Moral Obligation and the Military Collected Essays

This book escorts us through some moral mine fields. Recognizing the difficult obligations of the men and women who serve, the armed forces include ethics courses throughout the various curricula of their schools and academies. They also sponsor conferences on ethical issues, and generally encourage discussion of professional ethics. One such effort - the annual Joint Services Conference on Professional Ethics - has inspired and informed this book. Respected and influential ethicists and educators, both military and nonmilitary, gather each year to address ethical issues in all levels of national defense. These Joint Services Conferences have examined such difficult matter of ethics as terrorism and the morality of strategy and tactics. The collected essays in this book were among the best presented at two of these annual Conferences.The issues addressed in this book are representative of the concerns of the men and women in the Services and the society as a whole. The contributors are not in accord, indicative perhaps of the difficulties faced by individuals in reconciling military tasks with ethical responsibilities. In part I, Nicholas Fotion and John H. Yoder carefully weigh the terms morality and immorality, offering perspectives from semantics and history, and David E. Johnson examines the terrorist's ethic of "the ends justify the means," finding it incompatible with American principles. Part II, "The Clash of Ethical Systems, " contains four lively essays. In the first, Barry D. Watts, drawing examples from the military art and national values, concludes that we and the Soviets are not alike. John B. Chomeau, in a different approach, relates current Soviet actions to Marxist doctrine. In a pair of complementing essays, British Royal Marine Jake R. Hensman describes conflicts between different! ethics systems and between civil law and military necessity in the line of duty in Northern Ireland.Hosmer, Bradley C. is the author of 'Moral Obligation and the Military Collected Essays' with ISBN 9780898752427 and ISBN 0898752426.