Philosophers like to solve moral problems by appealing to principles, and it's what we are supposed to do. Being "principled" is very good, if not always fun. The opposite is "expedient", which may be fun, but isn't very, well, principled. There's just one little catch. Seasoned adults don't use principles to make their decisions. They never have. And since the seasoned adults are in charge, it might behoove philosophers and those who study decision-making to wonder how the grown-ups decide things.
Here is a problem. "Suppose a pilot comes to us with a request for advice: “See, we’re at war with a villainous country called Bad, and my superiors have ordered me to drop some bombs at Placetown in Bad. Now there’s a munitions factory at Placetown, but there’s a children hospital there too. Is it permissible for me to drop the bombs?”
The first thing you have to do is get over your horror at the idea of bombing innocent children. You won't think straight with that in the way. The second thing to notice is that it's not clear what is being asked for. The pilot already has permission - from her superiors. There is one catch, which is that "I was only following orders" was removed as a presumptive defence after World War Two, so she may well be asking if she has a good defence if she is charged with war crimes afterwards. That is a matter for an international war crimes lawyer. What she is asking is something like: "can I, in all good conscience, fly this mission?". (We will assume that she has no religious beliefs that provide her with an unequivocal "no" - if she has, I think she has to ask her superiors that someone else fly the mission. After that, it's between her and her rabbi.)
As I read the problem, a number of questions occurred to me. How close is the munitions plant to the hospital? How is the pilot going to bomb the plant: using a fire-and-forget GPS-linked missile launched from several miles out, a laser-guided smart bomb dropped a lot closer or with dumb bombs aimed by old-fashioned targeting computer? Have similar missions been well-informed as to GPS co-ordinates? Why are the children in the hospital: because of the injuries they received as combatants or because they are suffering from a terminal illness? What is the attitude of the local people towards children: do they regard them as precious possessions - as Westeners do - or do they take the more robust view that if there's one thing people can always make more of, it's children, and that it's the mothers who are precious? Why didn't the authorities re-locate the hospital once they knew there was an insurgent munitions plant next to it? Why did the insurgents put the munitions plant there? How many of her own comrades will be killed if the munitions factory continues to work? Or will they just start another one down the road the next day? Does the pilot have a choice in flying the mission, or will she get a court-martial or a reprimand if she doesn't? If she doesn't fly it, will someone else? Does the pilot have religious beliefs that preclude her from flying aggressive missions like this? Did she understand when she signed up that she might have to fly missions like this? Is it likely that the conflict will be over before the children grow up to be insurgents themselves? Would seeing the hospital go up affect her ability to fly other aggressive missions?
Eventually, the following argument resolved itself. The only reservation about the mission is the possible harm to the children. Assume that the weaponry she is given is accurate enough to hit the munitions factory, and the blast from that weapon would not itself damage the hospital beyond a slight shaking. What will damage the hospital is the blast from the explosives stored in the factory. A blast that will be set off by the pilot's missile, but equally could be set off at random by some clumsy materials handling by the insurgents. The children will be harmed, not by the missile fired at the building next door, but because that building contained explosives. Which were put there by the insurgents, who are cynically using the children's hospital as a human shield. The harm to the children is not caused by the attack on the munitions dump, which would be attacked no matter where it was, but by the decision of the insurgents to put their munitions factory there. And, by the way, by the complicity of the local people in not raising hell when the insurgents did. The fact the local people don't see it that way makes the PR harder but doesn't affect the moral issues. An army cannot be deterred by the use of human shields (exercise for the reader: why not?) - though a civilised army might try to work around the poor bastards being used as shields if they can, just not at the risk of greater harm to its own people.
This argument is intended to make you realise that, assuming the weaponry is well-chosen, the blame for any collateral harm to the children can be seen as not being the pilot's fault (strictly, the fault of her superiors who tasked her with the mission). Most people buy into the idea that it would be the pilot's fault. after all, the very setting of the question assumes that it's the pilot (strictly, her superiors) who has to justify her actions. Whereas it isn't: it's the insurgents who have to provide a moral justification for putting a munitions factory next to a school hospital.
I think the pilot's commanders can properly ask her to do it, and she should carry out the orders, if she is given a smart weapon (laser or GPS) of appropriate destructive force (that is, a small nuclear warhead would not be acceptable). If she believes the weapons are not adequate, she should ask for the appropriate ones. If none are forthcoming, she might request someone else fly it if she believes that her future effectiveness would be compromised by knowing she had caused the deaths of innocent children. That's the situation as I see it.
Which doesn't look anything like a regular moral argument. No appeal to principles, to the relative value of human lives, to our folk intuitions of fairness nor appeals to the rights of the children not to be harmed by a conflict between two groups of people neither of whom have the childrens' well-being in mind. No weighty demand that the pilot's superiors must answer to a higher standard of behaviour than that applied to insurgents. Just some fairly practical considerations about whose explosives did the actual damage and what weapons the pilot will use. Of course, there is an argument about responsibility in there, and that might make it a moral argument, but the assignment of responsibility is more a matter of fact, even if those facts can cut both ways.
In a later post, I'm going to look at another example and see how we deal with that.
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