Ethics is about morality; it involves right and wrong but there are many grey areas.
I don't think that because an issue is difficult a moral judgement should be avoided.
I trivial matters such as expressing an opinion on your wife's new hat it may be advisable to recourse to white lies, whether as a matter of self-preservation or to avoid hurting feelings unnecessarily. White lies can be a way of applying a sort of social grease which allows people to rub along together more easily.
On more serious matters. I would also take a clear stand. President Harry S. Truman's decision to drop atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, 1945, could not have been easy, especially as the result was a massive loss of civilian life.Truman would have preferred to avoid this but he saw that a full-scale invasion of the Japanese homeland would have resulted in a loss of life, both Japanese and American, on an even more massive scale. As Commander-in-Chief of the US armed forces he saw it as his duty to minimise US casualties and end the war as quickly as possible.
However difficult, he faced up to the challenge and made a clear decision.
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