Brian Perilla English Period D 4-21-11 Preemptive strikes The question has been posed through out history,

Is it reasonable to destroy something if it may causes a problem in the future?. The short answer is that yes it is reasonable, but there are sometimes moral limitations to doing this. In the soldiers dilemma it is a justifiable killing, but in Julius Caesar the conspirators murdering caesar is not justifiable in any way. The murdering of a person is wrong inevitably, killing someone to protect ones self or others is moral and right thing to do. Through out Julius Caesar brutus debates with himself weather or not it is right to murder Caesar. He even debates if there is cause to murder Caesar, he deals in posibilities, such as how that might change his nature(2.1 13) and that at his will he may do danger with. (2.1 17) This amount of doubt is most likely his conscience trying to communicate to him that what he is planing to do is wrong. Unlike someone that is a legitimate threat, Caesar had done nothing of danger to any of the conspirators. In fact the person that started the conspiracy one of his problems with Caesar is that Caesar is now the most powerful person in Rome, where before Cassius, being a senator, was at the top of the roman political spectrum. If anyone was ambitious it was Cassius. In the soldiers dilemma the soldier sees something out of place that possibly poses a threat to his unit, and he had been ordered to shoot anything suspicious. The woman posed a possible threat, and especially in Vietnam where the Vietcong was notorious for using women to

get the U.S. Soldier to let their guard down and then killing the soldiers. Also she was in a war zone, and there is no civilian that would return to that place to look for food, or to cross a road. The woman should be killed without hesitation, because of the aforementioned reasons but also because when in war there are not second chances; if you were wrong to shoot, you were just being safe, if you were right you just saved several lives. The catechism says specifically that the defense of thers and of ones self is not wrong, Legitimate defense can be not only a right but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm. For this reason, those who legitimately hold authority also have the right to use arms to repel aggressors against the civil community entrusted to their responsibility. (CCC p2265) The two cases are vastly different, the first is a political assassination, that has been premeditated and murders someone who is where he should be and he is put in his position by popular demand. The second is a spontaneous killing of someone who is suspiciously skulking around a war zone. The answer to the original question is that murder is inherently wrong, but preemptive strikes can be both right and wrong depending on the circumstances.