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by what-imright 1382 days ago
Did she save lives? The soldiers she protected went on to kill more people.
2 comments

Sure, they killed people. But there's a second order effect: They also probably prevented the soldiers of the other side from killing more people.
Ok so was her act of protection a net saving of life or simply a different form of violence?
That's probably very hard to say.

But consequentialism/utilitarianism [1] isn't the only form of moral reasoning. By most forms of deontological [2] morality, saving someone's life is a good act by itself, even if the fella goes on to become a murderer later.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utilitarianism

[2]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/

The first one. If you are trying to prevent loss of life, that is admirable. Even if the people you save choose to commit violence later, that is on them; the responsibility is not on everyone who had previously helped or healed a (potentially) violent actor.
But you’re saving a soldier, in an active warzone. You can’t pretend to be naive and say maybe they’re going to have a change of heart and become a flower farmer. By saving that life, you’re executing the future victims of that killer/soldier. That you don’t actually pull the trigger on those victims is neither here nor there.
Of course she did. Just like the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki "saved lives".