Western Australia ( CNN ) Many Australians are understandably appalled by the brutal and pointless executions of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran . The death penalty looks anachronistic and ineffective at the best of times , but to kill two people who had clearly made the most of their long periods of incarceration to transform themselves and make amends for their actions looks gratuitous and cruel . Consequently , Indonesia 's actions raise more general questions about the powers we give to states -- or , more accurately , to those who control the coercive apparatus of the state at any particular moment . As German sociologist Max Weber pointed out , one of the key features of an effective state is that it has a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence . State officials can order people to be killed because -- especially in democracies -- we authorize them to do so . We can give no more significant power to another human being than to decide who lives or who dies . And yet even where that authority is deemed legitimate -- as is clearly the case in Indonesia -- its significance is only seriously considered at moments like this , when the very personal circumstances of some of its victims become the stuff of popular commentary and media interest . Less prominent victims of state-sanctioned violence often go entirely unremarked . However disappointed we may be in the actions of Indonesian President Joko Widodo -- in whom so many inside and outside Indonesia have invested such hopes as a progressive force -- he can make a couple of claims in his defense . First , Widodo -- popularly known as Jokowi -- is Indonesia 's elected leader and is fulfilling his promise to crack down on what he and many other Indonesians see as a problem . Indonesia 's domestic political context and the need to be seen as not giving favorable treatment to foreigners left him very little room to maneuver . This is not a justification for his actions , but it helps to explain why he was so impervious to pleas for mercy . Whatever we may think about the underlying principles and administration of justice in Indonesia , at least Jokowi can claim that it is essentially a domestic issue . We may not like Indonesia 's laws , but they are being applied even-handedly within national borders where state officials have authority . Significantly , it is those same national borders that demarcate the extent of Indonesia 's leaders ability -- or even desire , perhaps -- to use their capacity for state-sanctioned violence . Other countries -- including Australia -- have no such inhibitions and regularly kill perfectly innocent civilians in the course of one conflict or another . This propensity for the application of state-sanctioned violence seems especially germane when we consider another president about whom great things were expected , but who has inevitably disappointed . After the unilateralism of George W. Bush , Barack Obama was widely predicted to be a very different sort of president and one who would not make the sort of catastrophic strategic miscalculations of his predecessor . Paradoxically enough , though , while Obama has been widely criticized for a lack of decisiveness and unwillingness to commit more American forces to the Middle East , this has done nothing to curb the use of state-sanctioned violence . On the contrary , the use of drone strikes has become a key part of America 's continuing war on terror . It is unsurprising , perhaps , that a cerebral and reflective leader as Obama is should be attracted to drones as a weapon of choice . Unlike Jokowi , Obama does n't have to confront the personal narratives of the people who die at his command . Or he does n't unless they 're American citizens , at least . The recent death of an American hostage during a recent drone strike highlights the potential for `` collateral damage '' . Are these cases comparable ? Yes and no . Widodo 's executions were cold-blooded , unnecessary and highly political . Obama clearly was not intending to kill Americans , and this has only become an issue because one of the hostages actually was . However , dozens of entirely innocent women and children from other countries are routinely killed in such strikes with little comment . The key point is that we are collectively responsible for such deaths at some level or another , especially if our leaders and state officials carry them out . Do good intentions justify one death and not another ? Perhaps . Would we encourage the state to kill a thousand innocents if it meant eliminating Hitler ? Almost certainly . Would we authorize a drone strike to kill ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdad if we thought a couple of passers-by might die , too ? Perhaps . Would we permit the state to execute people ? Not any longer in Australia , at least . But before we congratulate ourselves on how civilized and humane we 've become , perhaps we should pause to consider the violence that is still being inflicted on perfectly innocent people around the world in our collective name . What was done in the name of the Indonesian state was undoubtedly awful , futile and reprehensible . Whether our moral calculus is quite so self-evidently superior is not quite so clear . Copyright 2015 The Conversation . Some rights reserved .
Indonesia executed eight prisoners including two Australians on Wednesday . Two of `` Bali Nine '' were killed despite Australia 's pleas for mercy . All around the world , innocent people being killed by the state in our name , writes Mark Beeson .