The words "I was just following orders" have become a slogan for shifting the burden of moral responsibility away from the responsible party. Even so, the notion that war can be just, and that individual soldiers do not bear moral culpability for their actions, persists.
To preface this post, as I'm sure most of you who will read this are aware: I was a soldier in the U.S. Army. I was a cavalry scout, and I was immersed in all of the traditions and practices of a modern military. I learned how to conduct reconnaissance of enemy positions, and I learned how to close with and kill the enemy using a light vehicle platform and in close combat. I trained hard and I became proficient in those skills. So when I'm talking about this, I'm speaking from a place of extensive introspection and soul searching.
Just war theory, among other things, asserts that, if a war is just, then the individuals soldiers who conduct that war, so long as they abide by the law of war, are not morally responsible for killing other enemy soldiers or civilian threats to their self or their fellow soldiers. I'm going to set aside the discussion as to whether a war can ever truly be considered just, as the ethical doctrine rests on a foundation that a state sovereign is an ethically valid organization--something I strongly disagree with. What I want to focus on in this post is just what I stated above: whether acting under orders as a soldier absolves a soldier of moral responsibility for the killing he does.
I really think this stems from the magical properties that are conferred upon a state entity by people and philosophers. After all, where it would clearly be extortion if the mafia told you to pay for their protection or else suffer the consequences, it's entirely acceptable for the state to engage in the exact same behavior and somehow be morally blameless. Likewise, when the state orders men with guns to go kill other men with guns, the men with guns the state sends are somehow morally excused for the killing they do. This is absolutely an illusion; killing is killing, no matter who is doing it. Whether killing can be ethically valid rests on whether the killed violated the consent of another or presented a reasonably imminent threat to do so.
Moral responsibility for killing another human being rests with the killer. Now, I will gladly concede that moral culpability can also rest with the people sending out the orders to the killer, but their share of the blame must ultimately be less than the person pulling the trigger. Think of it this way: what are military orders without soldiers to carry them out? They're little more than incomprehensible jibberish on paper or weird-sounding acronyms and numbers barked into a radio handset. Without a soldier, the commander's orders are....well, not different than the crazy homeless guy who's usually naked on the street corner, shouting nonsense at the sky. Soldiers are what turn commander's intent into fully-realized events.
The ultimate responsibility for killing lies with the person doing the killing. We may find justifications for the killing, such as in self-defense, but to declare an entire category of killing as justified because you can append the label "war" to it is absurd. Killing is killing, no matter who's doing it, and the person pulling the trigger bears the ultimate responsibility for that killing.
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