Subject:
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Re: Justifying Barbarism? (was: More on Palestine)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 11 Oct 2001 02:59:12 GMT
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Viewed:
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512 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz writes:
>
> To your other comment on the effectiveness of the bombs, from everything
> I've read, the U.S. fully expected to have to fight house to house if
> conventional means of bringing the war to Japan were to succeed. The
> expected casualties were many times the actual casualties from the
> bombings. Also, the resulting Japan would probably have been so ravaged
> as to be much harder to bring back into the fold, and it's people far
> more resentful. What the bombs did was demonstrate the absolute futility
> of continuing the fight (never mind that we had just played our only
> trump cards). I'm also not convinced that we truly understood the scope
> of damage which would be caused (remember, prior to these bombs, only
> limited tests had been conducted). Dropping a bomb in an unpopulated
> area also would not have been effective since it would have used one of
> the bombs, and not really shown anything [wow, you kicked up a big cloud
> of dust...]).
This made me think a bit about the question:
Can barbaric acts (whether terrorism or not) be justified if
a. The intended overall result[1] is positive (eg. save lives, reduce poverty),
and
b. The actual overall result is positive, even if it's not the intended result?
IMO, the 11 Sep attacks fail (a) [2], but may yet succeed in (b), if it ends up
reducing terrorism in the world. Aug '45 fits both. So though it was barbaric
(and IMO terrorism), can it be justified?
ROSCO
[1] By result, I guess I mean "total effect on society" or something like that.
Feel free to make adjustments 8?)
[2] Though the perpetrators would probably argue they intended a positive
result for *themselves*
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: More on Palestine
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| (...) Hmm, I'm not sure this is a workable definition. I think this is the general purpose of most military action (just about no military action expects to eliminate much more than a fraction of the enemy forces, what it seeks to do is eliminate (...) (23 years ago, 10-Oct-01, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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