Another tough one. For me, I think you have to look at the consequences. — Down The Rabbit Hole

All we can do is speculate about consequences. We have to act with the information we have. We don't act from a transcendent position with omniscience. On the other hand, we can know precisely what has taken place in the past. This is why morality is mostly backward looking, assessing the value of actions that have already taken place.

One can keep one's footing. I surmise Truman realised it was immoral, but did it anyway. Would I have done differently? Such contemplations are fraught with equivocation. The morality of the act was probably not high on the agenda at those meetings. — Banno

I like my quip: "Morality 101: bombing civilians is bad."

I have sure footing there, but notice how that statement is like something God might have zapped into a stone tablet on Mt Sinai. That's the problem with the shallow end. It sounds nice, but it ends up being irrelevant to real people in real circumstances.

so it goes both ways, "the wars you don't fight," become an issue as well. — Count Timothy von Icarus

Yes. It's complicated as you have to measure not only the likely consequence of each course of action (or lack thereof), but how certain you are of those consequences. Makes questions like the one posed in the OP and the Israel/Gaza question extremely difficult, if not impossible, to answer.

So don't say to me that Japanese culture is somehow dead. It's very alive and influential. And if Samurai warriors don't walk around armed to the teeth in Japanese cities anymore, it hardly isn't an example of cultural decadence. — ssu

I agree on this point. Of course, Japanese culture is still influential, but the main debate that conservatives - or populists - have in Japan is if it was that worthy the influence of Western culture in Japan. Most of the Japanese citizens who I talked with agreed with this, and they love Europe and the USA in general. They are not nationalist because they learnt the lesson after WWII. I am not going to lie to you: I wish I see some Samurai if I go to Japan one day, as well as I watched them in Kurosawa's films. :wink:
But I am aware that this is just my taste, and most of the Japanese don't feel represented by their Samurai past any more.

The aspect that surprised me the most, is that they consider 'cultural decadence' the way they wear clothes. Suits are Western, and some of them miss wearing a yukata or kimono, because these are only used at important festivals. Yet, they are aware that if they wear a yukata the foreigners would not take them seriously...

I think many Japanese are proud of what they have made of their Island nation compared to other Asian nations. — ssu

Absolutely. They truly believe this.

I think you could make that pretty absolute. Terror bombing and area bombing as a means to reduce economic efficiency has not proven very effective.

The larger question is about the use of air power, or artillery, to attack an enemy who entrenches themselves in populated urban areas. There you have the trade off of doing nothing due to the risk to hitting civilians, which only encourages the use of "human shields," and the risks of various forms of attack.

In general, the risk ratio to civilians favors air power. Special forces raids can be less damaging, but they have the potential to blow up. What happens if your forces get pinned down? Now you have to let them be overwhelmed or start using way more, less discriminate power to support them. Actual occupations don't tend to result in fewer losses unless the occupying power can flood the area with manpower and effectively police it. This is hard to do. The US and allied forces to hold half of Vietnam peaked over one million men and wasn't enough.

Then, you can consider strategic bombing designed to cripple your enemies' ability to wage war. This moves to bombing civilian infrastructure, factories, etc., but not civilians as an end.

There aren't many ways in which bombing civilians can be justified because it isn't effective. But it's also wrong to conflate "any attack once an enemy has entrenched themselves in a populated area and not evacuated it," with "bombing civilians intentionally."

This is definitely a real strategy. In the one election Hamas allowed to occur they campaigned precisely on curbing their use of "human shields," a stratagem the shields were not particularly fond of. But if insurgencies can be justified then some degree of "hiding behind the population," must also be justified, since they are pretty impossible otherwise, particularly in urbanized areas.

So, with insurgents, their justification needs to be based in their goals and how well their techniques actually can be expected to achieve those goals. In many insurgencies, control over their own populace, infighting, and attacking just for the sake of attacking become goals in themselves. I'm thinking in particular of the Lebanese civil war with its endless landscape of groups. And these groups had justifiable causes, but lost justification for their muddled "attack to attack," doctrine.

Ah yes, the Samurai soul of beheading prisoners, and having thousands of civilians committ suicide for no reason.

Much like people lamenting the death of the "Crusader spirit," of the Middle Ages and the European Wars of Religion lol.

I think you could make that pretty absolute. — Count Timothy von Icarus

I think it's absolute in the sense that there's never a time when bombing civilians is the righteous thing to do. Even if it's part of an ethical dilemma, it doesn't represent the ideal. But sometimes people act in a way that manifests ideals. Sometimes they don't. What's happening when they don't?

An easy answer would just be that sometimes humans are vile. That strikes me as a useless condemnation, though. I don't think they're actually any more vile than a flock of birds or a school of fish. The only way to begin understanding human behavior is to start by looking at it through an amoral lens.

So looking at Hamas in mechanistic terms, how do they end up using their own relatives as human shields? What psychological factors lead to that kind of behavior? What do you think?

There aren't many ways in which bombing civilians can be justified because it isn't effective. But it's also wrong to conflate "any attack once an enemy has entrenched themselves in a populated area and not evacuated it," with "bombing civilians intentionally." — Count Timothy von Icarus

I'm not sure how to separate the two.

An easy answer would just be that sometimes humans are vile. That strikes me as a useless condemnation, though. I don't think they're actually any more vile than a flock of birds or a school of fish. The only way to begin understanding human behavior is to start by looking at it through an amoral lens. — frank

It sounds like you want to call good acts moral and bad acts amoral, such that immoral acts do not exist. You've defined immoral acts out of existence.

Relevant here is Elizabeth Anscombe's point:

All human action is moral action. It is all either good or bad. (It may be both.) — Elizabeth Anscombe, Medalist’s Address: Action, Intention and ‘Double Effect’

how do they end up using their own relatives as human shields? What psychological factors lead to that kind of behavior? — frank

Possibly the way a chess player is willing to sacrifice all pieces but the king.

Further, religion/ideology plays an important part here as far as civilians are concerned. If the civilians believe they are going to be killed in "friendly fire" but for the greater purpose of a holy war, then they themselves and their soldiers won't see themselves as victims.

a) believed it was wrong
c) believed it was amoral
d) rationalized that it was right even though their instincts were that it was wrong — frank

These options couldn't be possible, because the US was the one who declared war on Japan. They knew what they were getting themselves into, and they chose to do it.

"I want to live" says nothing about how you should deal with others, so it says nothing about morality. — Banno

It depends on what others, and what those others are doing or are willing to do.

One cannot be a gentleman among savages.

I have a daughter that has put all over her room pictures of Japanese cartoons, Manga, of cute puppies and always wants to go to the store with Japanese merchandise. So don't say to me that Japanese culture is somehow dead. — ssu

And you think *that* is "Japanese culture"??

Some in an society can be ardent believers, but the majority simply adapts to the prevailing situation. And the majority will also adapt when the situation changes. — ssu

Exactly. But what does it help if the body lives, if the soul, the spirit is crushed?

The idea of bombing civilians with any kind of bomb would strike most sensitive people as immoral. — frank

Why is it immoral to bomb workers in armaments factories?

Why is it immoral to bomb workers in armaments factories? — RogueAI

Because they're just trying to make a living?

Because they're just trying to make a living? — frank

A) people in the military are trying to make a living too
B) people working in armaments factories aren't JUST trying to make a living. They're helping the war effort as well.

Why is it immoral to bomb workers in armaments factories?

They have done nothing to deserve it. Since they have done nothing to deserve it, any conscience or sense of justice disappears and is superseded by motives of self-concern, which is the sine qua non of consequentialism. What I mean is, any reasoning involved in deciding whether to incinerate workers in fire and shrapnel is invariably premised on one’s own thoughts and emotions and imaginings. We can see this in post hoc justifications, for example, wherever a counterfactual is offered as proof that bombing was the right thing to do. Or that they are “helping the war effort”.

They have done nothing to deserve it. — NOS4A2

They're building weapons to fund the war effort. I'm not asking whether they "deserve it", but rather "is it immoral to bomb munition factory workers?" If you are fighting a war, and you can end the war by destroying the enemy's war-making industries, don't you have a moral obligation to your own people to do so?

Whatever the absolute judgement on the Hiroshima bombing is, relatively speaking the firebombing of Dresden had similar casualties (to the Nagasaki bombing) but didn't shorten the war by 10 minutes, so is morally worse.

What famous American author was a POW held in Dresden when it was bombed?

You don't know?

Actually I didn't want to raise a tricky ethical question in that thread, because it is in the Politics and Current Affairs section. — Leontiskos

Fair enough.

I think it could make a difference. We distinguish combatants from civilians, but then there are murky areas such as civilians who are proximate to the war, producing arms or some such. Thus insofar as someone is associated with the war, they are not a mere civilian. So if a compatriot hostage is more closely associated with the war/fighting than a neutral or opposed hostage, then a relevant difference could arise. What is at stake is probably a form of collectivism, and it may be contingent on whether the compatriot hostage is in general agreement with their possessor's tactics (i.e. if they think to themselves, "I am not opposed to using compatriots as human shields, but don't use me!"). — Leontiskos

From a utilitarian point of view, you could say the sympathiser is worth less on the basis that they hold more negative utility, and from a deontological point of view, you could say that the sympathiser is less deserving. There will be a minority of people that hold the belief that everyone is equal no matter what.

Sometimes folk do stuff they ought not? Yes. Many - most? - issues are inscrutable. That our choices are rational is more pretence than reality.

Should we therefore not at least attempt to be rational? To be consistent and coherent? There's a new discussion for you.

They're building weapons to fund the war effort. I'm not asking whether they "deserve it", but rather "is it immoral to bomb munition factory workers?" If you are fighting a war, and you can end the war by destroying the enemy's war-making industries, don't you have a moral obligation to your own people to do so?

I’m not answering whether they deserve it or not. I’m saying they do not deserve it, therefor it is immoral to bomb them. It is not moral to bomb people just in case it ends the war because such a decision is based on prophecy. You’re referring to your own predictions, your own assumptions, without once considering actual people involved.

Why is it immoral to bomb workers in armaments factories? — RogueAI

Check out what Anscombe says about innocence, and the sleeping soldiers example, in Mr Truman's Degree.

Destroying a city involves the murder of innocents.

Sometimes folk do stuff they ought not? Yes. Many - most? - issues are inscrutable. That our choices are rational is more pretence than reality. — Banno

Are you conflating irrational with inscrutable? It's fairly easy to understand people once you know what they fear and desire, for me, anyway.

Should we therefore not at least attempt to be rational? To be consistent and coherent? There's a new discussion for you. — Banno

Well you've claimed morality can be "subject" to logic. So why is it moral to kill chickens? Why should we attempt to be rational? Consistent? Coherent?

Are you conflating irrational with inscrutable? — frank

Well, no, I'm saying even if your goal is to be rational, there are situations that do not have a rational response. Even if, or perhaps because, you understand the motivation of the folk involved, there need be no reasonable choice. But nevertheless, one can be obligated to do something (When you are in the Chaotic quarter of the Cynefin Framework).

Sometimes there is not only no best choice, but no reason for preferring one option over another.

But that's a different issue to whether we should be rational. Perhaps we should pick one issue here. I suggest the former is closer to the issue of the OP?

It seems to me that before an action can be denominated as moral or not moral, it must be first established that the actor is a moral agent, or under some moral obligation. Not whether they should be, but whether they are. And it is not at all clear to me that the state - any state - is a moral agent or under any moral obligation. And that of course because the state is not a person, nor is a state's responsibilities and obligations the same as any person's.

I see what you're saying.

is obvious that Japan would have won against the US if Truman hadn't dropped the atomic bombs. — javi2541997

This article says:

Japan was considering surrendering prior to Nagasaki, the conventional bombs killed more than the nuclear ones, and Japan never could have fended off the US and the Soviet Union successfully.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/05/30/the-bomb-didnt-beat-japan-stalin-did/#:~:text=But%2C%20in%201965%2C%20historian%20Gar,use%20was%2C%20therefore%2C%20unnecessary.

All's fair in love and war.