From: Cory Przybyla (recherchetenet@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue Mar 25 2003 - 21:45:17 MST
--- Lee Corbin <lcorbin@tsoft.com> wrote:
> Cory writes
> > So, here, most Iraqis must know that they cannot
> win
> > against any one of the coalition nations in an all
> out
> > war, let alone all of them. If to them, being
> overrun
> > by the infidels or western imperialists, or
> whatever
> > association the may rightly or wrongly have, is
> the
> > worst fate, then they logically must do anything
> they
> > can to circumvent this.
>
> "Anything"? You are putting forth the interesting
> thesis that any act is justified in order to avoid
> losing a war. There are pluses to this view, and
> minuses.
nah, it depends on what loosing the war means to the
people. And I'm not sure what you intend with the
word "justified". I get "To demonstrate or prove to
be just, right, or valid" for justify from the
dictionary. I certainly was not claiming it right or
just, but that it is what they must do to prevent
losing. So again it routes back to what is to be lost
from the war.
> On the plus side, should the U.S. have subverted
> allegedly democratically elected governments in
> order to thwart the U.S.S.R.'s plans, should the
> British have killed a number of innocent people
> in a number of wars just to prevent an fleet of
> ships from falling into enemy hands? Should a
> nation torture a captive if it's the only way
> that appears to hold out any hope of averting a
> holocaust?
no, maybe, and maybe. If the US did that, it may have
won a battle, but probably have lost them the war via
PR relations. It depends on what was at stake for the
British, honestly I don't recall a whole lot of wars
where they were being invaded, although I can imagine
this principle could have held in WWII. In fact, they
did reopen the tower of London, so clearly as the
stakes rose, the actions worsened (I believe both
sides bombed innocent civilians too). As to the
torture, it's really vague to me how torturing one
captive could avert a holocaust, but if that one was
both guilty and it could be directly correlated to
saving a 'significant' number of lives through
torture, then yes. I have no idea what significant
is, but again this is a weird hypothetical situation,
that would also depend somewhat on the manner of the
genocide. Are they being tortured too? Well then it
should go without saying, torture one to prevent more
than one from torture = good.
> I would make a tentative "yes" to the above
> questions.
> Context must always be considered. I will take the
> usually dangerous route of expressing an allegiance
> to complete utilitarianism now, and say that a
> course
> is "justified" if it will lead to the best results
> in
> the long run. Perhaps you don't find that maxim too
> unobjectionable in the present discussion.
In the current geopolitical scheme, I couldn't
possibly fathom what 'best' means. Nor do I believe
many of those who claim to know do either. But no,
it's not objectionable.
> Therefore, I would suggest that if the U.S., for
> example,
> captures an Al Qaeda terrorist who knows where an
> atom
> bomb in New York city is hidden, then torture the
> hell
> out of him, I say, in order to learn where.
This is undoubtedly true, and I imagine that almost
anyone in such a position would do so. What would
cause the problem was if the bomb wasn't found, but
otherwise I don't see where such a case would even
receive much resistance. At the very least those who
protested the actions would be shot down by a much
stronger fervor than they've ever produced themselves.
> But if
> the
> U.S. captures an Iraqi soldier who knows where the
> concentrations of chemical weapons are stored, then
> torturing the information out of him is not
> justified.
> The reason, approximately, is that soldier are
> supposed
> (these days) to be prepared to meet chemical
> weapons.
that and the US are after all the ones invading.
Certainly at the very least, they need to live up to a
higher standard to justify any actions they do. OTOH,
an Iraqi soldier capturing a US soldier with just
general strategy knowledge, assuming said Iraqi
intends to defend his country, could easly view
torturing information out as the only way to stand a
fighting chance.
> The proximate reason is that there are conventions
> of
> war (so called "rules of war", I gather, about which
> I know very little), and I believe that torturing
> enemy
> soldiers is always against those rules.
They've never been followed well, and the first ones
to break them probably used to win wars (of course not
in Germany's case a few times). It's probably good
that most countries follow these limitations, but in
Iraq I'm not totally sure they lived up to our
war-time restrictions during peacetime, so it rings of
a victorian Brit scoffing at the Germans' manners in
WWI. All-out war has no rules.
> Here also is another governing principle: "What is
> going
> to happen anyway?" I know that that doesn't sound
> like
> a principle ;-) but it is! Suppose that I'm an
> American
> captain, and the U.S. is being overrun by the
> Germans and
> Japanese in the final days of World War II. I am
> one of
> the few commanders left in the Ozarks, our last
> refuge.
> In a daring move, we take over a Japanese supply
> train,
> and my Colonel orders me to kill all the truck
> drivers
> because we cannot afford to leave them behind us.
> But
> if I can now tell with utter moral *certainty* that
> our
> cause is lost, and it really won't do any good
> anyway,
> then by God I'm going to take all those truck
> drivers
> behind the hill and put some bullets in some
> legs---I
> will not kill them. Because what good would it do
> anyway?
Certainly good standards to follow. Although the
irony is, they'd probably face a worse fate once found
by their fellow countrymen for having been besieged.
But an aside...
> * * *
>
> Now here are the acid questions: (1) would you or
> would
> you not have any moral outrage against the U.S. were
> the
> Americans to do to enemy captives what is apparently
> being done to theirs?
Okay, before I can answer this, which would you rather
have? A few soldiers of your party captured and
tortured, or Washington routinely bombed,
communication broken off and surrounded so that
eventually if by some miracle the invading force
doesn't break through, everybody will inevitably
starve to death? Not that I don't understand *why*
the coalition would choose this strategy in the war,
but certainly it's not a fair fight to start with. In
other words, yes I'd find moral outrage as it's
utterly unnecessary and cruel in our case.
> (2) Is there any act of perpetrated by the Iraqis
> against
> enemy combatants (or enemy nations, e.g., an A-bomb
> in
> New York's harbor) that would elicit moral outrage
> on
> your part?
Certainly the A-bomb would, although I'd keep in mind
that we could have NOT invaded and this wouldn't've
happened, so perhaps the outrage would be directed at
more than one source. OTOH, if Baghdad was on the
brink of extinction, (and I mean no question: they
either do something drastic or die, surrender not even
an option) and a centralized group of troops located
in Iraq were nuked, it would certainly be a horrible
thing, but I can't be certain I'd be outraged at them,
as they were left with no other choice. It is for
this reason that the modern world considers political
assasinations motivated by sovereign nations to be a
no-no. Albiet, if it's assumed that they're
comparatively defenseless and incapable, not so much.
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