Shooting to kill versus exploding to kill

"All else being equal, it is worse to be killed by one’s friends than by one’s enemies, and worse to be killed by people in authority than by people not in authority." – John Gardner, Oxford professor of jurisprudence. The rest of his article is worth reading too. (via)

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16 thoughts on “Shooting to kill versus exploding to kill

  1. Mmmm, that’s it exactly. Some pro-War-On-Terror types get very upset when people seem more outraged by, say, Abu Ghraib than Saddam’s prisons, or government/army/police-caused deaths than terrorist ones. To me, the reason is obvious: because people can understandably expect better from their own side, from governments with a mandate from the people, and from people who are trying to make the situation better rather than worse.* You don’t actually expect terrorists and dictators to behave well, so it’s not particularly shocking when they don’t.

    *I thought it was time for some uncharacteristic generosity and non-cynicism.

  2. I think that’s what I’m finding so un-nerving about the whole situation – in response to the Bad Things that are happening, we seem, as a society, to be becoming more and more prepared to do Bad Things ourselves – or to accept them ‘for our own protection’ when our governments instigate them.

    Not good.

  3. Nick Cohen made a similar point back when he was on the dark side

    "When the government meets those who question America’s cack-handed ‘war’ with Hilary Armstrong’s brilliant: ‘It was people like you who appeased Hitler in 1938’, we must get back to basics. I’m sure even Ministers will concede that it was possible to support the fight against the Axis powers while protesting that the bombing of Dresden and the atomic obliterations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were crimes against humanity. You can applaud the ends while deploring the means. You can suspect that degraded means may make worthwhile ends unobtainable."

  4. John Gardener, Oxford Professor of Jurisprudence, would have done well in my old game – the second-hand car trade – because he certainly knows how to tell ’em! However, as a professor of Jurisprudence, he’s crap! I can’t be bothered to go through all of his egregious exaggerations and sly innuendos, but here are a few.

    He refers to the mistaken killing of the Brazilian as a "Mossad-style execution". My understanding is that Mossad would target *known* terrorists and deliberately kill them irrespective of whether or not they constituted a danger to those in the immediate vicinity. (In th eone case where they made a mistake the Mossad operatives did time in a Norwegian jail.) By inserting that piece of deliberate agit-prop, he casts a completely mis-leading colour over the whole preceedings that occurred in the shooting of the Brazilian – *before* any enquiry has reported on the facts.

    Then he comes up with this piece of specious nonsense, and nonsense in the subject upon which he is supposed to be an expert: "Everyone is responsible for their own faulty actions, never mind the contribution of others". So there go ‘mitigating circumstances’, which almost every high profile miscreant pleads, according to virtually every case I read of in the prints – including, and especially, women who murder their husbands and then claim he was brutal to them. And the judges go for it!

    As for the two books he refers to, if they do, indeed, plead the case for political violence *in a democracy*, then they should be banned and the writers jailed. Why should there be one law for, dare one say, Oxford Professors of Jurisprudence, and another for the dimwits of the BNP or the SWP or the Muslim Alliance or whatever?

    God almighty, if that is an example of intellectual rigour from the legal profession it is no wonder our judges are such un-utterable rubbish. I certainly wouldn’t buy a used ‘Roller’ from Professor Gardener.

  5. David, I shouldn’t take the michael, especially off topic, but I can’t help it: Did you ever run a used car business in your own name?

  6. Yes, at one stage when I was dealing in, what we call in the trade, ‘shrapnel’, I did use to advertise as ‘Duff Motors’. Got results, too!

  7. Is a "Goat ***ker" the same as a "Sheep Shagger". In which case any Welshman is perfectly justified in killing an Englishman.

  8. "All else being equal" – what on earth can this mean in this context?
    "It is worse to be killed by one’s friends than by one’s enemies" Worse for whom? Worse in what way?

    Not much of an advert for Oxford clarity of thought or expression.

  9. "All else being equal, it is worse to be killed by one’s friends than by one’s enemies, and worse to be killed by people in authority than by people not in authority."

    If I was dying of a terminal and very paniful disease I’d much prefer to be killed by a friend who was a doctor.
    What a bunch or arse this man speaks…..
    I get the point he’s trying to make it’s just he makes it so appallingly badly..

  10. Chris B – presumably he’s talking about non-consensual killing, though. Euthanasia being basically suicide while borrowing someone else’s hands.

  11. That being why I said "I get the point he’s trying to make…."
    My example was made to poke holes in his intellectually loose statement

  12. There are other holes as well. It’s not worse for you personally either way once dead, even non-consenually, if you didn’t know who was trying to kill you. Once you were dead you wouldn’t know that the person succeded or not, as you’re dead and can’t think.

    The only people it would be worse for are third parties, but even this doesn’t hold true as there are plenty of examples of the families of people who have died in car crashes saying "We’re devasted he died but at least he was with his friends" (who were the ones who caused the crash)

  13. Perhaps he should have said "It is no better to be killed by your friends than by your enemies". Plenty of people attempt to morally vindicate both the war and the shooting by saying that those who died were killed unintentionally. If this is the guy’s basic point then it makes perfect sense.

    dearieme – He means worse for society. Those who aren’t shot now face a greater risk of being shot if this act is legitimised, where as someone being shot by a criminal does not increase the risk to others because the act is condemned. Debatable yes but not particularly hard to understand.

  14. athan, your point isn’t hard to understand (though I find it unpersuasive) but it’s not a point he made. I suspect that he was just wittering.

  15. "My example was made to poke holes in his intellectually loose statement."

    It didn’t seem that loose to me. Whatever ‘rules’ we draw up, we can always add more conditions and clauses, leading to the state of affairs Wittgenstein describes – that the rules of society can be known and lived by – we do, after all – but they cannot be completely and without exception articulated.

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