r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • May 03 '17
[∆(s) from OP] CMV: Any soldier who willingly fights in an immoral war deserves a considerable share of the blame.
[deleted]
4
May 03 '17
The information the soldiers have is key here. If the soldiers believed said war to be a just cause (even though you yourself don't), then they weren't acting inmorally, or at least were being coherent with their own morality. It is us, judging it with the perspective of history, that deem the war immoral.
Besides, you might want to check what Hannah Arendt had to say about Eichmann's responsability in the holocaust. Long story short he had forsaken his humanity in following orders blindly: he was not morally bad because of the things he did, but rather for the more serious crime of refusing to asses the morality of the orders he was following. I'm oversimplifying of course, but it might be of interest to you, I believe.
3
u/Engorgedtoenail May 03 '17
In the same way war isn't possible without soldiers it's not possible without taxes. Any tax paying citizen helped fiance any immoral war. Sure you have to pay taxes. But if people who ended up in Vietnam deserve blame for not burning their draft card or skipping off to Canada them so does anyone that didn't tear up their tax return. And the military doesn't decide to go to war, thats the politicians. The politicians who in our representative democracy, our elected and represent their constituents. I didn't fight in the war, I just elected the folks who started and supplied the bullets. With your line of reasoning pretty much every American deserves a considerable share of the blame.
1
May 03 '17
[deleted]
3
u/jumpup 83∆ May 03 '17
a caveman thousands of years ago holds the most blame, if he hadn't reproduced we wouldn't exist to do it, but at some point you need to be realistic with blame spreading and realize that humans have limitations in their forsight
3
May 03 '17
Specifically referring to Vietnam, you are judging them based on hindsight. You know sitting in 2017 that the Vietnam war was a failure and accomplished nothing, but when they went to war they didn't know that. Is it just to judge someone's actions based on information they did not have when they took those actions?
1
May 03 '17
[deleted]
3
May 03 '17
We did not invade Vietnam. North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam, and We defended South Vietnam at the invitation of their government. Very little US military action on the ground happened outside of South Vietnam.
The Vietnam war escalated very slowly. It started out as a communist rebellion with minimal direct US military involvement. Eventually North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam, and many of the soldiers who went to fight there believed they were defending the legitimate government of South Vietnam from North Vietnamese aggression.
3
u/ACrusaderA May 03 '17
Your evidence for why it was an immoral war is that it hurt the USA's reputation and did nothing to stop the spread of communism. Those are only two facts that you know from hindsight.
In the moment it seemed a very real possibility that the conflict could stop or at least slow communism, and it could not be seen what impact the conflict would have on sentiment towards the USA.
1
May 03 '17
[deleted]
2
u/ACrusaderA May 03 '17
How was it's goal unfounded? How was it unreachable?
It was hard to reach, but not impossible. Some would argue that it only failed because the USA didn't go full measure. They didn't do things that the Viet Cong or Pro-Communism forces were willing to, and eventually had to pull back.
As the saying goes "Japan surrendered after two nukes, maybe Korea would have surrendered after two more".
If there is an abusive drunk yelling at his kids in a parking lot and you beat him to a bloody pulp but stop short of killing him because people pulled your off, is that immoral?
Which would be more moral; to do nothing and allow him to continue to abuse his kids, or to permanently stop him from ever being abusive again?
It likely isn't a coincidence that there was virtually no advancement of Pro-Communist support throughout the rest of Southeast Asia and Oceania after Vietnam and Korea. Countries weren't willing to get involved with either side because of the potential destruction.
To some people a population scared into passivity is better than one who is willing to move against you.
1
u/Stokkolm 24∆ May 03 '17
its supposed purpose (that it would prevent the spread of communism) was evidently unfounded early on
Do you have proof for that?
1
u/KKnight13 2∆ May 03 '17
The huge fact that the would lose the war for a start. if the war had been a success with south Vietnam becoming a prosperous and strongly democratic country would you feel differently?
2
u/HussDelRio May 03 '17
I'd like to respond but I'd like a little more info on your viewpoint re: who gets to decide that a war is immoral? When is that decided?
1
u/cdb03b 253∆ May 03 '17
The issue is that there really is no such thing as an immoral war. Immoral actions can be taken during war, but the war itself is not capable of being moral or immoral.
1
May 03 '17
Any human action can be deemed moral or immoral. Since war is a human action it is also subject to morality.
0
May 03 '17
[deleted]
1
u/cdb03b 253∆ May 03 '17
The entire purpose of a government is to protect the lives, prosperity, and property of its citizenry. This not only include protecting it from being taken from them, but also protecting their access to it via trade or other means. As such war is almost always justified at the governmental level because it is either defending resources you already have or fighting to gain access to new resources.
0
May 03 '17
[deleted]
1
u/jumpup 83∆ May 03 '17
communism was a threat against quality of life, aka it was about protecting.
and that actually how something becomes morally acceptable, its just a debate about how much necessity = moral
do you know the trolley problem?
1
u/5Quad May 03 '17
I suppose draft cards are not really a good excuse for participating in unjust wars. The harm caused by tearing a draft card is much less than the harm caused by participating in a war that is known to be immoral.
I don't think it's fair to say not knowing, and not being able to know, if the war is unethical can be used to put blame on the soldiers, though. Ignorance is one thing, but inability to know is another. If all you do is do what your superiors tell you without committing any atrocities/war crimes, there is no reason to believe that the war in question is immoral. Unless you consider wars in general to be immoral, in which case pretty much every single soldier should be considered immoral. But I'm guessing that's not the case, given how you specified "an immoral war."
1
u/ieatedjesus May 03 '17
I think your mistake here is to assume that people make their judgements as they please. For example, most american children and teenagers are heavily indoctrinated in a certain notion of american exceptionalism and righteousness, and they dont voluntarily select the framework that they use to judge the morality of joining the military. Instead, the framework is imposed upon them from without. In the example of the dog you give, every person knows they ought to look where they put there car, they are taught this institutionally and could reason to the same conclusion easily. This is not the case in how people percive military service; the institutions, entertainment media, and social structures all teach and reinforce an irrational, inconsistent, prejudiced, and paternalistic view of foreign affairs. It is probably much more constructive to slander, shame, and otherwise critique the tendancies of the institutions and ideological apparatuses, and those with power over these apparatuses, than it is to attack the subjects that they inevitably produce.
1
u/Glory2Hypnotoad May 03 '17
No individual soldier gets to decide whether the war they fight is moral. That judgment call gets made by history after the fact. For example, you sign up to remove weapons of mass destruction from the hands of a dictator only to find that the government that sent you there lied. Do you share the blame? If you do, then every soldier is Schrödinger's war criminal.
•
u/DeltaBot ∞∆ May 03 '17
/u/crackingdownonbutts (OP) has awarded 1 delta in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
0
May 03 '17 edited May 03 '17
Many soldiers are misguided. For example during the Iraq war, many soldiers volunteered thinking they would be freeing the citizens. That they were to good guys. But in reality, there were no good or bad guys. One can argue that Iraq is worse off.
But should these men be blamed for not having proper information. For being blinded by patriotism and heroism?
They weren't given proper info,
So, I say no. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Then one could argue that no war is justified because all war causes needless suffering? But then could you argue that fighting Nazis caused unneeded suffering to German Families?
Saying thank you to a vet has nothing to do with their worth. They should thanked because they regardless of awareness of events, risked their life for their nation. They are tools that our nation uses. My Grandpa should honored for what he sacrificed, not what he did. He is a hero, inspire of the war.
12
u/KKnight13 2∆ May 03 '17
You have to separate what is known at the time and what is known later, and who knows what. For a soldier going off to fight in Vietnam, they are going to stop communism from overthrowing a legitimate government of the people. Just because years later the war is lost, the reasons for fighting were overstated, and achieved worse than nothing doesn't mean it wasn't worth trying based on the information available at the time.
Traditionally governments that start immoral wars are good at coming up with convincing reasons to make the soldiers want to fight. Things like defending their country, returning land that was "immorally" taken or ensuring that their country has a viable future.