RE: Inability to see the enemy

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Feb 22 2003 - 13:40:42 MST

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    Samantha writes

    > [Lee wrote]
    > > Hal posted about "stealth democracy" and the researchers
    > > he quoted had me pegged pretty well: I wouldn't make (myself)
    > > a great study of policy issues confronting my country, but
    > > rather trust people whose ideology is close to mine, and
    > > who are presumably paid professionals.
    >
    > I am sure many people in many aggressor nations and budding
    > fascist states said the same thing at some critical points in
    > history. How is this different from leaving the moral questions
    > in the hands of those paid to consider them? What does that
    > make you?

    Oh, well, moral questions are something else altogether.
    Consider the Bush administration's continuation of the
    earlier administrations' War on Drugs, or consider their
    take on cloning or abortion. Naturally I disagree with
    that. But if they are such professionals, you are
    probably wondering how it is that I can disagree with
    them.

    After all, it's their job to think about such things,
    and they have the advice of hundreds of medically
    gifted people, and so on.

    Well, whenever I get a whiff of ideology, then I know
    that merely acquisition of knowledge isn't sufficient:
    (It's necessary, but not sufficient.) I totally disagree
    with the Bush administration about drugs and abortion
    because I'm on the other side of an ideological divide
    from them.

    When I spoke above of leaving "policy issues in the
    hands of professions", I'm sorry that I didn't make
    this clear, and you were right to call me on it.

    What I do leave to them is---given that they have my
    ideology---the intricate and deep issues of strategy.
    For example, what should be the U.S. stance towards
    Pakistan? On the one hand, we must question and
    criticize many things that go on there---but would
    such criticism do more good or harm there, given the
    details of the situation?

    Frankly, I am disappointed in people who only have
    knee-jerk reactions to injustice. It's as if they
    never think of the difficulties involved. It's
    almost as if they never heard of the idea of "the
    lesser of evils". I have been aware of that idea
    since I was twelve years old, and, more importantly,
    keep *acting* on it. Sometimes it---choke---is even
    necessary to praise an evil, as hard as this is to
    do, if it truly means preventing an even greater
    evil.

    Naturally, all this is extremely complicated to try
    to figure out. Observe the complex scenarios discussed
    by Max Plumm and Kai Becker: trying to calculate what
    would happen if the Shah of Iran were to lose power---
    would it result that the people were more free of
    tyranny, or would a Communist or Muslim religious
    fanatic regime impose even greater tyranny? Once
    you have found the professionals with whom you agree
    on an intellectual, a moral, and an ideological basis,
    you MUST leave such questions to them.

    I understand the motivation for protesting in the
    streets---you seek to weaken the power of your
    ideological adversaries. I do not understand an
    inability to *understand* arguments based upon the
    lesser of two evils.

    > Were you napping

    You and Mike Lorrey must derive great emotional
    satisfaction from starting sentences like this ;-)
    But that's okay..., it's entertaining!

    > when Bush declared it as US doctrine that we can
    > preemptively strike anywhere on Earth we feel
    > threatened?

    In the context of what he meant, I totally approve.
    How "threatening" is threatened? I'm sure that you
    would be the first, were you a part of some presidential
    administration, to advocate instant and unilateral
    action if intelligence people that you trusted said
    that bio-scientists in Mexico City had just created a
    plague that would finish all life on Earth, and it
    was about to get out! George Bush meant, for example,
    if a *real* threat developed, he would not wait one
    second for all these U.N. decrees, and permission
    from Cameroon (no joke).

    Lee



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