Eliminative Killing and the Targeting of Noncombatants Comments on Seth Lazar's Sparing Civilians

Abstract

At the heart of Seth Lazar’s arguments in support of what he calls Moral Distinction — “In war, with rare exceptions, killing noncombatants is worse than killing combatants” — is his treatment of eliminative and opportunistic killing. He adopts the standard line, that eliminative killing is easier to justify than opportunistic killing. And he acknowledges that there are various circumstances in which one might be able to justify killing noncombatants on eliminative grounds. Nonetheless, he claims that “intentionally killing civilians is more opportunistic than intentionally killing soldiers.” I argue that his argument in favor of this claim rests on two mistakes. First, he misunderstands the nature of deontic justification. He mistakenly uses a kind of “factor analysis” — looking to how much of the overall reason for an action various reasons might provide — to capture the wrong-making power of opportunistic killing; and he mistakenly thinks that acting on mixed motives is more difficult to justify than acting on purely morally appropriate motives. Second, he mistakenly treats eliminative killing as the moral equivalent of killing as a side effect. These mistakes need not impugn other parts of his defense of Moral Distinction. But it takes the heart out of his defense of it, putting a much greater burden on the other parts of his argument.