On Some of the Moral Limits Regarding Strategic Attack (Paperback)

In this paper, I will argue that the employment of the current doctrine regarding strategic attack is morally deficient when it gives priority to force protection over noncombatant immunity. My contention is that the use of aerospace power in a strategic attack capacity cannot require less moral stringency or less moral forethought than the use of force by troops on the ground. Any apparent disparity results not from difference in kind between air power and other force, but from a vagueness regarding the means of justification, the Doctrine of Double Effect, which is then exploited in the way Double Effect is employed. Deaths caused by such action are not in fact always unintended but are sometimes foreseen and accepted to obtain some military end under the guise of necessity and proportionality. However, such actions are incompatible with the notion of integrity, a core professional value, because one's intent must also be good. Hence, breaking the will of an enemy through strategic attack has no more moral legitimacy than terrorism if it capitalizes on the innocent.