Capital punishment

Originally posted by googlefudge
Sooo... You are also a racist... As well as a condoner of genocide...
And state sanctioned murder... And God sanctioned murder...


Or is their any other possible way of interpreting that, which I am missing?

You can sit in your comfortable chair and label me all day long. That doesn't affect the truth.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Not so. The wrongs of war belong to those committing them, just like any wrongs. This is why we still conduct war crime trials. To prosecute war crimes.

To be clear, I was not excusing the individual of wrong doing. I was just agreeing with whitehead that there is collective blame as well.

Originally posted by SwissGambit
To be clear, I was not excusing the individual of wrong doing. I was just agreeing with whitehead that there is collective blame as well.

Only if the war being waged is not just. If the war is just, as the war waged by the Allied powers in World War II against the Axis powers, where is the collective blame? There is none. Any blame is only the blame of those guilty of actual war crimes. Now if the entire Army covered up the existence of war criminals and the crimes they committed, then there is collective blame for that.

The problem may be that since then, few wars have been totally just.

Originally posted by Suzianne
Only if the war being waged is not just. If the war is just, as the war waged by the Allied powers in World War II against the Axis powers, where is the collective blame? There is none. Any blame is only the blame of those guilty of actual war crimes. Now if the entire Army covered up the existence of war criminals and the crimes they committed, then there is collective blame for that.

I disagree. There is indeed collective blame. The US military gets egg on its face as a whole every time some military scandal like Abu Ghraib (sp?) or Guantanamo Bay happens. The military is on the hook for allowing those people to be in positions to abuse power at minimum.

Originally posted by SwissGambit
I disagree. There is indeed collective blame. The US military gets egg on its face as a whole every time some military scandal like Abu Ghraib (sp?) or Guantanamo Bay happens. The military is on the hook for allowing those people to be in positions to abuse power at minimum.

Do you think that the War for Oil was a just war?

Originally posted by Suzianne
Do you think that the War for Oil was a just war?

No.

Even if that stuff happened in a just war, there would be justifiable collective blame. Not as much as for the abuser, but still some.

Edit 2: I thought it was common knowledge that a military leader can lose their command if there are too many incidences of bad behavior by their subordinates.

Originally posted by SwissGambit
No.

Even if that stuff happened in a just war, there would be justifiable collective blame. Not as much as for the abuser, but still some.

Then that's my point. In a just war, there need be no collective blame. The minute there is an unjust war, then yes, we all share in a collective blame. Would you really blame the Allied soldiers coming back from Europe or the Pacific for anything? They were engaged in fighting the evil of the Third Reich and Imperialist Japan. What blame did they deserve?

Originally posted by Suzianne
Then that's my point. In a just war, there need be no collective blame. The minute there is an unjust war, then yes, we all share in a collective blame. Would you really blame the Allied soldiers coming back from Europe or the Pacific for anything? They were engaged in fighting the evil of the Third Reich and Imperialist Japan. What blame did they deserve?

I think I can compromise on this point. It is possible that there could be a just war with an individual abuse of power that a commander could not reasonably have forseen. Perhaps the abuser was careful about not showing their true colors.

In that case, there may be no justified collective blame, although some people may blame the leaders anyway (especially people on the opposite side of the war). It's hard for outsiders to know who is truly at fault in some of these type of cases.