On Fri, 8 Apr 2005 18:03:39 -0500, Dan Minette wrote > OK, let's talk about medical policy then. According to UN figures, > tens if not hundreds of thousands were dying in Iraq due to > conditions under Hussein. The war
Did you leave that for me to finish? ... has increased the death rate dramatically. > OK, without collateral damage, then. Let me give my point of view > considering recent genocide. If we went in with force to stop the genocide > in Rwanda, we would kill innocents. As much as we would try to > avoid it, it would be impossible to set the number of innocent > deaths at zero....just as it is impossible to get friendly fire > deaths down to zero. I don't understand where the number "zero" came from. It would be nice if zero innocents were killed in police actions, but in reality, it happens often. > I didn't see analysis of what would happen without war from the religeous > figures opposed to the war. That sounds pretty reasonable to me > because we shouldn't expect, for example, an exemplary moral > theologian to have any special insights into the likelyhood of the > fall of any government. On the other hand, widespead agreement > among accademics and policy makes who differ greatly on other issues, > seems to me to be our best shot at understanding consequences. I fail to see any reason to choose between the two in decision-making, which is why I offered no special weight to academics. > Well, we've been discussing this for over two years: I saw three > choices at the time: continuing containmnet, the war, and > withdrawing the sactions and the no fly zones. Changing the > containment slightly might have improved it slightly, but I didn't > see anyone on the list or anywhere else lay out a program for regiem > change that did not involve war. I suspect you can thank the media for that. > Everything I read from serious > opponents to the war (by serious I mean that they weren't simply > saying "No Blood for Oil" indicated that the alterntive they saw was > continued containment. There was a six-point plan from the churches, which Tony Blair took very seriously, while it was virtually ignored by the media and the administration on this side of the pond. > All right, lets look at one of the first police actions: Korea, How were > the rules of engagement in Korea limited, and how did that reduce civilian > deaths? Korea is about the worst example to pick, since it looked far more like an undeclared war than a police action. Certainly it was *called* a police action, but that doesn't mean it was conducted like one. > OK, but your point was that there was no just war theology that allowed > premeptive wars. Aquinas was a theologian. I think Kant's work > pretty well eliminates the litter bug nuking issue. I hope that Kant isn't needed for that degree of common sense. And Aquinas' arguments did not allow for an unprovoked or pre-emptive war. The principle of a just cause insists that *initiating* agression is wrong. But even that begs the question, since there are many meanings of aggression. I don't think we can invoke Aquinas and settle the issue. In any event, do you want to argue that *this* war fits into "just war" morality? > OK, let me clarify this. You would be opposed to using unilateral military > force to stop genocide on moral grounds, right? Even if we found > that the killing in Sudan was intensifying and that the Arabs were > planning a "final solution", we would be oblidged to refrain from > military action. Not "military action," war. Are you saying that it would be a moral course of action for the United States to conquer the Sudan, as it has taken over Iraq? > I think the point is that the power to deceive ourselves is not > limited to those favoring war. Those who argue that it is not > needed also need to be sure that they are making a concerted effort > to see the most likely repercussions. Aren't we far more likely to deceive ourselves in ways that maintain our personal safety, wealth and power? Doesn't that make a presumption against war appropriate? Nick _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
