Do you think there is some way to tell what a person intends by analyzing their actions and choices? Or can intent simply be a person's verbal description --- one of may possible descriptions --- of what he was doing, and why?
I actually tried to digest G.E.M. Anscomb's book "Intention" to get to the bottom of this, but it didn't help. I could not grasp what she was getting at. (I'm not, generally, deficient in reading comprehension, but I was definitely stupid in relation to Anscombe's book!) Could you recommend some relatively straightforward reading on this?
This can get tricky. If I'm attacked by a criminal, I may intend to shoot the criminal, but if I'm a poor shot, I may inadvertently hit an innocent bystander. That wasn't my intention, but it was the outcome. In that case I'd hate to be judged by the outcome.
It gets even trickier when you aim at a legitimate target, knowing that there will be collateral damage among innocent bystanders. The objection raised is, "How can you say you didn't intend to kill those bystanders when you know it would happen?" The answer is, did the good effect of my attack (destroying a factory, blowing up a train, whatever) follow in any way from the deaths of the bystanders? If I could have achieved all of my purpose even had the bystanders been miraculously removed from the scene, then killing them was not part of my intention. However, if any part of my benefit derives from killing someone, such as by depriving war industries of workers, then that outcome has to be counted as part of my intention.
However, in the cases of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention the fire-bombing of Tokyo and the obliteration bombing of Dresden, the intention was clear from the outset. The aiming points given the bombardiers were chosen such that bombs were to fall on civilian housing, non-military industries, etc. The stated intent was to wipe out the cities and their inhabitants.
Anscombe has a lot of good stuff, but basically she's a philospher, You have to be pretty deep into philosophy (I'm not) to understand much of what she says. I recommend The Just War Tradition by Corey and Charles; Law and War by Peter Maguire; and Just and Unjust Wars by Walzer. The latter is particularly interesting because Walzer is an atheist and derives Just War entirely from the Natural Law tradition, with not so much as a gesture to Aquinas or any of the other Christian scholars of Just War.
Hope that helps.