Date: 28 Oct 2001 16:24:24 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> Cc: chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Course of law (was: Islam (was: Religions (was Re: helping vi ctims of terror))) Message-ID: <dv8zdvguo7.zdv@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <4.3.2.7.2.20011028084141.04a5ef00@localhost> References: <4.3.2.7.2.20011028084141.04a5ef00@localhost>
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Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org> writes: > In a civilized world, it is considered an atrocity to attack civilians. Then I'd hope to never see a civilized world, because that is ill- considered, like much of what Globalist Thinkers have come up with so far. Whether an action is atrocious doesn't depend upon some rules that some bleeding-heart dreamers have managed to get countries to insincerely sign up to. It depends as much upon the (good?) purposes of the action as upon the (bad?) effects of the action (and not at all upon the action itself, of course). The purposes include the not only the immediate goal (eg, ensuring survival; avoiding slavery; avoiding harm to many of one's own civilians OR soldiers) but also the necessity of the action (eg, there is no alternative that will achieve the purpose). It also includes consideration of the "goodness" of the acting country and the "badness" of the acted-upon country. When a good country with some bad citizens is attacked by a bad country with some good citizens, and the good country must resort to attacking the bad country's good civilians in order to survive, or even just to protect itself in some cases, then that should be considered an honorable action, even a duty, and not an atrocity. Of course, we could argue about "must", "survive", "goodness", "badness", and related matters for as long as people will argue about the first use of atomic weapons. Taking this a different direction, I'll note that there was a time when it was more widely considered that an attack on civilians was only atrocious for the first country to do it. You played by the rules, but when some someone broke the rules, the rules changed. The rules you play by don't make your actions atrocious (unless maybe you choose to live by some "higher" rules such as those handed down by your Giver-Of- Decrees or John Lennon or something). What makes an action atrocious depends much upon the history of what lead up to the action, such as who was the first to resort to (physical) force, who's being the bully (physically or otherwise), etc. While the above arguments have been used to justify many true atrocities, I think it is possible and good to put hard-to-consider limits on all of the fuzzy concepts (eg, "must") to limit such actions with bad effects on individuals. For instance, it is almost never a clear necessity for national survival that some POW be horribly tortured and even if it had helpful short-term effects, there are other effects to consider, such as greatly increasing the probability that your citizens with be tortured in return. Many rules are established and followed for no other reason than to avoid bad things happening to us, not the other fellow. (Compare the rules for harming Apes vs. harming Humans.) When the other fellow does the bad thing to us, the reason for the rule vanishes. A bumper sticker once seen: Visualize Whirled Peas To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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