If Saddam is in a hospital that we could bomb and kill him in, but 1000 civilians were also in the hospital, would you do it?

absolutely not

edit: the question presents no moral dilemma.

If Saddam was in the same hospital with 1000 civilians, they would probably kill him themselves.

edit: the question presents no moral dilemma.

I would bomb it twice

If I could hand-pick the civilians, yes. Here are some options for starts:

Ray Lewis
O.J. Simpson
Carrot Top

Since the question appears to be a serious one I'll give it a serious answer.

No, of course not.

Noble, do you honestly believe we should bomb 1000 civilians to kill a crippled leader? And that there is no reasonable alternative ESPICIALLY considering we would be talking about a crippled man.

If this was Osama and we had a handle on his location since he is not a head of state and can go into hiding anywhere in the world, I would have to think about it but would still guess that we would not knowingly kill 1000 innocents to take out Osama. But I would have to think about it because he can hide so easily. Saddam is a head of state, it's a totally different scenario with a very clear answer IMO.

we would not knowingly kill 1000 innocents to take out Osama.

How ironic.

If it means that I would save countless thousands of not just americans but other people that Saddam would be the cause of their death due to his nature, then yes. If it stopped something like another 9/11 and saved thousands of our citizens, wouldnt you? Are their 1000 people more important than all of the other people that could and would suffer?

The question didnt pose the option of a reasonable alternative Radii. It was a yes or no question. If the alternative was there to send a force in to capture just Saddam, then I would chose that. That wasnt the question though. Reread the original post.

We were talking about this at work today with the news that saddam may be wounded. Most said bomb him, which suprised me. I feel with as good as this war is going, we might as well wait 5 days till we can shoot him at point blank range on cnn :) :)

Noble: You're guaranteeing the death of those 1000 people to stop the POTENTIAL loss of thousands of other people's lives. I think that is a poor trade off.

There's no way you bomb that hospital.

Originally posted by Vince
Noble: You're guaranteeing the death of those 1000 people to stop the POTENTIAL loss of thousands of other people's lives. I think that is a poor trade off.

There's no way you bomb that hospital.

Yeah, because he MIGHT decide to just stop torturing and killing people.

As most of you know I'm pretty pro-war, but I don't think you ever want to stoop to the level of your opponent. Bombing a hospital full of innocent civilians would make us no better than them.

Tarkus

No, just have the guy that hand counted the 1000 other patients in there kill him.

It's a dumb question to begin with, if he's in the hospital, we wouldn't bomb it, we'd use ground troops.

Originally posted by Bishop
No, just have the guy that hand counted the 1000 other patients in there kill him.

It's a dumb question to begin with, if he's in the hospital, we wouldn't bomb it, we'd use ground troops.

I am sorry that you are not dumber for reading this. This wasn't meant as a question in reality, but a question of whether we kill 1000 people to get rid of one really bad guy or just wait and hope to get him later.

Originally posted by The Afoci
I am sorry that you are not dumber for reading this. This wasn't meant as a question in reality, but a question of whether we kill 1000 people to get rid of one really bad guy or just wait and hope to get him later.


You don't kill 1000 people when you don't have to, so how is it a moral question.

If we knew exactly where he was, couldn't we just have one of our "informants" go in and "accidently" switch medical instruments there were being used on him with ones that were covered in, I don't know...anthrax? Couldn't we just do that?

I actually thought it was a good question. This whole "war" is to remove Saddam and his regime <sp?>, is it not? At the end of it if I was told 1000 Iraqi civilians were killed, while I would feel sorrow for those lost and their families, would consider it relatively reasonable "collateral damage" for a military action of this size.

While this question takes somewhat an extreme end of the circumstances of Saddam versus the whole regime, and 1000 people in a hospital versus 1000 civilians spread throughout the entire country of Iraq. I've always thought good "Moral Dilema" questions are the ones that take the situation to the extreme and put what seems an obvious answer in front of you when there isn't one.

Would I drop the bomb in such a situation? I honestly don't know, and am glad I will never be in a situation to decide such a thing.

No way I would.

IMO its not really that critical to actually kill Sadaam if he's already incapacitated to the point he is no longer in charge of Iraq. If he's wounded in a hospital somewhere, he's probably not much of a threat to us at that point anyway. And if he's wounded to the point of being hospitalized, there should surely would exist better ways to get him than to bomb the hospital.

He's not like Osama where he can go from country to country gaining pockets of support to rebuild his power... once he loses control of Iraq he's pretty much done as a threat IMO.

The question that would have created a bit more of a moral problem would be if he was still 100% and had built a headquarters under a hospital and was running the war from there. At that point do you bomb it?

Him being incapacitated while in the hospital makes it an easy no as he is no longer in power at that point.

No way. Not only would it be a horrible thing to do, but at that point we would completely lose the moral high ground.

If there were no other way to get to him I MIGHT consider it, but considering that our ground forces are steadily moving on and that it is very likely to either personally apprehend him or intercept any escape attempt, I think it would be immoral to bomb a hospital full of innocents for one man.

I always love questions on morality, considering I'm relatively amoral - So yes I could do it, a 1000 people I don't know against 1 I wanted.
I however wouldn't do it, as it would be so much more fun to drag him alive in front of a war crimes trial, that way the people get their entertainment and I would look good for giving him up for trial.

Still looking for that perfect dictator who needs a good henchman

The reason you don't intentionally kill 1000 to kill Saddam is because he would. The U.S. government is saying that because he has tortured and killed thousands of innocent people, he should be stopped. I think that's a valid reason and I agree with it. However, shouldn't the same logic be applied to the forces stopping him? If we killed 1000 innocent people, shouldn't we be stopped?

Originally posted by JHandley
The reason you don't intentionally kill 1000 to kill Saddam is because he would. The U.S. government is saying that because he has tortured and killed thousands of innocent people, he should be stopped. I think that's a valid reason and I agree with it. However, shouldn't the same logic be applied to the forces stopping him? If we killed 1000 innocent people, shouldn't we be stopped?
Much of the world is thinking just that.

Originally posted by The Afoci
If Saddam is in a hospital that we could bomb and kill him in, but 1000 civilians were also in the hospital, would you do it?

Yes, twice over to make sure the mission was accomplished.

I don't know. After hearing a few interviews with iraqi citizens who think we deserved the 9/11 attack, I may be for bombing them. But then again it is 1000 civilians, and bombing a hospital would look pretty bad to the rest of the world. So I'd be tempted, but wouldn't.

Osama, yes.

Susan Sarandon, maybe.

Saddam, in this context, no.

Okay, let me ask this now, it seems most are against killing a 1000, some because if he is in the hospital he must be not very capable, for others just because it isn't justified. At what amount of civilian lose do you consider it alright to kill him. If it kills 10 is it alright...100 ... 10 ... 1. Now this is all hypothetical, not realistic, but imagine the only way to get him out was through this method of bombing him when he is around civilians. At what point do you kill a dictator who is killing his own people?

When he sends a couple dozen islamic fanatic(I so much wanted to use derogatory slang here) pieces of shit to kill American civilians. Until he does that, even one allied life is too much, imho.

Just to play devil's advocate for a moment here, at what point did the words 'war' and 'morality' ever become linked? War is hell. People die. Lives get shattered. Innocent lives get affected in ways they never deserved to be.

But at the same time, sometimes you've got to draw to that inside straight. If Saddam is incapacitated in the hospital, as others said, find a better way. If you CAN achieve your aims and still salve your conscience, so much the better. But war and morality are not, and have never been equivalent concepts.

War is savage in every sense of the word. To allow fragile sensibilities to affect strategic decisions is to put yourself behind the 8 ball. Is it better to keep the "moral high ground" and not bomb that hospital, but have the war result in an additional, say, 20,000 casualties (military and civilian), or draw to that inside straight? I don't know that I could personally make the call to drop the bomb in that situation.

Still, I'll say it again - war isn't pretty. Innocents die. You never want to go into it with a 'damn their souls to hell' attitude, but sometimes you have to make the tough call and, if you believe in God, pray He has mercy on your soul.

Originally posted by Noble_Platypus
The question didnt pose the option of a reasonable alternative Radii. It was a yes or no question. If the alternative was there to send a force in to capture just Saddam, then I would chose that. That wasnt the question though. Reread the original post.

I don't think that's a valid statement. It isn't a yes or no question, obviously. It's a question to get us thinking and discussing things.

Posed the question, "If Saddam is in a hospital that we could bomb and kill him in, but 1000 civilians were also in the hospital, would you do it?":

My answer is "find a better way to get him"

If you tell me there is no better way to get him, well, I simply don't believe you.

this is not about killing 1000 civilians. This is about killing 1000 invalids (a reasonable assumption based on the building being a hospital.) Targeting a hospital is not something you do, except under the most desperate conditions.

To answer the question posed later which asked a better(IMHO) question:

"The question that would have created a bit more of a moral problem would be if he was still 100% and had built a headquarters under a hospital and was running the war from there. At that point do you bomb it?"


Again no. The man is essentially holding those 1000 people hostage. If you look at it that way in no case would the United States ever knowingly, willingly and intentionally sacrafice 1000 hostages to kill the hostage taker. Our international credibility would be totally shot.

This isn't a war on a mobile terrorist unit, this is a war on a nation-state, it's much much easier and makes questions like these much easier to answer IMO.

Originally posted by Anrhydeddu
How ironic.

This was a followup to my statement:

"I would have to think about it but I would still guess that we would not knowingly kill 1000 innocents to take out Osama"

(although you chose to only quote the part where I said:

we would not knowingly kill 1000 innocents to take out Osama, thanks for that) ;)

why is this ironic? Are you saying that because Osama led an attack that killed many of our innocent civilians, we are justified in laying waste to Afghani, or Saudi(or wherever he pops up next) civilians to capture him?


Edit: accurately quoting the original stuff.

I wouldn't. Blowing up a hospital does not look good to the rest of the world.