Why is it okay to kill people in some cases but not others?

[philibert63]

Suppose there are 2 men I just make up off the top of my head. Both are pilots.

The first man is in the military. He pilots a military aircraft. He gets an order to bomb a building full of people. The pilot drops some bombs, and as people are going to run away from the carnage he drops a few more. He kills 59 people in this little bombing. including some child laborers who are workers in this factory. The factory was suspected of producing something for war, but only suspected. He kills those 59 people, he goes home they call him a hero they give him a medal. Not one of those people personally did anything to wrong that pilot. He never looked a single one of those 59 people in the eye.

The second man is a civilian pilot. He is a married man. Because of his job he needs to travel a lot. His wife gets bored with her man not being around so she decides to have an affair. Well her husbands flight got cancelled b/c of the weather or something like that so he goes home early. He finds his wife in bed with another guy. He pulls grabs the man off his wife and gets in a fight dropping the man on his head breaking his neck. That guy was porking his wife and did him wrong. This guy don't get treated like a hero. This guy gets treated like a criminal and does some hard time for murder.

The 1st guy kills a bunch of people who did him no wrong and is treated like a hero.
The 2nd guy kills one person who did him a big wrong and is treated like a criminal.

That's the world we live in. Most laws don't even really make logical sense.

An 18 year old can get a license to kill in the military, but still not allowed to go have a drink at the bar. We live in a seriously messed up world.

[ned]

You had grow up. Welcome to the reality of true reality.
Now, change to a more mature DP.

For the military, the pilot gets away because when he kill those people, he could be saving more lifes.

For the civilian pilot, killing one man doesn't save another life

[elkanah1]

In your examples it depends in the greater good, and your own personal view of justification.

If the pilot bombing the factory, killing 59 people saves thousands of lives, there is a case for justification. I'm sure the pilot does not go in to work for the sake of killing people, he would be screened for psychopathic tendencies before getting his pilot wings.

Alot of people do not see that death is the end of life, no undo button, no rewinding the tape to go back.

Reality is, that we live in a harsh world, and sometimes difficult decisions have to be made. Centuries of war have made us what we are now, settling our differences with a conversation, verbal or electronic, rather than with rapiers or pistols.

The key question is what would the other side do? Can they be reasoned with to back down?

As for the other pilot; crimes of passion are always the hardest to condone or condemn. He can't just walk away from his marriage and go, "OK fine, your with him now". Emotions come with irrational thoughts, which lead to extreme actions. He may have decided to end his own life in the same situation.

I am a father of two and if anyone hurt either of my two boys, I would want to redress the balance, but would it do more harm than good?

Your argument boils down to rational killing vs irrational killing. The former being a last resort hopefully.

Take a time paradox... If you assassinate Hitler as a child, you could prevent world war two (possibly), but you would be killing an innocent child and what if the cold war became more prevalent and more people died?