The Death Penalty

You could have kept it at that. If you don't grant the premise, there's nothing to discuss further on the topic.

Perhaps I should have phrased that as, "If they think keeping you alive," etc.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw

No it's not. A POW is a solider that has been captured by enemy forces; they are no longer combatants because they no longer pose a threat. You cannot defend yourself against something that does not threaten you.

You could, you know, make an argument in support of your premise? Or acknowledge and respond to his points other than saying, in essence, "you disagree with me, therefore discussion is impossible".

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Tobias explicitly said they have to be killed because letting them go endangers your side and imprisoning them is infeasible. That is a means of defense not a punishment.

edited 8th Jan '15 7:56:15 AM by Antiteilchen

Either way, deliberately killing a POW is a War Crime.

Keep Rolling On

That, yes. Smaller groups such as militias, grassroots revolutionary movements, etc. don't always have the means to reliably imprison large numbers of enemy combatants, and there is a risk that surrendering combatants may become combatants again when opportunity strikes them. P.O.W.'s spend much of their time figuring out how to stop being P.O.W.'s.

As Greenmantle pointed out, deliberately killing P.O.W.'s is a war crime, and it is so for good reason; just about any group with the resources to care about properly following Rules of Engagement has the resources to imprison enemy combatants. It's mainly civilian militias, grassroots revolutions, etc. that are liable to find themselves in that position.

edited 8th Jan '15 7:50:45 AM by TobiasDrake

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...and to bring the conversation full circle, such militias and resistance movements are generally unlikely to fit the criteria of lawful combatants, and thus are considered civilians rather than soldiers. Which means, if they're raising arms against their nation's government, they're guilty of treason and could be (in my opinion) legitimately executed.

Funny how things work out.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

Agreed.

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So it's wrong to kill combatants from a different country but okay to kill "civilians" from your own. If that isn't Insane Troll Logic I don't know what is.

No, it's not wrong to kill enemy combatants. The problem is that a POW is, by definition, not a combatant.

Meanwhile, killing your own citizens is certainly wrong if you're doing it without due process of law. However, if a group of armed citizens that do not follow the laws and customs of war (wearing readily-identifiable uniforms, having a clear chain of command with superiors legally responsible for the behavior of their subordinates, etc) choose to fight against their government, they are not entitled to the protection afforded to POWs by international law, and thus can be dealt with via civilian courts, which may well find them guilty of treason for taking up arms against their nation and sentence them to death. (Incidentally, this is why it's legal to execute spies and other covert agents working on behalf of an enemy nation, despite it being illegal to execute POWs.)

So no, it would be inaccurate to say that it's not okay to kill enemy soldiers but is okay to kill your own civilians. It would be accurate to say that it's not okay to execute POWs but is okay to execute traitors.

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

@Native

That's not completely true; it depends on how big the intra-state conflict is - in a full-on civil war, for instance, the government forces cannot simply treat the opposing side as common criminals and execute them out of hand.

edited 8th Jan '15 4:40:21 PM by Achaemenid

Schild und Schwert der Partei

Right. Most countries are completely okay with killing enemy combatants during armed conflict. That's why, as we discussed earlier, it's important to distinguish between Death Penalty and war. An execution is the act of killing someone who is not presently an active threat in cold blood, which is very distinct and separate from killing an enemy soldier or an armed criminal in the act of threatening or attempting to harm others.

edited 8th Jan '15 4:41:20 PM by TobiasDrake

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So if people put on the right clothes and organize in a hierarchical manner they suddenly cannot be executed anymore. Yeah, makes perfect sense.

Fatuous comment. Where the death penalty exists it is as a punishment for acting unlawfully. A soldier at war has not acted unlawfully unless he or she commits war crimes. Hence, killing enemy combatants just for fighting you is generally considered to be bad form.

Nothing in international law says you can never judicially punish enemy soldiers post-capture, but you do have to give them a real trial first.

edited 8th Jan '15 4:54:24 PM by Achaemenid

Schild und Schwert der Partei

If we're talking about legality you're right. Also if we talk about practicality. But when we talk about who "deserves" to be executed it seems wierd to say that people deserve to be executed unless they have enough resources to form a proper army. It basically says that people deserve to be executed for not being organized enough.

They aren't being executed for not being organized, they're being executed because they attempted to overthrow their government and failed. The execution is the default state. Gaining recognition as a separate nation is the special case. It's not about whether or not they have uniforms. It's about whether they were able to gain sufficient recognition on an international scale that their government would do more harm than good to its image to have them put to death. Sparing traitors is a PR move, not a judicial mandate.

In revolution, you don't get a trophy for participating. Only the winners get to take home the prize.

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But that is about practicality (you couldn't just execute the whole Confederate Army) and legality (you cannot execute people from another, new nation) not about "deserving" specifically. I misunderstood you as saying those people sudenly don't "deserve" death anymore.

What people deserve often is more about practicality and legality than morality. When you get right down to it, nobody deserves anything. The default state of life is a competition of Might Makes Right. Most of us with the luxury to argue about what human rights "should be" do so from a position comfortable enough that we can try to build something better than what nature gave us to begin with.

The death penalty is an artifact of a less luxurious world. The question isn't whether or not the criminal "deserves" death. Whether you say that it is the only just punishment because he does deserve it, or you say that it's inhumane because nobody deserves it, that is a purely emotional argument, and our Better World must be built on something sturdier than raw, human emotion.

edited 9th Jan '15 9:28:56 AM by TobiasDrake

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"What people deserve often is more about practicality and legality than morality."

No it isn't. Or it shouldn't be. Deserving is about the should not the is. And yes, that is an emotional argument. But just because something has an emotional axiom doesn't mean that there can't be rational and irrational implementations of that axiom.

"In revolution, you don't get a trophy for participating. Only the winners get to take home the prize. "That was and is the case in war as well. We still established rules around war to make it less horrible.

But it does, because an emotional argument is no more or less valid than any other emotional argument. You can speak from emotion that nobody deserves death. Another person can speak from emotion that some crimes deserve nothing less. How can you prove which stance is more valid? How do you even define the concept of "more valid"? Whose opinion is unequivocally, inarguably, irrefutably right?

One way is Morality By Majority, the idea that what most people think is right, is what is. But Mob Rule isn't any better than tyranny, and tends not only to lead to death penalties, but completely unjustifiable ones at that. Mobs love a good lynching.

edited 9th Jan '15 10:15:49 AM by TobiasDrake

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Well, if you for example use the emotional axiom that human's deserve to be free because they have feelings and would be sad not to be free, it would be irrational to exclude black people from it since it contradicted the very axiom of feelings=free.

You can refute the axiom as a whole but you cannot accept it and then exclude beings with feelings from it just because.

Of course you can. You can claim that certain groups of people don't have feelings, and therefore cannot be sad any more than a cow or a pine tree can be sad. Unpersoning undesirable groups is, in fact, a standard tactic employed by hate groups, militaries, and any other group whose purpose is to make its members more willing to kill them.

When I was in BCT, one of the ways we were shown that enemy insurgents are inhuman monsters deserving of death was my DS bringing in a video filmed by an insurgent saying, "I have twelve bullets; twelve presents for President Bush," and then sniping twelve American soldiers in the head. The man in the video probably received similar treatment regarding us.

You can also claim that a cow and a pine tree can be sad, and therefore have feelings and deserve the same rights as a human.

edited 9th Jan '15 11:08:33 AM by TobiasDrake

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But those claims aren't based on emotions. You can scientifically test if someone has feelings.

I fear this is getting off topic though.

I'm not talking about proving ethics. I'm talking about feelings. If those feelings should be respected cannot be determined scientifically but that they exist can be.

edited 9th Jan '15 11:54:01 AM by Antiteilchen

You can't scientifically determine ethics in any case, and the death penalty debate is an ethical issue.

Schild und Schwert der Partei

We probably are. I can see how the current conversation applies to the topic, but we're definitely veering away.

Personally, I'm on the fence about the death penalty. I believe there are good emotional, economical, and pragmatic arguments that can be made both for and against it, most of which have been made in this thread at one point or another.

edited 9th Jan '15 11:51:58 AM by TobiasDrake

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