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Comment by Entangled | Hacker News Reader

War has ethics? That's new to me.

The fact that some "rules" are set so idiots follow them doesn't mean everybody does, specially when they are not seen. Abu ghraib anyone?

Wall street has a very clear ethics set on stone, profits no matter the loss.

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War does have ethics. For example, the US military has rules of engagement. A great example of this is that the US at one point (70% sure) knew where the head of ISIS was. He was alegedly in an appartment building in a city in Syria. The US rules of engagement prevent the airforce from simply bombing an appartment building full of civilians, so they did nothing. That means a lot. It means that they don't simply bomb large numbers of civilians, which is a good thing. It is what makes it easy for the US military to point to ISIS and say "those fighers are uncivilized they kill civilians". It is a significant advantage on the ground, because civilians are less hatefull towards the US as a result. It is also the right thing to do.

Edit: Abu Ghraib was horrible and the solders should have been sent to prison for the rest of their lives and not just a few years.

Also, I do not support the US military and think that they cause more harm than good in their foreign engagements.

Much of this is because we're nominally at peace with Syria. ISIS is the belligerent party.

We absolutely did bomb large numbers of civilians in WW2, Iraq, and Vietnam, and in the latter two cases we hadn't even formally declared war.

Are you nitpicking the examples as stand-alone, or as part of the greater argument: that war does have ethics?

If you're intending to say that it doesn't, I think you should revisit your conclusion.

Otherwise, these were just examples of war having ethics.

My argument is that war has ethics as long as it is peacetime. As soon as it is wartime, the ethics are quickly forgotten. The ethics are remembered again once peace is restored, but only for the losing side.

I've got another comment that lays out some historical examples of this [1], but there are plenty more.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13897486

(In particular, I'm not commenting on whether war should have ethics; I agree that it should. But factually, looking at what belligerents actually do in wartime, it doesn't, at least in any meaningful sense.)

There's the Geneva Convention. Not all countries have signed on, and the countries that have don't necessarily follow them all the time or when they think no one is looking, but that doesn't mean that there aren't mostly-agreed-on standards for what is or is not a war crime.

If universal adherence were a necessary characteristic of ethical standards, we wouldn't have many that pass that test.

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