Pintoo Shome commented on 'Ethics Discussions at PEA Soup: Cécile Fabre's "Guns, Food, and Liability to Attack in War," with commentary by Jeff McMahan'

Cecile, thanks for your reply and sorry for the delay in expressing my views on the two points raised by you, d) and e).
My views on (d) is already there in my previous post of 'a weak utilitarian leg'. On (e) I would like to maintain that as long as a person is a part of the 'armed forces' and has potential to kill directly his moral immunity gets automatically lost. However, a munition factory worker is not liable morally just because he works in a factory called 'Ammunition Factory'. The supply chain for manufacture of arms and ammunitions not only extends right back to all the mines from where the metals and ingredients come but on its path lies a whole host of other factories that cover really a very large part of the countries manufacturing and processing units. The easiest and most convenient way of decapacitating any arms manufacture is to attack all the water resources in the country and its pipe lines. So, where do we draw the line? Here lies the problem of making ammunition factory workers liable. If one decides to draw the line at the boundaries of the factory called 'ammunition factory' still the workers who get killed fall in the category of collateral unintentional damage much the same as armed extremists in civilian buildings and civilian residents held hostage therein who are not morally liable but may get killed.
Best, Pintoo