The Relationship Between Jus Ad Bello

The relationship between Jus ad Bellum, Jus in Bello, and the modern warfighter is very controversial, and this debate has pitted many philosophers against each other, specifically the revisionist and the Just War theorist. The majority of the discourse revolves around how we should treat combatants with regards to the justness of their war and are they responsible with the justness of their war, Jus ad Bellum. I would argue that not only should the justness of a combatant’s war deem how we view their actions but also soldiers should be responsible for Jus ad Bellum. Soldiers fighting in an unjust war are not morally to combatants fighting in a morally just war because combatants make a choice to join a military. Additionally by including soldiers
One of the first concerns regarding my argument is how does it deal with combatants that are ignorant or misled about the justness of a war. Ignorance is not an excuse to blindly accept the morality of a conflict before one enlist. Access to information is at an all time. 3.58 billion people now have internet access and that number is growing (UPI). People ought to do research on conflicts that they might serve in. However, those who do not adequate access to information and are misled are an exception, and they can’t be judge because they truly thought they were fighting a just war. Another common objection to my argument is that war is different from regular life, and it is hard to use cast judgement on it because of this. This view is similar to that of Walzer. Walzer thinks that we shouldn’t use peacetime laws to judge the morality of war, particularly Jus ad Bellum(338). McMahan offers a response to that. First, it is difficult to determine what a conflict is and what a war is. Even though these two are fairly similar, traditionalist would argue that they fall under different set of morality, which doesn’t make the most sense. Moreover, I agree that war is different from everyday life, but with the exceptions of extreme stress morality of ordinary life can be applied, and it is. It is applied in Jus in Bello by the Uniform Code of Military Justice in the American military. Soldiers can be tried and have been tried for crimes that people are tried for in daily life. This incongruence between Jus in Bello and Jus ad Bellum does not follow. Walzer’s even says that this argument makes since, but he says that we can’t liken war to street crimes, but that is already happening. The final objection that people might have to my argument is that tasking combatants to caste decisions on Jus ad Bellum could make the military not apolitical. This is because people’s morals and politics are generally intertwined.