Military Ethics Analysis

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A basic knowledge of ethics will help a person make more well-rounded decisions and be able to justify and explain the actions they have made. Applying this type of thinking to military leaders will help them in understanding the duties they must follow. Even if the leaders do not fully believe in the particular action they are ordered or are ordering people to do, with at least a basic knowledge of ethics they will be able to apply it to the structure of importance they swore an oath to follow and understand the importance of following those orders. This means putting all else before themselves and their personal beliefs. Background knowledge in ethics will also help set up guidelines for the military leaders to be able follow when dealing …show more content…
(Utilitarianism, web) Therefore from utilitarianism, morality is about minimizing harm and increasing the net quality of good in the world for as many persons as possible. This is a type of consequentialism, where an action is morally right or wrong depends entirely on its consequences and an action is right if it brings about the best outcome. Although going strictly off of this thinking, conflicting actions can be justified that are not moral to all that view it and contradict many of the moral values people are brought up to believe in. A problem that lies within the core beliefs utilitarianism can start to be seen. According to Utilitarianism, …show more content…
One example is, just because something makes people happy doesn’t make it right. Specifically, it is wrong to harm certain individuals in order to make other people happy. Suppose a doctor harvesting a indefinitely unconscious patients’ organs to save the lives of many other patients. Although according to utilitarianism this could be justified, but in reality this is horribly immoral and not a proper way to conduct oneself. Another example is when Britain was bombing German cities during World War II in order to strike fear in the Germans and crush there will to fight. These bombings killed many German civilians though. Although this was thought to be a possible way to lead to the end of the war. To Utilitarianism, ending the war may have seemed like the best possible outcome and all that had to happen was killing innocent people on the enemy side but it was morally incorrect. Even though there are many situations where utilitarianism should not be used in a person’s decision making process or to be used as a reason to justify their actions, the concept can be useful with tough decisions that you may come