Moral justification for the execution of criminals of war?

[bennyboy]

I think that might be the item in question.  Whether well organized savagery still counts as savagery.  The primary utilitarian reason to treat all people better than livestock is so that no one has legitimate cause to act like livestock , and so they cannot mount such a defense caught in such an act... I'd imagine.

I mean..it may even be true that we're factually no better, but it probably doesn't help society to acknowledge as much - doesn't further any societal goal to which some response a b or c could be said to have some utility.  We've been known to execute the incompetent as well as the competent.  The guilty and the innocent.  Knowingly so, even - just a process.  Actual innocence and actual guilt are not necessarily bars or preconditions to conviction and punishment.

I argued once upon a time that black people, if they really thought that the police were serving as the speartip of the executive branch of a tyrannical government, then that would make them right to invoke the 2nd Amendment, in pursuit of a "well-organized militia."  I thought that would be a much more suitable approach than, say, shouting at white kids with dreadlocks, or looting TVs to make their point.

How long would it take the government to brand such a constitutionally-approved militia as a "terrorist organization?"  This, while Wall Street bankers cost maybe more than a million black families to lose their homes, and Republicans continue to attack social programs including health care, welfare, and so on?  Seems pretty unjust to me.

To me, this is the flip-side of the social contract argument.  I've said if a citizen will not fulfill his side of the contract, he shouldn't expect ANY of the benefits of that contract, including the rights to safety or the pursuit of happingess.  But ALSO-- if the government is not going to support the constitution, and specifically the equality of all citizens not only on paper but in reality, then who's left to decide what constitute "actual innocence and actual guilt?"

Short version:  that ship has sailed-- in fact, has always been sailing-- since the foundation of the States of America.