Are atrocities an integral part of war?

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7229774        War and the Politics of Ethics        POLI 30822

Are atrocities an integral part of war?

Introduction

This paper’s main argument is that war creates conditions that significantly increase the likelihood of atrocities occurring, but atrocities are neither integral nor limited to war. In order to understand this conclusion it is necessary to analyse what is meant by atrocity and how intention affects whether or not certain harms are atrocities. Therefore this paper first looks at what atrocities should be defined as and their relationship with war. Followed by an analysis of what justifications for war there are to compare to the likely occurrence of atrocity. These definitions will be used in conjuncture with historical illustrations of events in war with a particular focus on the My Lai and Son My Massacre from the Vietnam War on the morning of March 16th, 1968. My Lai was a hamlet 7 miles from Quang Ngai Town on the South China Sea that had the most deaths in a grouping of massacres by the US 23rd Infantry Division directed under 2nd lieutenant William Calley Jr. The military police concluded that 347 people perished at My Lai although a memorial at Son My remembers 504 victims.[1] While some soldiers refused to take part many others still raped and killed, women and brutally murdered men, children and even the animals.[2] Its use as a case study is pertinent due to the extent of the atrocities that took place there and usefulness in ascertaining what causes soldiers to commit atrocities. For my purposes “war” is defined as a legal condition which equally permits two or more groups to carry on a conflict by armed force[3]. To be “legally” permitted war has to have some just war justification, which will help to direct the ethical focus of this essay.

Defining Atrocity

        To show that it is possible to have war without atrocity it is necessary to define what is meant by atrocity. This essay will use Osiel’s description of atrocities from a legal journal, which is defined as:

“[T]he deliberate harming of known non-combatants (and their property), a category encompassing both civilians and soldiers who have surrendered (or sought to surrender), and the use of prohibited methods of warfare against enemy forces.”[4]

This definition immediately raises the question of intention through the use of the word “known” implying that an atrocity would not occur if a non-combatant was harmed but was not the intended target of the harm presumably using the justification from the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE)[5]. Therefore the bombing of German cities early in World War II[6] with intention of ending the war quickly by breaking the civilian populations will to fight may be permissible and therefore not an atrocity, because the intention is to end the war, whereas killing the villagers at My Lai is not excused, because it is the soldiers direct intention to kill non-combatants as well as many other reasons which will be discussed. But to justify why some killing of non-combatants is perhaps permissible requires a greater analysis of DDE, which this essay will come to. The point at the moment is that intention may change whether an incident of non-combatant death is an atrocity.

Doctrine of Double Effect

        If a soldier’s deliberate harming of non-combatants in war is only an atrocity if he intended the harm then proving that a soldier’s actions had the right intentions is necessary by further analysis of DDE. Walzer first outlines DDE as having 4 conditions:

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        The first is that the “act is good in itself or at least indifferent, which means for our purposes, that it is a legitimate act of war.”[7] The My Lai Massacre is certainly not good in itself as killing non-combatants should not be. Killing can, however be a legitimate act of war, which is the point of using this doctrine, but the beating to death of the villagers and the raping are not legitimate because they only cause harm.[8]

        The Second is that “the direct effect is morally acceptable-the destruction of military supplies, for example, or the killing of ...

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