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Friday, April 07, 2017

When both sides are villains

In general, I like what the Trump administration has been doing. An exception was Ryancare. I was happy to see that crash and burn–not because I like Obamacare, but because Ryancare locked in the core assumptions of Obamacare. 

I have no firm opinion about what, if anything, to do concerning Syria. When it comes to the Mideast, it's usually a choice between the disastrous consequences of business as usual compared to the disastrous consequences of military intervention. Moreover, there's the dilemma of taking sides when both sides are villains. For an intelligent critique of military intervention in Syria:

3 comments:

  1. steve, your Syria comment above notwithstanding, would you care to interact with the moral permissability or impermissability of the strike from a Christian non-pacifist position? Rightly Considered posted a piece here, and I wonder if you might offer your thoughts.

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    1. I don't know enough about the current intervention to have an informed opinion. And a lot depends on how it turns out. But these are my general principles:

      http://triablogue.blogspot.fr/2011/03/military-intervention.html

      http://triablogue.blogspot.de/2014/10/inverted-priorities.html

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  2. The fact is that there aren't just two sides. There are at least three. The sunnis are at odds with each other as well. The annoying fact is that the only side that isn't anti-Christian is Assad's regime. Both the rebels, backed by Turkey, and ISIS, backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar (and others - there are at least three different groups of ISIS now as if it weren't complicated enough), are singling out Christians, whereas Assad, backed by Russia and Iran, is protecting Christians. I'm sure Assad views it as a kind of dhimmitude, but wise Christians in the war zone would rather be under him than downrange of him.

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