War Crimes: Causes, Excuses, And Blame

Cover......Page 1
Half title......Page 2
War Crimes
......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
Dedication......Page 6
Contents......Page 8
Acknowledgments......Page 12
A Note on Authorship......Page 14
	Introduction......Page 18
1. What are war crimes?......Page 19
2. Outline......Page 20
Chapter 1 Explaining Behavior: The Person or the Situation?......Page 26
1.1 Solomon Asch......Page 28
1.2 Stanley Milgram......Page 29
1.3 John Darley and Daniel Batson......Page 31
2. Philosophical situationism......Page 33
3. Responses to philosophical situationism......Page 36
4. The principle of construal......Page 39
5. Conclusion......Page 41
Chapter 2 Situationism and War Crimes......Page 42
1. Situationist accounts of war crimes......Page 43
1.1 Paul Roth’s situationist explanation of the Holocaust......Page 44
1.2 Philip Zimbardo’s situationism......Page 47
1.3 John Doris and Dominic Murphy’s account......Page 50
	1.3.1  Situational pressures on the battlefield......Page 52
	1.3.2  Distal pressures......Page 54
1.3.3.A 
Obedience to authority and learning to kill......Page 55
1.3.3.C Ideology......Page 58
2. Applying the situationist account......Page 59
2.1 My Lai......Page 60
2.2 Abu Ghraib......Page 61
2.3 Haditha......Page 62
3. Conclusion......Page 63
Chapter 3 A Dispositional Account of War Crimes......Page 66
1. What’s wrong with the situationist account?......Page 68
2. A dispositional account of war crimes......Page 70
2.1 Morality as socially articulated......Page 72
2.2 The creation of war crimes: ideology and social narratives......Page 76
2.3 CAPS theory: understanding individual perpetrators......Page 77
2.4 Character traits in CAPS theory......Page 78
2.5 Comparing CAPS and situationism......Page 80
2.6 Explaining perpetrator behavior......Page 82
3. Conclusion......Page 84
Chapter 4 Excusing Perpetrators......Page 86
1. What is moral responsibility?......Page 88
2. Situationism and moral responsibility......Page 90
3. Normative competence and moral responsibility......Page 92
4. Normative competence and war crimes......Page 94
5. Circumstantial and constitutive moral luck......Page 98
6. Conclusion......Page 104
Chapter 5 Blaming Perpetrators......Page 106
1. Excuses......Page 108
2. Ignorance as an excuse for war crimes......Page 109
3. War crimes and moral justifications......Page 111
4. War crimes and exemptions......Page 115
5. Ill will and excuses......Page 118
6. Moral luck......Page 120
7. The victim’s perspective......Page 122
8. Conclusion......Page 126
Chapter 6 Hard Cases......Page 128
1.1 International law and policy......Page 129
1.2 Characteristics of the child soldier......Page 130
1.3 The passive victim model......Page 132
1.4 Child soldiers’ capacity for agency and moral responsibility......Page 134
1.5 Concluding thoughts on child soldiers......Page 139
2.1 Remote weaponry......Page 141
2.2 Causal contributions and outcomes......Page 145
2.3 Kutz’s account of responsibility and collective action......Page 146
2.4 The Dresden case......Page 147
2.5 The supply chain......Page 151
3. Conclusion......Page 153
Chapter 7 Punishing and Preventing War Crimes......Page 156
1. The superior orders defense......Page 157
1.1 The duress interpretation......Page 159
1.2 The “reasonable mistake” interpretation......Page 160
1.3 The motive argument......Page 163
2.1 Current approaches to military ethics training......Page 166
2.2 A new approach to preventing war crimes......Page 168
Bibliography......Page 172
Index......Page 182