TI /10 COM /10 NAME:
Battlefield Morality Assignment
After reading the article complete the following;
Write an article to the newspaper in response to the one you have just read. Your article should include the following information.
1. Your personal opinion of what the solider did?
2. What would you have done in his situation? Why?
3. What you think the Catholic Church would say he should have done?
4. Explain if killing someone out of Mercy still Murder?
Battlefield morality
Captain Robert Semrau won't serve jail time for killing an unarmed Taliban fighter in Afghanistan. The sentence is just but the process that led to it revealed a serious flaw in Canada's laws.
The principle of the rule of law requires that the law's application be rational and predictable. Two people who commit the same action should be convicted of the same crime, though sentencing can and should take differences of circumstances into account.
Semrau shot an unarmed Taliban fighter in Afghanistan in 2008. It might have been the morally correct decision. By all accounts, the fighter was horribly, fatally wounded. Semrau was doing what virtuous soldiers have done for as long as there have been wars: showing mercy by hastening death. It seems, from the testimony at his trial, that Semrau knew he would have to bear responsibility for his decision. There are moral philosophers and professional ethicists who undoubtedly could argue that walking away and letting the man die slowly would have been more cruel.
Nonetheless, Semrau crossed a line. Mercy killing is not legal in Canada, although it happens in subtler and more technical ways in hospitals across the country. When Robert Latimer killed his disabled daughter, he was ultimately given the mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in prison.
The Latimer case and the Semrau case both show why mandatory minimum sentences are dangerous: in cases where such sentences are clearly inappropriate, juries might have to choose between an honest assessment of the facts and a just outcome. A jury panel at Semrau's military trial acquitted him of second-degree murder and attempted murder, but found him guilty of disgraceful conduct, an offence under the National Defence Act. It's possible the automatic prison time attached to murder charges in Canada was a factor in that verdict.
Put differently, the verdict itself makes little sense: by acknowledging that Semrau's conduct was "disgraceful," the jury acknowledged what he did. Yet if he did shoot a man who posed no threat to him, why isn't Semrau guilty of attempted murder?
In delivering the sentence, the judge recognized Semrau's motivation and spotless record. But he said his action was "shockingly unacceptable" and a breach of Canadian values. He noted that Semrau put his military comrades, who knew what he had done, in a difficult position. A punishment was necessary to maintain military discipline, the judge said. Semrau was demoted and kicked out of the military.
The question of whether mercy killing or assisted suicide should be legal is difficult even when the hypothetical circumstances are ideal: when the person gives consent, when the method of killing is painless and foolproof, when the decision about whether to proceed is vetted and regulated.
On the battlefield, the circumstances are messier. History shows that soldiers have shot prisoners for many reasons, out of mercy or vengeance or bloodlust or simply because caring for the wounded might be inconvenient. Several of these factors might come into play, sometimes simultaneously, if we were to give our soldiers carte blanche to shoot enemy wounded. We'd be asking them to push the exigencies of the battlefield out of their minds and make informed medical and moral decisions -- decisions that remain illegal in Canadian law.
There are also the international rules of war to consider, from both an ethical and practical standpoint. And it's worth remembering that the conduct of Canadian soldiers has a direct effect on mission success, when that mission is to foster the conditions that allow a pro-western government to exist in a country such as Afghanistan.
So the fact that Semrau escaped criminal charges sets a worrying precedent, and demonstrates that the Criminal Code is not equipped to deal with situations like this one. Either through the introduction of new charges, or the removal of mandatory minimum sentences, the law should be made ready to deal with the next mercy killing. In the meantime, at least Canadian soldiers know that if they choose to flout their training and the law for what they see as a higher moral purpose, their careers could be forfeit.