I would obviously disagree as to the characterization of "useful". The problem with this sort of logic is the same one as the logic you used before. It quickly turns into a license to do anything.
Even if we just keep it to a discussion of the killing of innocents - once you state that it is ok, and justified it becomes exactly that and there ceases to be any real effort made to avoid it and the situation escalates.
This is exactly the problem with allowing things like Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be justified. Perhaps they were necessary, perhaps they saved millions - but they should still be held up as a horrible evil.
When you hold up the killing of "innocents" in war-time as wrong, then you force people prosecuting the war to evaluate options in that light and look for ways around it. If there is truly no other way, and they proceed anyway, the repercussions will likely take that into account - but the action itself must continue to be held as evil.
If it is instead then spoken of as good, it only encourages others to perpetrate the same - and greater - acts of evil and with far less justification.
In War, sometimes people who shouldn't are going to die. That is a harsh reality. That doesn't mean it should become acceptable to us.
Second, he seems to predicate the whole argument on it being a just war in the first place, something that does not apply to our current involvement in Iraq.
Third, I'll note we are the aggressor in Iraq. We have been bombing them for nearly a decade. But, of course, the kind of logic we use to justify our own actions never gets to be used by the enemy. It's only right when we do it.
I would obviously disagree as to the characterization of "useful". The problem with this sort of logic is the same one as the logic you used before. It quickly turns into a license to do anything.
ReplyDeleteEven if we just keep it to a discussion of the killing of innocents - once you state that it is ok, and justified it becomes exactly that and there ceases to be any real effort made to avoid it and the situation escalates.
This is exactly the problem with allowing things like Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be justified. Perhaps they were necessary, perhaps they saved millions - but they should still be held up as a horrible evil.
When you hold up the killing of "innocents" in war-time as wrong, then you force people prosecuting the war to evaluate options in that light and look for ways around it. If there is truly no other way, and they proceed anyway, the repercussions will likely take that into account - but the action itself must continue to be held as evil.
If it is instead then spoken of as good, it only encourages others to perpetrate the same - and greater - acts of evil and with far less justification.
In War, sometimes people who shouldn't are going to die. That is a harsh reality. That doesn't mean it should become acceptable to us.
Second, he seems to predicate the whole argument on it being a just war in the first place, something that does not apply to our current involvement in Iraq.
Third, I'll note we are the aggressor in Iraq. We have been bombing them for nearly a decade. But, of course, the kind of logic we use to justify our own actions never gets to be used by the enemy. It's only right when we do it.
"The problem with this sort of logic is the same one as the logic you used before. It quickly turns into a license to do anything."
ReplyDeleteBEWARE THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF DOOM! IT'S EVERYWHERE, AND IT'S COMING AFTER YOU!!!!!
HIDE HIDE HIDE HIDE HIDE!!!!