From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Thu Apr 17 2003 - 10:40:51 MDT
> (Samantha Atkins <samantha@objectent.com>):
>
> It is not "being perceived as a nice guy" it is being a
> reasonable well-adjusted human being rather than a paranoid that
> believes it justifiable to kill any who might conceivably be a
> threat. It is roughly the difference between civilization and
> the jungle. Also, I do not believe for a minute that we can
> hold such preemptive use of deadly force attitudes and survive
> even the level of technology we already have much less what is
> on the way.
That's actually a very important point: the level of technology
does make a lot of difference. Years ago, when technology and
the world economy was such that the only actors capable of doing
major damage to a country as a whole were other countries, and
the very first attack was unlikely to be decisive, it made sense
to think of defense in terms of countries, and to have a policy
of not attacking until attacked first.
At today's level of technology, we're on the edge: clearly now
small non-nation groups can cause serious damage and have done
so, so the age of "countries" is past. But it's probably still
the case that a first strike won't be devastating, so we're
probably still not justified in attacking someone like Hussein
who is unlikely to directly cause us great harm, and doesn't
really have the means to even if he wanted to. But imagine
moving just a little bit into a very likely future, where a
weapon technology exists that would make it possible for a
single person or small group to create and deploy a weapon that
would cause major damage to an entire country without warning.
If a person existed that were clearly mentally ill, had a
history of violence, had the means to deploy such a weapon, and
a clearly expressed irrational hatred for a certain people, I
would hardly blame those people for eliminating that clear
danger to their very existence at a lower level of threat--
say, proof that he had negotiated to buy materials for that
weapon--rather than waiting for a devastating loss.
An actionable threat requires all three of means, credible
intent, and immediacy. Clearly it can't be justified to react
to a threat that doesn't have the means to destroy you, or that
hasn't clearly expressed intent to, or that hasn't done
something to make you reasonably fear for your existence /now/,
when the decision has to be made. But if all three of those
are indeed present, I would consider standing idle not to be
civilized restraint, but suicidal foolishness.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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