Ethics (also known as moral philosophy) is a branch of philosophy that addresses questions about morality-that is, concepts such as good and bad, noble and ignoble, right and wrong, justice, and virtue. (Wikipedia.com)
I don’t claim to be an ethicist but anyone over six knows a few things about what’s good and what’s bad and the difference between right and wrong. It’s called the age of reason which is to be distinguished from the 18th century Age of Enlightenment and usually kicks in around the age of 7 when conscience and not just the threat of punishment and retribution begin to govern one’s actions.
Rightly or wrongly, ethics and conscience tend to become murkier in times of war when decisions must be made that will affect, or take, thousands of lives. The question becomes not whether to give Johnny a bloody nose for kicking you but whether to perform such actions as dropping “Little Boy” on Hiroshima and kill tens of thousands of innocents and perhaps end a war that had already killed millions.
On a much smaller scale is the ethical issue of killing one man or a group of men who you are reasonably certain are plotting to decimate cities and commit mass murder. Today we have the ability to accomplish such precision acts of war without risking the lives of the guys with boots on the ground or of the pilots in the sky. Some are calling the use of very successful predator drones in the Afghani war as unethical, others call it a great advancement in the conduct of modern warfare. Pinpointing a high value target certainly seems to beat the destruction of large swaths of real estate tenanted by unknown numbers of innocent non-combatants.
And, yes, there will be drone mistakes, casualties that occur in the fog of war described with the sanitized term “collateral damage” which happens no matter the military tactics employed but do those mistakes constitute unethical warfare? A related ethical question has arisen in conjunction with Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, a naturalized American citizen who following 9/11 declared himself a bridge between America and the Muslim world. That bridge collapsed after the U.S., with fair warning, struck back against the Taliban attackers in Afghanistan and later invaded Iraq.
Awlaki was happy to be a bridge when the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were still smoldering but not nearly as happy after we retaliated against Islamic extremists. That retaliation apparently radicalized the eloquent imam; he applauded the Fort Hood massacre and is believed to have inspired various terror plots including the Christmas Day and Times Square failed attempts to rain destruction down on American cities.
Awlaki effectively declared war on the United States: “I eventually came to the conclusion that jihad against America is binding upon myself, just as it is binding on every other able Muslim:” http://tiny.cc/k5soc.
His declaration of a holy war and his inspirational rhetoric driving that jihad notwithstanding, some in the government are questioning the ethics of targeting anyone, least of all someone who is technically an American citizen, for murder in a faraway land without due process. Awlaki was added to the CIA’s “kill list” by President Obama. It is not considered an assassination but rather is “lawful as part of the military action authorized by Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, as well as under the general principle of self-defense.”
One counterterrorism official explained the matter more simply: “American citizenship doesn’t give you carte blanche to wage war against your own country. If you cast your lot with its enemies, you may well share their fate:” http://tiny.cc/2baio
Aside from the incongruity of political and governmental figures discussing questions of ethics, the fact remains that the president of the United States authorized the targeting of Awlaki even after criticizing similar George W. Bush policies.
Is it ethical? Is it morally good, noble, and virtuous for a government ever to execute one of its own citizens without a trial by a jury of his peers? As I said, I’m not an ethicist. All I do know is that, if killing Anwar al-Awlaki by any means saves the lives of Americans and preserves American cities, it is right and just. It is said that after a war, the victors get to write the history books. After our interminable war with radical Islam is resolved, the victorious will also determine the ethics of it all.
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