Subject:
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Re: Terrorists hate freedom
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 14 Mar 2004 08:28:24 GMT
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Viewed:
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364 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, John Neal wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Ross Crawford wrote:
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This is key, because “terrorism” is defined as
the targeting of innocents with the goal of breaking a society or group’s
resolve-- to use its own humanity against itself in order to cooerce it
into change. It is, in fact, impossible to “terrorize” a military, because
violence perpetrated against an army is called “war”, not “terrorism”.
This is why terrorism is so disgusting, because it is so cowardly. If
you want to oppose a government, then rise up against the government!,
not against its citizens! But the cowards might think, “We are not powerful
enough to oppose the government, let us strike out at it by killing its
citizens instead”. This is not “clever”, but immoral and despicable. Or,
at its essence: 2 wrongs don’t make a right.
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I agree totally. Obviously Truman didn’t.
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Less innocent US lives were lost (as well as aggregate Japanese lives
compared to a land invasion). Also, Truman targeted industrial cities,
rather than Tokyo, a target where the optimal amount of civilian deaths would
have occurred. I agree that it was a difficult decision, because Truman had
the power to decide which innocents would die (not whether innocents
would die)
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But a land invasion was tried first! “Oh well, that didn’t work looks like more
innocents will die that way, lets go with the nuke and see how well that works”.
And they didn’t stop at one to see if it worked, they killed many more thousands
with a second bomb, just to increase the probabilities a bit. There was no
guarantee it would work (to end the war), no matter how anyone wants to argue
there was. They were playing the percentages.
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Liberation from Evil = Evil from Liberation.
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I don’t get this, sorry.
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If I am being evilly oppressed, and I use evil to liberate myself, I am
mimicing my oppressor and therefore loosing any moral justification for
freeing myself.
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Does freedom require moral justification now?
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I am talking about actions taken while attempting to gain it.
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So if a single Iraqi had taken it upon themself to murder Saddam, they don’t
deserve freedom because it was morally unjustified? Is murdering Saddam “less
evil” than murdering an innocent civilian? Would that person be more or less
“morally justified” if they chose to detonate a suicide bomb in the vicinity of
Saddam, even knowing it would kill innocent civilians too?
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I am a fan of democracy. A big fan. I don’t believe in forcing on
people, and I don’t believe in simply giving it to people. Democracy has
to be won.
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This is a very interesting assertion. I’m not sure what to do with it. On
the one hand, I believe that things obtained freely are valued less than
things earned. But does this apply to freedoms which we believe are innate
and the right of every person?
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Does that include the freedoms that require moral justification?
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You are missing my point. Everyone has the innate right to be free. What I
am saying is that you do not have a moral right to take away my freedom to
obtain yours.
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But if it is the only way I see to obtain my freedom (misguided or not) I will
most likely take it (moral or not).
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Are we all be truly “free” if there are
others who are oppressed? Are we, as Democracies, and especially as
Super-Power Democracies morally bound to help the oppressed people of the
world? Are the free obligated to help the unfree? Are the wealthy
obligated to assist the poor?
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Nope, but it sure does give you a warm, fuzzy feeling.
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I happen to believe they are moral obligations of the rich and free.
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It was sarcasm. Sorry for not making that clearer. As for the question, which I
assume was about America (and allies) assisting Iraq, I think the jury is still
out. Sure Saddam is out of the way, but are the Iraqis any better off? Less
torture & stuff, but now they just have to dodge the shells targetting their new
police force. Time will tell.
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And what about you? Given the world situation in 1945, would you kill
thousands of “innocent” civilians if you were pretty sure it would end a
war?
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It is a hard question, but it must be acknowledged that, either way,
thousands of innocents were going to be killed. All that was unknown was
which ones in particular. Given that rationale, choosing the path which
spared the most innocent lives seems logical.
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But they didn’t give a hoot about sparing the lives of the residents of
Nagasaki.
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Let’s be clear what we are talking about here. Are you saying that you
would kill an innocent person to alleviate some “greater hurt”? I ask you:
what can be worse than an innocent being killed? I know of nothing,
except more of the same.
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And yet here you say it
can be rational to do so. In the thousands.
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See above. I am consistent. I said the only thing worse than the death of
an innocent is more of the same. If dropping the bombs saved innocent
lives in the aggregate, then it was a rational decision.
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Well the great thing is we’ll never know, so that argument can’t be refuted.
Similar situation in Iraq. If saving innocent lives was so important, why wasn’t
Saddam finished off in 1991?
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I need to know if you believe that if someone is desperate enough, they are
justified in killing innocents.
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Do you mean morally or rationally justified?
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Well, both. Neither are justified in my mind.
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<SARCASM>
Obviously they are. Just not more innocents than would have been killed if
they’d done nothing. </SARCASM>
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Show me the economic oppression being suffered by al-qaeda. Their leader
is a multi-millionaire.
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But their leader doesn’t fly planes into buildings or blow himself up on
buses.
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What’s your point?
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My point is the people doing the evil acts (eg suicide bombers) ARE suffering
economic oppression. For their leader it’s just a power trip and something to
spend all those billions on. It’s the people that see no other solution than
blowing others up that we must find another solution for.
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What are their demands? What do they want? Why don’t
we know these things?
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Why weren’t we told the real objective of invading Iraq beforehand?
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We were.
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No, we were told it was to remove the threat of Iraq’s WMD. We still don’t know
the real objective, but most think it has something to do with oil and/or to
free Iraqis from oppression by an evil dictator.
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Islam is not new. Its been around for considerably longer than western
democracy, and even longer than the United States of America. Yet the
faith has not been driving people to ruthlessly and violently lash out.
For a time, it was the Muslim world that was the scientific and
philosophical light of humanity. So why has it suddenly reared up now?
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“Wahabism” is a particularily violent anti-Western form of Islam. Why?
Who knows; who cares. There is no rational or moral justification for it.
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And yet it will continue until we find out why.
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What makes you think you can end it by merely finding out the cause?
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You can’t. You need to provide an alternative answer for them too.
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What if
the reason is because they don’t like your freedom?
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Then the alternative answer may be more difficult to come up with. I happen to
think people of that mind are in the minority.
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“Everyday people” do not consider
targeting innocents to butcher in the most heinous of ways.
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And yet heinous crimes occur against innocent people every day in your own
country.
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Perpetrated by whom? Relevance?
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You removed the assertion I was answering, I have re-inserted it. You claim
“Everyday people” do not consider heinous crimes against innocents. I refuted
it. Do you not agree it is a heinous crime to get totally slammed, then drive
your car on public roads? You are playing russian roulette with the lives of
people you don’t know. Yet “Everyday people” do it every day. Is it somehow ok
to do it for kicks, but not for a cause (misguided or not)?
And if you say “well that isn’t targetting innocent people” I say bullshit.
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we can’t simply kill or imprison them all, even though we seem keen to
spend a great deal of money, and undermine a great many personal liberties
in an attempt to do just this. We really need to find a way to
understand.
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That’s all. All we need to do is understand “evil”. Well, good luck, my
friend. One doesn’t need to understand evil to combat it; only to identify
it. And that is your problem and the problem with the Left in general-- you
cannot acknowledge or identify evil.
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OK. So show me all the evil in the world. Then show me how you would propose
combatting it.
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Find the oppressed. Liberate them.
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And will you keep endlessly liberating the oppressed until they are brainwashed
into thinking you are helping them? And after you’ve spent years finding &
liberating, will you go back and liberate the people you thought you’d liberated
the first time? Sounds like painting bridges to me - necessary to keep the
bridge in good condition and some people employed, but it doesn’t stop the
deterioration of the bridge.
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Continue on our current course,
evading understanding, thinking that ‘terrorists hate freedom’ only adds
fertiliser around the plant, and makes it grow stronger and larger.
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Any insight into the reasons/issues/demands of al-qaeda you have would be
most helpful. Understanding WRT movitations appears to be a luxury-- all I
understand now is that if I don’t stop them, they won’t stop.
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And do you seriously think the current course is going to stop them?
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What is our choice? Give in to them? Negotiate with them? We will continue
to oppose them kill them and hurt them until they see the folly of their
actions, or they are all dead. Only then will it stop.
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I imagine Bin Laden’s generals are saying much the same thing to many oppressed
innocent civilians right now. Who will prevail? The side with the bigger guns?
Or the side with more people willing to give their lives in the name of their
cause? Are you willing to find out?
ROSCO
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Terrorists hate freedom
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| (...) There are so many different legal issues-- definitions of POWs and of being "at war" and the Geneva Convention and whatnot. It's lawyer stuff and I really try to avoid it. That doesn't mean that there aren't people out there who aren't on up (...) (20 years ago, 14-Mar-04, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, FTX)
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