On Fri, Sep 14, 2001 at 09:36:31PM -0400, John D. Giorgis wrote:
> At 12:57 AM 9/15/01 +0200 J. van Baardwijk wrote:
>
> >You are right on this one. Back then, the US spent USD 500 million
> >per year (according to a news program on Dutch television yesterday)
> >on arming and training Bin Laden's people.
>
> Indeed, enlisting evil to fight evil seems like a brilliant tactic.
> After all, everyone who dies in the battle between two evils benefits
> us.
I have mixed feelings about this. The US has a history of aiding
fascists against communists, and the result has been a lot of suffering
for many innocent people.
There's kind of a calculus of evil here. If you take a group which
would otherwise be impotent and empower it, perhaps it will destroy
more "evil" than "good". But what if they save x number of people by
destroying a "great evil" but then become a dictatorial government that
results in destroying y number of people, and y > x ?
This is a gross simplification, but I think the point is clear: there
is a difficult judgement call in trying to decide how evil is the evil
regime you are supporting.
I think the US has done a poor job of choosing the groups they support.
I am sure the US could do better. It would be impractical for the US to
wait for perfect people to support, but the standard DOES need to be
raised significantly above what it has been in the past. "Not communist"
or "not Muslim" is an insufficient judgement standard.
> It is also a rational response to a world in which the bad guys
> outnumber the good guys.
Do the bad outnumber the good? I hadn't thought so.
--
"Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://erikreuter.com/
