Comments Elsewhere

Suppose that you have, somehow, conclusively proven that there is no way to have a modern war without massacreing innocent people. (*) That gives you an incompatibility claim between moralism and militarism — if, say, you go around categorically condemning tactics (like the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, say, or the firebombing of Tokyo) for killing innocent people, then you’d end up having to condemn any modern war at all as immoral. Many people seem to use this argument as if it were an obvious reductio ad absurdum of moralism about military tactics. (“Oh, well, if it’s always immoral to bomb cities you can’t have any wars. That’s why it must not always be immoral to bomb cities.”) I honestly don’t know why so few people who give this argument ever even seem to have considered the possibility that their conversation partner might take it as an obvious reductio ad absurdum of militarism. (“Oh, well, if it’s always immoral to kill innocent people, you can’t bomb cities, and if you can’t bomb cities, you can’t have any wars. And that’s precisely why you shouldn’t have any wars.”) (* Actually, I think this has been more or less conclusively proven. And that’s precisely why you shouldn’t have any wars.)