Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com> Wrote:
>We have directly disrupted and destroyed the duly elected
>government of various nations
It's happened a few times, Chile and Iran come to mind. War is a dirty business
so there are probably even examples somewhere in the history of the 40 year
cold war where America deposed elected leaders and should also feel ashamed
of itself because of it, but I can't think of an example off the top of my head.
I'm sure there must be a few instances where the world would have been better off
if America had not done it, but not many. Democracy does not guarantee virtue or
even sanity to those who get the most votes.
>Every country does not do this
Wrong. Every country tries to influence other countries to do things they like,
the most extreme example is war, covert action is tried if you want to fix
things in a less drastic way.
>and even if they did, it would still be clearly wrong
When discussing world events you talk a lot about morality, indeed you
talk about little else, but to me morality is just a tool, a tool to reduce the
amount of misery in the world. If at the end of the day your ethical
gymnastics lead you to conclude that Bin Laden should be allowed to
hatch more terrorist plots in Afghanistan or Saddam Hussein allowed to
invade his neighbors rule the world economy and brew his bio weapons
then I have absolutely no use for your morality because being "moral" will
cause more pain torture and death than being "immoral".
>>Me:
>>Saddam Hussein's Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in
>>the world, today he would also own of the first and third largest too
>>and thus control the world economy if he hadn't been defeated militarily
>Tough.
Tough? You're confronted with the prospect of a creature like Saddam Hussein
ruling the world's economy and all you can say is "Tough"? If that's moral then
I'm immoral, and proud of it.
>Do you believe in free enterprise or not?
It's original I'll give you that, you bring up a line of argument that I confess had
not occurred to me, it just never crossed my mind to think of Saddam's tanks
pouring over the border as an example of free enterprise.
But I'm really not surpassed you opposed Desert Storm, even though it was
sanctioned by the UN. You said you didn't like the war in Afghanistan because
it wasn't done through international efforts like the UN but I had a hunch that
wasn't the real reason. It's safe to advocate retaliation if you figure there is
zero chance of the UN actually doing such a thing. I don't think you'd ever
advise taking military action, or action of any sort for that matter, against a
dictator regardless of how evil his deeds were, except perhaps if the USA
didn't want any action taken.
You then go on to say that the USA wanted Iraq to invade Kuwait and to point
out that America had done bad things itself from time to time so if Iraq was the
only superpower on Earth and Saddam Hussein was running the show things
would not be any worse than they are now and might even be better. I thing there
could be a teeny tiny possibility that you just might be a little bit wrong about that.
> We also sold him (indirectly through Canada) that nerve gas so he
>could better whoop up on the Iranians who we also wanted to keep in line.
Yea, right, and I hear the Lost City of Atlantis was helping Saddam too.
>I would want nukes or something equally deterrent myself if I was the
>ruler of Iraq. Wouldn't you?
No, I can quite honestly tell you that I very definitely would not! I do find it
interesting however that you would desire weapons of mass destruction if
you were the ruler of Iraq, I guess our difference in this regard is due to
your superior morality.
John K Clark jonkc@att.net
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:28 MDT