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Ok then, do you find planned and deliberately arbitrary politically motivated violence to be virtuous and productive?
I agree with pigglet, as well. I've stated before on other threads that I'm fully behind military intervention in cases of genocide, such as Darfur and Rwanda. But those sorts of collective interventions on the behalf of defenseless people are wholly different than using violence as a political statement in and of itself. For instance, I would support a collective intervention on the behalf of the Palestinian people in order to force their rights to life and sovereignty on Israel and surrounding nations, but I will never support or justify the bombing of a bus or a restaurant as a means of asserting one's group or cause into the province of politics. And I do believe that to do so justifies any group's similar actions on the behalf of their cause of choice. To me it is insane to pick apart the carnage and proclaim that this death was justified, but this one was not. Not to mention that it justifies the resulting backlash that is certain to follow in which even more people will die for nothing. And it is for nothing. It's a cycle of revenge and retribution that will never end of its own accord.
I think it also bears mentioning that what I consider to be acts of unjustified violence are never free from the very compelling element of hatred.
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Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats. - Diane Arbus
PESSIMISM, n. A philosophy forced upon the convictions of the observer by the disheartening prevalence of the optimist with his scarecrow hope and his unsightly smile. - Ambrose Bierce
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