Jeff McMahan probes the morally-provocative question, “is morally permissible for an individual to join the armed forces if he will thereby become an “unjust combatant?” I will present two arguments to debate this question, epistemic justification and pacifism. I will implore the use of Reserve Police Battalion 101 as a historical example to support my conclusion that epistemic justification, or the moral permissibility for a man to join the armed forces in defense of an unjust cause, as the stronger of the two arguments.
Before progressing any further, it is imperative to have a foundational understanding of “just combatants” and “unjust combatants,” as McMahan understands theses terms. A combatant is anyone who actively participates in war. A just combatant is one who is fighting for a just cause. A just cause is one that may permissibly be pursued by means of war and the combatants on the other side have made themselves morally
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It is generally accepted that the German people felt they had been robbed of victory in WWI, and for various reasons the Jews were the reason to blame. Battalion 101 was deployed in 1939 and the average age of the men was thirty-nine. All of the men would have been old enough to be aware of Germany’s social and political situation at the end of WWII in 1918. There is reasonable belief these men truly believed they were fighting to reclaim justice for Germany, from the people who stole it from them. Therefore, the men were epistemically justified in fighting for the Nazi’s. Many people would argue the deportation and mass killing of the Jews, or non-liable, noncombatants, is an objectively impermissible act. However, deportation and mass killing did not begin until late 1940, thus at the time the men of battalion 101 joined the army they had no justifiable reason to believe they would later be expected to senselessly commit mass murder of non-liable,