Killing

Is it ever okay to take another human's life?

This is a loaded and incredibly subjective question with hundreds of potential answers. But for this post I'm going to focus on a couple of scenarios.

In a book that I am currently reading (I'm not going to name it so there aren't any spoilers), there is a man who is given the task of killing another person. This is an ordinary man who has never killed anyone or even committed any crime before. The man he is supposed to kill gets drunk every night, goes home, and rapes his wife while his daughter runs outside and sits on the porch crying. I think we can all agree that this is a guilty man to the crimes of rape, physical abuse, and emotional abuse of both the mother and the young girl, who is 8 years old. But is it OK for him to be killed? I realize that potential other factors to this question include the fact that the man doing the killing is a vigilante of sorts and is in no way related to the government or the courts. However, in my mind, there is little difference between killing individually or institutionally, so I will ignore this fact for now.

In my opinion, this man does not deserve to die. I agree that his crimes are horrendous and irredeemable, and in no way am I suggesting that he is innocent. However, in this scenario, I do not believe killing him is the appropriate answer to his crimes. I think putting him behind bars for life is the best solution (excluding issues like prison costs).

The second scenario I'd like to discuss has been in the news a lot recently- drones. For those of you who aren't familiar with drones, they are unmanned planes that are currently in use by the United States in precision strikes outside of the United States. They are most often used against terrorist targets, and there have been many civilian casualties as well. President Obama personally approves every single use of a strike drone, and, though there are plenty of advisers informing him, he has final say on all strikes. Recently, Eric Holder, the current Attorney General, stated that, essentially, the President does have the right to authorize drone strikes against American citizens on American soil.

So the questions here are if it is okay to kill the "bad guys" overseas with the potential death of innocent civilians, if it is okay to kill American citizens right here at home, and if the President should have the ultimate authority on these kinds of decisions. Personally, I am opposed to war. However, when killing the few to save the many (as in the case of killing members of organizations like Al Quida), I think it is a permissible circumstance. As far as killing Americans, my immediate instinct is that this is a horrible thing to do. However, having these thoughts make me think that what this is coming down to is valuing a United States Citizen's life over that of people elsewhere in the World. I am extremely uncomfortable with this idea, as it goes against most of my basic moral principles. However, I think I am reacting more to the fact that taking out Americans seems like an act of betrayal against my fellow countrymen by the government, and less that a life is taken here as opposed to elsewhere. Though this may be myself trying to justify my conflicting moral views. As to the final question of whether the President should have the ultimate power in this scenario, I disagree with it on principle. I think that President Obama is a responsible leader and would listen to the advice of his council closely before making decisions. However, I know future Presidents may not be so responsible, and plenty of people think the current one isn't either. I think that the best way to handle it would be to have a minimum number of cabinet votes to send out a drone strike.

I know I talked about a lot today, and I think the only conclusion that I've come up with is that I need to sit down and think through my morals and ethics. This is an incredibly complicated issue, and my intention is not to try to convince you one way or another by this post, but is merely to try and inform you about a couple of specific scenarios to consider. And I think this is a very important issue to consider, and I encourage everyone to think through it from all possible angles before making any judgments or decisions.