CRANFIELD UNIVERSITY DAREN BOWYER JUST WAR DOCTRINE

technology to achieve the long-sought goal of being able to strike at an enemy from a
distance that denies/reduces his ability to hit back also, especially on a complex non-
linear battlefield, reduces discrimination and increases the risk of disproportionate
casualties among the non-combatant population.
4.2.2.2 Removing Moral Agency
If soldiers on the battlefield are the primary agent of violence in war, then, ironically,
they have historically also been the primary agents of compassion and moral arbitration;
delivering death and destruction one moment, dealing out succour to the wounded (of
both sides) and assistance to the unwittingly involved civil population, the next. The
history of warfare is littered with examples of this and the author would draw attention
to just one personal favourite: on the battlefield at Fredricksburg, Virginia, stands a
statue in memory of the ‘Angel of Marye’s Heights: Sergeant Richard Kirkland of the
2 nd South Carolina Volunteers infantry regiment, who on the second day of this
particularly bloody battle (December 1862) risked his own life to venture forward from
the stone wall where his unit was positioned, to deliver water to the many wounded
union soldiers who had lain unaided all night on the slopes to his front. The greater the
distance placed between soldiers and their enemies, the fewer the opportunities for such
acts of heroic compassion.
Moreover, as distance increases, so the opportunity for true discrimination is reduced.
Walzer draws attention to the issue of shooting ‘naked soldiers’ 85 . Drawing on first-
hand accounts of, among others, Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen and George Orwell,
Walzer makes the argument that when enemy soldiers, through the circumstances in
which they present themselves – naked and bathing, for example – are seen not as
‘enemies’ but as fellow human beings, then killing them becomes remarkably difficult
and will often times be avoided. This is all the more the case if other options – taking
them prisoner, for example – are available. The reluctance of soldiers to kill is a feature
of research also by SLA Marshall 86 and latterly retired US Army Lieutenant Colonel
Dave Grossman 87 . As distance increases so the opportunities for such discrimination –
between genuine threats and others who just happen to be on ‘the other side’ – are
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