Professional military Ethics. Literature & Language Essay

Running head: MILITARY ETHICS1
Military Ethics: A Reflection Journal
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MILITARY ETHICS

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Military Ethics: A Reflection Journal
The decision to go to war is both national and personal. Leaders, particularly military leaders, make informed decisions about war underscored by political, legal, religious, and social values and principles. In every nation, a decision to go to war, or at least to contemplate war, is not a light decision made by an all-knowing military leader, however, experienced. The moral courage required to make many right decisions about a final decision to go to war, I have come to understand in studying military ethics, is essential, if not inevitable, for a genuine military leader, particularly in modern welfare.
This is particularly applicable to the Marine Corps, whose core values emphasize honor, courage, and commitment above anything else (US Marine Corps, 2016). The war decision cuts across different moral and cultural values adopt by different military servicepersons. Further, I have come to learn war decisions – and, for that matter, military service in general – is not a matter of black and white option military leaders choose from and go. Instead, war decisions are often complicated by moral and personal complexities military leaders need to navigate, so often against uphill resistance, to get through. In a military service, as diverse as US military, moral and personal complexities could render war more of a matter of “friendly” as opposed to “non-friendly” negotiation. That is, while enemies are assumed to be any military’s center of attention, often military services need to grapple with friendly, or internal, moral frictions, if not conflicts among, say, different branches. Unders...