The Morality of Using Dragons

[Spotted Cat]

. Oh and Edric was not burned and I doubt he would have been.

edric would have been brunet, i am almost sure of it. stannis wouldn't love it, but he will do it out of necessity. just my opinion.

[E-Ro]

i think people who hate stannis do so because he is burning the lot and not beheading.

That's my point, getting angry that stannis burns people is a fair criticism of him. But after complaining about how he burns people don't go into another thread and comment on how dany should definetly use her dragons to burn all her enemies, because "oh it's war get over it"

[TheWanderer]

Pragmatism =/= Morality. Doing what's smart, what will win the war is not the same as doing what is morally right or just. Yes, using dragons might (and I must stress the word might) save lives but that does not automatically make it morally right.

I have seen numerous arguments comparing using dragons against a dragon-less force to using a larger army against a small one, as well as ones comparing them to back-powder weapons and other technological advancements. I feel these comparison are not good ones. A dragon is not simply an 'improvement' on how war is fought, they completely change the game. Using iron over bronze makes your weapons last longer, rifling your barrel makes it shoot farther, having more men gives you a number of tactical advantages; but all you're doing is changing the range of the combat. Dragons do not do this. They add an entire new dimension to battles (ie. the third one), they provide an opportunity for mass slaughter that is not present otherwise. Nothing else in Westeros is capable of airborne combat, it does not exist in Westerosi conflict. No other single weapon/animal is capable of killing on mass as a dragon is. Dragons are not comparable to the small steps our military technology has made throughout the ages. Adding dragons to a Westerosi war is like taking some B52's or some jets loaded with naphalm and sending them back to the middle ages (only they don't need to refuel or reload).

I would consider using dragons immoral (or at least dishonourable) because of how they change the scope of battle. I would not consider using an assault rifle to kill a man with a shittier assault rifle to be immoral, but I would consider using that same assault rifle to kill an unarmed man immoral. The man with the assault rifle can defend himself almost to the level of my ability to harm him (going purely by weapons) but the unarmed man cannot. Now that's not to say that the unarmed man is completely defenseless, people can and regularly do fight and seriously injure each other with their bare hands. But doing this requires getting close to your target and likely taking some time and effort to injure them (and training wouldn't be amiss either). Comparatively I can injure them from a great distance and with minimal time and effort and there is little they can do to stop me. Shooting the unarmed man is morally wrong because he cannot oppose me. Dragons work the same way, the soldiers they are killing are perfectly able to kill each other but pose little to no threat to the dragon, so using them is wrong. Smart, maybe, but wrong.

Oh and @ Spotted Cat: just because one thing would be bad doesn't automatically make anything that avoids that good. No one is trying to argue that Ramsay or Clegane are good, but the simple fact that they are bad doesn't make anything that doesn't involve unleashing them good. Hypothetical: I could torture someone to death or I could stab them in the face. Torturing them is pretty obviously the worse option here but that doesn't make stabbing them a good thing. And by similar logic: Just because some people do bad things doesn't mean everybody is free to do those bad things. Yes, Tywin's actions in the Riverlands are bad (many of the POVs in story recognize this, a fact I have not seen mentioned here) but just because Tywin did bad things doesn't justify Dany doing similarly bad things. People break the law every day, does that make the law moot?

[Rheagar Prime]

a dragon is a weapon with one flaw, the one flaw that all great weapons have and thats the capability of the user to use it properly. I see no immorality in using dragons they are pets.