It's Complicated Part 1

From 2012 to 2016, I served in the United States Navy. During that time, I was sent on two deployments. Throughout those deployments, The USS Harry S. Truman dropped roughly 1500 bombs on targets across the Middle East. While getting ready to stand watch, I heard 25 people had been killed in a single night. The officers could not determine which of those were targets and which were civilians. How many more died over the time I was in the military?

Don't be dramatic. You were a logistics specialist. A supply guy. You gave out desks, chairs, paint, and paintbrushes to people who worked on the ship. You never flew a plane, you never dropped a bomb, and you never gave an order. Hell, you didn't even supply parts to the guys who built the bombs.

True, but would that excuse be believed by those on the ground? Would the mother whose son was killed care? Would God, the judge of good and evil, care? To quote preachers you have heard before, to simply think of murdering someone is to be a murderer yourself.

Ah yes, those ever-reliant preachers who believe that a drop of alcohol will make you an addict and that doing anything on a Sunday is a sin against God. Besides, let me remind you that you were fighting ISIS. That America intervened in that war because ISIS was about to massacre hundreds of thousands of people on a hill. ISIS, a group whose religious intolerance makes American pastors look like grade school bullies. That is who you were fighting.

But who am I to judge good and evil. That is God's job. Humanity was never meant to judge good and evil.

Oh? Are you saying that humanity should roll over for dictators and tyrants? That we should've let ISIS slaughter those innocent families? That we should've let the Japanese continue to massacre the Chinese? That we should've let the Germans purge Europe?

No.

Oh then, to some degree, God, the creator of the universe, has given humanity the right to judge itself. Besides, let's take God out of this. You barely read your Bible and your understanding of your own faith is almost entirely based on the opinions of yourself and others.

Well, then what standard do we go by?

There is no clear answer. Humanity has proven that judging good and evil is hard. For every human who makes a good judgment call, there are two who make a bad one. Beyond that, why are we labeling things as good and evil? Morality, like most things in the world, is not a checkbox. It is like a complicated game of chess. Even in chess, a good move can create risk for the player who made it.

So what, morality is like a Dungeons and Dragons alignment chart?

I wish it were even that simple. It can best be defined by the baby Hitler question: If you could develop time travel and kill Hitler as a baby, would you do it?

Oh because killing a baby is wrong.

Use your head, you idiot. Before World War 2, the prevalent mentality across the world was that there was a designated pure race of people. This mentality lead to the belief that anyone not a part of that pure race was an animal whose life didn't matter. During World War 2, this mentality was taken to its extreme when the Third Reich implemented the final solution. A solution that saw almost the total extinction of the Jewish culture. When Allied forces saw these slaughter camps, it became painfully apparent the flaws in this line of thinking. Since the end of WW2, there has been an increasing shift toward the mentality that all lives are equal, regardless of anything.

Are you saying that this shift wouldn't have happened if Hitler hadn't been around?

Not exactly. Hitler was the one who caused this shift in our history. But if you killed baby Hitler, who's to say someone else wouldn't have taken his place. Remember, this was a worldwide mentality and the Germans weren't the only ones to commit a holocaust during WW2. In fact, the Japanese had their own version of it in China. What I am saying is that the question is far more complicated than most people care to even consider, because it attributes that blind, meaningless bloodlust to one individual instead of acknowledging that, given the right circumstances, anyone could be a Hitler.

So am I guilty or not?

You are as guilty as any American who supported President Obama's decision to go to war with ISIS. You are as innocent as any American soldier who enlisted during WW2 to defend their loved ones from the horrors threatening to jump across the Atlantic and the Pacific. Beyond that, it is up to God, or whatever force that runs this universe, to decide.