Legal Affairs Good Kills?

"EVEN AS IT INCREASES ATTENTION TO CIVILIAN SUFFERING, however, the legal principle of noncombatant immunity can deaden sympathy for enemy combatants. The moral intuition that lies behind protecting civilians is that fighting with your opponent's military is legitimate in a way that fighting with its citizenry is not. Because they have taken up arms, enemy combatants are, in the jargon of the battlefield, "good kills." In his classic Just and Unjust Wars, the political philosopher Michael Walzer described the transformation that occurs when a civilian becomes a soldier: "He has been made into a dangerous man." Walzer concluded, "For that reason he finds himself endangered.""

redux [05.06.03]
Editor & Publisher Soldier in 'Las Vegas R-J' Story May Be Investigated

"Military officials have yet to decide if a U.S. Marine will be investigated for possible war crimes in Iraq, after seeing an interview published in the April 25 Las Vegas Review-Journal in which the Marine described shooting an Iraqi soldier in the back of the head.

According to the newspaper story, Gunnery Sgt. Gus Covarrubias told Review-Journal reporter Richard Lake that when the action died down after an intense April 8 firefight in Baghdad, he slipped away from his unit to find the soldier who shot a grenade that exploded near Covarrubias and temporarily knocked him out. When Covarrubias found his chief suspect, an Iraqi soldier in a nearby house, he ordered him to stop and turn around, then "went behind him and shot him in the back of the head," he said in the story. "Twice." Then he chased the man's partner, who was outside trying to escape. "I shot him, too," he said, according to the newspaper story."

redux [04.18.03]
The New York Times Magazine 'Good Kills'
[requires 'free' registration]

""Things are going well," he said. "Really well."

When Colonel McCoy told you that things were going well, it meant his marines were killing Iraqi fighters. That's what was happening as we exchanged pleasantries at the bridge. His armored Humvee was parked 30 yards from the bridge. If one of the Republican Guard soldiers on the other side of the bridge had wanted to shout an insult across the river, he would have been heard -- were it not for the fact that Colonel McCoy's battalion was at that moment lobbing so many bullets and mortars and artillery shells across the waterway that a shout could never have been heard, and in any event the Iraqis had no time for insults before dying. The only sound was the roar of death.

"Lordy," McCoy said. "Heck of a day. Good kills.""

The Chronicle of Higher Education When Teaching the Ethics of War Is Not Academic

"In the spring semester following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the start of President Bush's "war on terror," I gave an unusual assignment to my students. I asked them to write essays detailing exactly why they are different from terrorists. The midshipmen were to spell out as clearly as possible how the roles they intended to fill as future Navy and Marine Corps officers are distinct in morally relevant ways from that of, say, an Al Qaeda operative. They dubbed the assignment "creepy," but gamely agreed to do it. After they had read their efforts aloud, I gave the project a twist. I had them exchange papers, and told them each to write a critical response to their classmate's paper, from the point of view of a terrorist. Then I had them read those responses aloud.

The midshipmen found the entire exercise very disturbing because it forced them to reflect on that thin but critical line that separates warriors from murderers."