I no longer consider myself pro-life

[Roy]

Killing some-one now in case they try and kill you in 15 years time is not self-defence.Had it been my decision, I think I'd have dropped the bombs near the cities, not on them.

I just discovered that the primary target was the much smaller city of Kokura, and Nagasaki was bombed only because Kokura was obscured by clouds.

[carpedm9587]

Why eat alone?

Who invited you!?


Gimme that popcorn!

No one messes with my popcorn...

[Sparko]

There are find points here worth examining:

I'm not sure that the "deliberately targeting" gives us moral cover. If we take an action that directly leads to an innocent person's death, are we in the clear because we didn't mean to do it?

If we take an innocent life that is threatening ours then we are in the clear. In war things are murkier because it is not one-on-one in all cases. If a child is coming at you with a bomb on his chest, you can kill him in self-defense. You can't just walk into a village and decide to shoot an enemy child. You can target his village because it has a military outpost there and he can be collateral damage because not to take out the depot puts your entire unit in danger.

And what do you mean by "inconvenience" to the family or the woman? I suppose that rules out prophylactic abortion, but what about a single mother who works part time and cannot lose the hourly pay, should it come to that. Is that merely an inconvenience?

yes it is. And she can give the baby up for adoption if it is too much of one. It sure isn't endangering her life which is required for "self-defense"

[Raphael]

Why shouldn't a woman whose family is going to be devastated by an additional pregnancy, for whatever reason, be allowed to kill a child

Because there is an alternative solution that means the child doesn't have to die. It's called adoption and there are plenty of people out there who can't have children (for whatever reason) who would be happy to adopt that child and give it a family.

(my folks adopted my sister. they had to get the law in South Africa changed to do it because at the time it was illegal to adopt a child from whose birth family belonged to a different denomination to the adoptive family.)

[Terraceth]

I just discovered that the primary target was the much smaller city of Kokura, and Nagasaki was bombed only because Kokura was obscured by clouds.

Huh. I never knew that.

[Starlight]

I just discovered that the primary target was the much smaller city of Kokura, and Nagasaki was bombed only because Kokura was obscured by clouds.

Clouds save lives still today...

This 13-Year-Old Is Scared When the Sky Is Blue Because of Our Drones:

"I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer grey skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are grey," a 13-year-old Pakistani boy named Zubair told Congress on Tuesday. Zubair was 12 when he and his younger sister, Nabeela, were injured in a drone strike near North Waziristan last October. "When sky brightens, drones return and we live in fear,"

[One Bad Pig]

Clouds save lives still today...

This 13-Year-Old Is Scared When the Sky Is Blue Because of Our Drones:

"I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer grey skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are grey," a 13-year-old Pakistani boy named Zubair told Congress on Tuesday. Zubair was 12 when he and his younger sister, Nabeela, were injured in a drone strike near North Waziristan last October. "When sky brightens, drones return and we live in fear,"

Obama loved those (this was from 4 years ago).

[KingsGambit]

Support for drone bombing programs (with a high rate of hitting civilians) was one point of agreement for candidates Clinton and Trump. I chose to target Clinton's support leading up to the election; this backfired as Trump has ratcheted it up to unprecedented levels.

My liberal friends were not particularly pleased by me bringing this up. One directly asked me what I hoped to achieve by talking about it. Well, duh, I want it to stop.

[Starlight]

Obama loved those (this was from 4 years ago).

I agree Obama's use of drone strikes was abhorrent and I think he should have stood trial for war crimes.

Unfortunately Trump has ramped up the strikes by an order of magnitude.

[lilpixieofterror]

Killing some-one now in case they try and kill you in 15 years time is not self-defence.Had it been my decision, I think I'd have dropped the bombs near the cities, not on them.

And you would have condemned millions to die in an invasion.

[guacamole]

If we take an innocent life that is threatening ours then we are in the clear.

I'm not sure what you mean. An innocent life that is threatening ours would seem not innocent.

In war things are murkier because it is not one-on-one in all cases. If a child is coming at you with a bomb on his chest, you can kill him in self-defense. You can't just walk into a village and decide to shoot an enemy child. You can target his village because it has a military outpost there and he can be collateral damage because not to take out the depot puts your entire unit in danger.

And that was the root of my critique of the moral justification of collateral damage: We CAN kill children so long as doing so benefits us and ours in a narrow set of circumstances--war and conflict. That is functionally what is going on here.

yes it is. And she can give the baby up for adoption if it is too much of one. It sure isn't endangering her life which is required for "self-defense"

Again, I'm not supporting abortion. I'll only note here that the "self-defense" justification for the killing of children seems rather loose.

In any case, we come back to where we started with Starlight. Starlight, you, and I all think it's is permissible, for various reasons and at various times, to kill children.

fwiw,
guacamole

fwiw

[guacamole]

Because there is an alternative solution that means the child doesn't have to die. It's called adoption and there are plenty of people out there who can't have children (for whatever reason) who would be happy to adopt that child and give it a family.

(my folks adopted my sister. they had to get the law in South Africa changed to do it because at the time it was illegal to adopt a child from whose birth family belonged to a different denomination to the adoptive family.)

No doubt. My argument isn't meant to argue for abortion, merely to note that the "self-defense" argument is useful and available as moral justification for both soldiers and mothers. Different parties simply draw the self-defense circle around different points. Everyone so far agrees that you are morally justified in killing a child who isn't actively threatening you.

fwiw,
guacamole

[guacamole]

Clouds save lives still today...

This 13-Year-Old Is Scared When the Sky Is Blue Because of Our Drones:

"I no longer love blue skies. In fact, I now prefer grey skies. The drones do not fly when the skies are grey," a 13-year-old Pakistani boy named Zubair told Congress on Tuesday. Zubair was 12 when he and his younger sister, Nabeela, were injured in a drone strike near North Waziristan last October. "When sky brightens, drones return and we live in fear,"

It seems like what people are saying in this thread is that killing that kid is no worse morally than killing a dog--so long as he is standing close enough to a terrorist.

[Sparko]

I'm not sure what you mean. An innocent life that is threatening ours would seem not innocent.

an ectopic pregnancy is an innocent that is threatening the life of the mother. A child that has a bomb strapped to him and sent into an army camp to blow up soldiers is an innocent. A man who has a heart attack and passes out at the wheel of a bus heading right at you is innocent.

And that was the root of my critique of the moral justification of collateral damage: We CAN kill children so long as doing so benefits us and ours in a narrow set of circumstances--war and conflict. That is functionally what is going on here.

ok

[carpedm9587]

And you would have condemned millions to die in an invasion.

The problem is - this is a hypothetical. I know of no evidence that proves that such an invasion was an inevitable outcome of NOT dropping the bomb, not to mention that it would have been at the scale of millions. So we are weighing the certain death of tens of thousands of innocents against the possible future death of an unknown number. Furthermore, dropping the bomb on a city rather than a predominantly military target...?

The moral equation here seems fairly clear.