by Lucius Trae

Created on: May 12, 2010

If conflict becomes necessary, society should strive to minimize harm towards people. While it might seem this would deny the possibility of harming innocent people, that's simply not true. There are cases where you are stuck between two equally unappealing options, and you choose the lesser evil.

When a terror suspect is being attacked, there are a lot of actors. In cases where harm is acceptable, the evidence for believing the person is a terrorist should be fairly conclusive.

People shouldn't be put in danger if there is little evidence to support a threat. This means the terrorist should must also be a future threat. If a terrorist became brain damaged and was no longer threatening to society, it would be illegitimate to put innocent people at risk.

If we know a terror suspect is planning to destroy thousands of innocent people, it is justifiable to attack. This is justifiable not only when innocent people "may" be killed, but when they "will" be killed.

It depends on the numbers involved, and it's depressing that situations in life can reduce to numbers like this. If thousands of innocent people in the attack country are at risk, it is acceptable to put a few hundred innocent people at risk.

You have to judge how great the risks are, and things are very complicated. This is why it's a difficult job to determine when military missions are acceptable.

Criticism of this view comes from multiple directions. Many people believe killing is always wrong and those actions are "playing God." From a religious perspective, people have free will. If killing is unethical, reducing the number of killings seems acceptable when the only means of doing this is killing a smaller amount of people. Typically, the situations where this is necessary are the result of past mistakes.

Failures in both international relations and the development of particular nations can contribute to the rise of terrorism. Many of the injustices in the Middle East date back to decades of repeated mistakes both from inside the region and outside it.

Additionally, people say the issue is too complicated. They have a pessimistic view as opposed to the practical viewpoint being offered. They suggest we do nothing but let people die simply because we might make things worse.

The realist says you learn and improve society by at least making an effort. Furthermore, there are circumstances where mistakes are made and more people die than necessary. These always get focused on by the media. The victories are never victories.

Less people die than would've otherwise, but there is no crystal ball showing what terrible things might have happened without society having taken action.

I don't intend for this argument to be used to support every war throughout history. To be quite frank, it's been misused time and time again to support unjust wars and actions.

The mistake arose from human error in evaluating what should be done in a certain situation. The method of selecting the lesser evil is not flawed, but it's simply a reality that human error can occur. Furthermore, many unjust wars simply pretend to be just.

In those cases, the argument is simply being used to manipulate people. A proper implementation of that same reasoning could have been used against a variety of historical wars.

So as sad as it may be to accept, there are circumstances where some people are going to die, and the best way to minimize death is to take things into your own hands. Even if your actions leave you feeling guilty, it seems admirable to sacrifice yourself so others may live. Otherwise, you are weighing the importance of not feeling guilty against the lives of hundreds.

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