War Crimes: Causes, Excuses, And Blame

Description

In 2005, US Marines killed 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians in the town of Haditha, including several children. How should we assess the perpetrators of this and other war crimes? Is it unfair to blame the Marines because they were subject to situational pressures such as combat stress (and had lost one of their own in combat)? Or should they be held responsible for their actions, since they intentionally chose to kill civilians? In this book, Matthew Talbert and Jessica Wolfendale take up these moral questions and propose an original theory of the causes of war crimes and the responsibility of war crimes perpetrators. In the first half of the book, they challenge accounts that explain war crimes by reference to the situational pressures endured by military personnel, including peer pressure, combat stress, and propaganda. The authors propose an alternative theory that explains how military personnel make sense of their participation in war crimes through their self-conceptions, goals, and values. In the second half of the book, the authors consider and reject theories of responsibility that excuse perpetrators on the grounds that situational pressures often encourage them to believe that their behavior is permissible. Such theories of responsibility are unacceptably exculpatory, implying it is unreasonable for victims of war crimes to blame their attackers. By contrast, Talbert and Wolfendale argue that perpetrators of war crimes may be blameworthy if their actions express objectionable attitudes towards their victims, even if they sincerely believe that what they are doing is right Cover......Page 1 Half title......Page 2 War Crimes ......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Dedication......Page 6 Contents......Page 8 Acknowledgments......Page 12 A Note on Authorship......Page 14 Introduction......Page 18 1. What are war crimes?......Page 19 2. Outline......Page 20 Chapter 1 Explaining Behavior: The Person or the Situation?......Page 26 1.1 Solomon Asch......Page 28 1.2 Stanley Milgram......Page 29 1.3 John Darley and Daniel Batson......Page 31 2. Philosophical situationism......Page 33 3. Responses to philosophical situationism......Page 36 4. The principle of construal......Page 39 5. Conclusion......Page 41 Chapter 2 Situationism and War Crimes......Page 42 1. Situationist accounts of war crimes......Page 43 1.1 Paul Roth’s situationist explanation of the Holocaust......Page 44 1.2 Philip Zimbardo’s situationism......Page 47 1.3 John Doris and Dominic Murphy’s account......Page 50 1.3.1  Situational pressures on the battlefield......Page 52 1.3.2  Distal pressures......Page 54 1.3.3.A  Obedience to authority and learning to kill......Page 55 1.3.3.C Ideology......Page 58 2. Applying the situationist account......Page 59 2.1 My Lai......Page 60 2.2 Abu Ghraib......Page 61 2.3 Haditha......Page 62 3. Conclusion......Page 63 Chapter 3 A Dispositional Account of War Crimes......Page 66 1. What’s wrong with the situationist account?......Page 68 2. A dispositional account of war crimes......Page 70 2.1 Morality as socially articulated......Page 72 2.2 The creation of war crimes: ideology and social narratives......Page 76 2.3 CAPS theory: understanding individual perpetrators......Page 77 2.4 Character traits in CAPS theory......Page 78 2.5 Comparing CAPS and situationism......Page 80 2.6 Explaining perpetrator behavior......Page 82 3. Conclusion......Page 84 Chapter 4 Excusing Perpetrators......Page 86 1. What is moral responsibility?......Page 88 2. Situationism and moral responsibility......Page 90 3. Normative competence and moral responsibility......Page 92 4. Normative competence and war crimes......Page 94 5. Circumstantial and constitutive moral luck......Page 98 6. Conclusion......Page 104 Chapter 5 Blaming Perpetrators......Page 106 1. Excuses......Page 108 2. Ignorance as an excuse for war crimes......Page 109 3. War crimes and moral justifications......Page 111 4. War crimes and exemptions......Page 115 5. Ill will and excuses......Page 118 6. Moral luck......Page 120 7. The victim’s perspective......Page 122 8. Conclusion......Page 126 Chapter 6 Hard Cases......Page 128 1.1 International law and policy......Page 129 1.2 Characteristics of the child soldier......Page 130 1.3 The passive victim model......Page 132 1.4 Child soldiers’ capacity for agency and moral responsibility......Page 134 1.5 Concluding thoughts on child soldiers......Page 139 2.1 Remote weaponry......Page 141 2.2 Causal contributions and outcomes......Page 145 2.3 Kutz’s account of responsibility and collective action......Page 146 2.4 The Dresden case......Page 147 2.5 The supply chain......Page 151 3. Conclusion......Page 153 Chapter 7 Punishing and Preventing War Crimes......Page 156 1. The superior orders defense......Page 157 1.1 The duress interpretation......Page 159 1.2 The “reasonable mistake” interpretation......Page 160 1.3 The motive argument......Page 163 2.1 Current approaches to military ethics training......Page 166 2.2 A new approach to preventing war crimes......Page 168 Bibliography......Page 172 Index......Page 182