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Originally Posted by martinguerre
I don't mean to pick on you personally, but this is my response to anyone who denies the moral importance of what is going on over there. Inflicting civilian deaths on such a scale is unnacceptable conduct for a moral nation.
I simply do not understand nor accept the calculus that states that an ongoing war of attrition is justified.
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It is an easy thing to refuse to kill. You never have to balance one person's death against another, or against a dozen others, or the other way. You can simply wash your hands of all death -- by refusing to kill, you become non-responsible for any death.
Being moral and willing to kill is harder -- maybe impossible. But, death does happen, even if you are a pacifist, and dealing with it is hard.
I hold that Inflicting deaths on the scale appearing in Iraq is quite possibly a moral act, a superior option in a bad situation. I don't know if the Iraqi war is moral -- the scale of the death raises the stakes to insane levels.
Those who have blind faith in the current leadership of the USA hold that their leaders can do no wrong, and thus the deaths in Iraq, while signs of high stakes, are signs that the war is a great one -- and because it must be moral, it must be a great moral act.
Those who lack this faith look at the stakes involved, and tremble in fear.
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Originally Posted by powerclown
Its reassuring to understand the motivation of people.
The 'good' guys are trying to help 25 million people help themselves.
The 'bad' guys are trying to stop this from happening.
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I do not trust the US government, and I do not trust the current people who have control of it. Too many of them are sanctimonious pricks. Too many of them benefit personally from war. Almost none of them have personally risked in war.
The people of Iraq have less reason to trust the US government than I do. You identify with the US forces in Iraq, and thus extend your own self-belief that you are 'good' into the belief that the US forces are doing good. How do you know the current 'truth' about why US troops are in the middle east is really true?
I will admit that is their current stated goal -- get the Iraqi's on their feet. How long ago was the stated goal about weapons of mass destruction? Enforcing UN resolutions? Building a perminate US military base inside a vassal state in the middle east, to provide the US with a secure supply of oil? Opening a new front in the cold war?
I don't trust governments who lie to me. The Iraqi people who rise up and attack an occupying power are doing what nearly every nation has done. Some of the rebels are assholes, some of them are evil, some of them are patriots, some of them are just proud. Can you, from a nation whose birth was a bloody struggle against overseas domination, really condemn a citizen of a nation for giving their lives to prevent a foreign power from occupying their land?
The European colonial powers (and especially England) convinced themselves that they where carrying "white man's burden" to civilize the world. Other oppressors believed they where 'superior' to those they oppressed, and justified themselves that way. I'm afraid that America has fallen into just another variation of the same self deception.