare is that it provides the opportunity to those who possess modern scientific weapons especially atomic, biological, or chemical weapons - to commit such crimes.

2315 The accumulation of arms strikes many as a paradoxically suitable way of deterring potential adversaries from war. They see it as the most effective means of ensuring peace among nations. This method of deterrence gives rise to strong moral reservations. the arms race does not ensure peace. Far from eliminating the causes of war, it risks aggravating them. Spending enormous sums to produce ever new types of weapons impedes efforts to aid needy populations;110 it thwarts the development of peoples. Over-armament multiplies reasons for conflict and increases the danger of escalation.

2316 The production and the sale of arms affect the common good of nations and of the international community. Hence public authorities have the right and duty to regulate them. the short-term pursuit of private or collective interests cannot legitimate undertakings that promote violence and conflict among nations and compromise the international juridical order.

2317 Injustice, excessive economic or social inequalities, envy, distrust, and pride raging among men and nations constantly threaten peace and cause wars. Everything done to overcome these disorders contributes to building up peace and avoiding war:

Insofar as men are sinners, the threat of war hangs over them and will so continue until Christ comes again; but insofar as they can vanquish sin by coming together in charity, violence itself will be vanquished and these words will be fulfilled: "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."111
Keep the Faith!

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Penfold
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valleyboy
Tuesday, 17. July 2012, 17:44
Penfold
Tuesday, 17. July 2012, 17:25
Any life is one to many, however in the reality of war Dresden was a legitimate Military Target according to the rules of war that applied at that time. This is the thing that has to be remembered when considering history, what may be condemned and outlawed today was not necessarily outlawed at the time.
War is a horrific but telling untruths and exaggerating the horrors does an injustice to the brave men and women who defended the freedom we now enjoy.
Dresden's military installations would indeed have been a military target, unfortunately it was the living quarters of the old town that were reduced to ashes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_146-1994-041-07,_Dresden,_zerst%C3%B6rtes_Stadtzentrum.jpg
There were certainly too many to bury and many of the corpses not already burnt to ashes, were cremated so numbers are hard to discern allowing ideologists to play with them for their own purposes.
Valleyboy when you get your facts right you might have something useful to say.
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valleyboy

Penfold
Tuesday, 17. July 2012, 23:59
Valleyboy when you get your facts right you might have something useful to say.
Penfold, browbeating people into submission with your supposed superior knowledge may impress people in this little fiefdom but it won't wash with me. The numbers are disputed with the far right making a meal of them. That's what happens when you let moral standards slip and venture down the means justifies the ends route, it rumbles on for generations. As it happens my wife is in Dresden at the moment, still trying to re-build bridges.
Liberal, ecumenical, universal and it's my church too.
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