I don't think my comments re Euros and the Holocaust are either stupid or uninformed. I realize full well that many Poles, for example, went to their deaths for trying to protect Jews. Saying "Euros", I suppose, was needlessly provocative. I was actually referring to Western Euros, the French and Dutch in particular, who freely, voluntarily, and gleefully turned their Jews over to the Nazis, and they weren't under the same draconian laws as the Poles were, so their incentive to cooperate was pure hate. No surprise, there, for anyone who's ever heard of Dreyfuss (Turner?). The Nazis had many willing helpers, not just Petain.
Claudine, ma petite history buff, have you ever heard of the US Civil War? It happened between 1860-1865. A lot of white people--including large numbers of Irish immigrants--gave their lives to free black people (and few Americans apologize for it to you pacifists out there--that is an interesting parallel to the present: what would all the pacifists be saying if we were back in the mid 1800's? I seem to recall, no, I do recall: France was among the supporters of the slave states.). It remains far and away the single bloodiest conflict in American history. Yes, it was a complicated affair and was not simply about slavery, but slavery was a major part of it, and the Emancipation Proclamation was what ultimately galvanized the nation. It was the ancestors of today's liberals, the Democrats, who supported slavery and instituted Jim Crow (Turner, twoj intelligent, na pewno rozumiesz co to jest) laws after the war to return blacks to near slavery. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, passed under a Democratic president, but only because of the support of patriotic Republicans like Sen. Dirksen--and over the die hard opposition of Democrats like Al Gore's father.
Look at it this way: by any measures, over 300 years of history, the US has made progress in race relations. I said "progress," I didn't say "reached perfection." Can the "Euros" say that re the treatment of Jews? Has progress been made in Europe from the pogroms of the Middle Ages to the Holocaust to the carving of swastikas in the wrist of a Jewess in Marseille last week, to the resurgence in France of synagogue burnings, etc.? I wonder.
Native Americans will have to be a topic for another day. Let me just remind you savants over there, however, that 100 years ago my ancestors (and those of many many other Americans) were grubbing for potatoes and cabbages in Europe--and happy to find a few. They came here and made a better life, and maybe a better country. America is a very complicated country--something Europeans rarely appreciate or are willing to even try to understand. The makeup of its population has changed drastically throughout its history, and is still changing. Can you say that about la belle France? No--at least not until very recently. The people running the medieval pogroms were the ancestors of those who set up Vichy and cooperated with the Nazis and who today burn synagogues and denounce Israel as "a sh*t little country" (a direct quote from your esteemed ambassador to Britain, which went unrebuked by his President). That is simply not true in America.
I've found over the years that
the only sure way to end a cantankerous
thread is to bore people to tears. You''all
have earned this.
The question arose early in Christianity:
'Is it ever pemissible for a Christian to
kill, especially to wage war.' The
answer was: 'Yes, but only in self defense.
Otherwise you are committing murder.'
The Doctrine of the Just War makes its
appearance in Augustine. There are six laws
of war, all of which must be satisfied. The idea is to make sure that you
are killing in self-defense. These laws have
become part of secular thinking, and they provide
a framework for thinking about warfare--though
I don't quite accept the doctrine.
The Laws of War
1. War must be waged to right a specific wrong.
Implicit is that when the wrong is righted, you
stop fighting. So the American's refusal to
invade Iraq after Iraqi forces were driven from
Kuwait was in conformity with 1.
Our refusal to accept the Japanese conditional
surrender at the end of WWII was not in
conformity--as the Japanese army and navy
had been neutralized. We demanded unconditional
surrender--so according to Just War theory,
at that point we began to commit murder.
The best candidate for a specific wrong
in the Iraq situation is Iraq's failure to
disarm, as it said it would in the cease
fire agreement at the end of the Gulf War.
2. War must be taken up as a last resort.
One mustn't be trigger happy. But a pre-emptive strike
is allowed. You can fire the first shot. So if your
enemy is massing troops on your border with
a clear intention of invading, and if you wait till
they are all in place you will be annihilated,
you can strike first. Plainly you are fighting
in self-defense. However given the fact that
Iraq is a long way from doing anything like that,
striking in the name of 'pre-emption' isn't
justified under the Doctrine. There needs
to be a clear and present danger of assault
to attack first in self-defense.
3. There must be good hope of victory.
If the wrong can't be righted you can't justify killing
on the ground that it is necessary to right the wrong.
A consequence is that the Jews in the Warsaw
ghetto, who fought to the death rather than go
off like sheep, were committing murder--because
there was no hope of victory. (This isn't quite accurate,
because there was some hope of being liberated by
the Russian Army, but the point remains that if they
had fought knowing it was hopeless, they would have
been violating 3.)
4. The good to be attained by the righting of the wrong
must outweigh the harm that will be done by
the choice of war as a means.
You must do a cost-benefit analysis of the consequences
of fighting for all concerned. If the harm one does
outweighes the good one does, one shouldn't fight.
In the Iraq situation it seems reasonable that the
good outweighs the harm--Iraq is disarmed, Iraq is
liberated from tyranny, the lives of many Iraqis are
saved who Saddam would have killed, rogue nations
realize that they can't go nuclear with impunity...etc.
The probable costs are that American, Brits,
Australians and especially
Iraqis die--but probably not so many of us,
and the long-term consequences are that fewer
Iraqis die than Saddam would have accounted for
in the next couple of years. So 4 appears to be satisfied.
Remember, however, that all six laws must
be satisfied or waging war is committing murder,
according to the doctrine.
5. One needs to adopt a strategy that minimizes
the harm one does; one needs to stay professional
in combat.
We are doing that--the plan is to by-pass, not
to engage, most Iraqi forces, because the idea is
that they probably won't fight if we don't attack
them. We will concentrate on the Republican Guard,
which probably will fight. From the air we are using
smart bombs and going for military targets as
precisely as we can, so as to minimize casualties.
Also we are using non-lethal electronic weapons to
destroy communications rather than blowing things
up.
6. One must never intentionally kill innocent people.
Innocent people are those who aren't engaged in
harming our forces. You must never try to kill
innocents. Doing so is murder pure and simple.
(So the bombing of Hiroshima was
murder, because we deliberately targeted a
civilian population; so was the bombing of
Dresden; also the nukes were dropped after the
wrong was righted (see 1, above). Murder twice
over, according to the Doctrine.)
However there is no blanket prohibition against
killing the innocent. Killing innocent people unintentionally
can be permissible.
Here some terminology helps (from Jeremy Bentham):
A consequence of a voluntary act is directly intended
when it is foreseen and desired.
A consequence of a voluntary act is obliquely intended
when it is foreseen but not desired.
So when I take a few drinks at a party at least two
consequences are foreseen--I will get tipsy, and I
will have a hangover in the morning. I desire to get
tipsy, not to have a hangover. I'm not trying to
produce a hangover, though I know I will.
The hangover is the foreseen by undesired
side effect of what I do to get tipsy. If I get
tipsy but happily don't suffer the hangover,
there was nothing I was trying to do that
i failed to do. I know a hangover is coming,
but it isn't part of my plan.
Getting
tipsy is directly intended, having a hangover is
obliquely intended.
6 is saying that one must never kill innocent people
by direct intention.
If I deliberately target a civilian population, I violate
6. However if I bomb a military target positioned
in the midst of a civilian population, knowing that when
it blows up ,innocents will be killed, or that some of
my bombs are bound to miss the target and kill
innocents, the civilian deaths are obliquely intended.
The deaths are the foreseen but undesired side effect
of what I do to destroy the military target.
In this case 6 isn't violated, according to the
Doctrine.
However 6 is supplemented by another principle:
'The Doctrine of Proportionality: Civilian casualties
must not outweigh the value of the military target'
Killing by oblique intention becomes murder when it
manifests a reckless disregard for human life.
If I use a hydrogen bomb to take out a radar installation,
so as to be sure to get it, and I'm indifferent to the
fact that I'll kill a million innocents (I'm not trying to
kill them; their deaths are foreseen but not
desired) I've committed murder.
There are umpteen reasons (political, simply humanitarian,
practical, etc) why we aren't trying to kill
civilians in Iraq. But we will kill them, by oblique
intentions, as the foreseen but undesired side
effect of strikes on military targets. However it's
obvious that we are doing what we can to
minimize 'collateral damage.'
1 and 2 pose the chief difficulty for
the new Iraq war.
Do cease fire violations concerning WMD constitute
a specific wrong of a sort that warrants waging war?
Here is a consideration:
The first Iraq war was waged to right a specific wrong,
the invasion of Kuwait. As Iraq invaded another
country, we were entitled to set reasonable conditions
for a cease fire. The condition that Iraq destroy its
WMD was reasonable--Iraq put itself in the way of
such conditions when it attacked another country.
Once the conditions for a cease fire are set, we are entitled to
return to a state of war if they are violated.
Serious and dangerous violations of a cease fire
agreement by a nation that has invaded another
country are sufficiently wrong to return us to
a state of war--otherwise such conditions are
unenforceable.
The chief difficulty is the second law of war:
War must be taken up as a last resort.
The first Gulf war was condemned by the
Roman Catholic bishops of the USA for violating 2.
The embargo was still in place to force Iraq out
of Kuwait--it had only been several months, etc.
But we attacked anyway. So we violated 2.
But I don't think that's so clear. After several months
the embargo wasn't working. We had an army
sitting in the field that couldn't stay there indefinitely.
Also a coalition that was likely to break up before
Iraq did. So we attacked because we believed that peaceful
means weren't working and the risks of waiting
were too great, principally, that the wrong would
never be righted; also that Iraq would sooner or
later have nukes.
At the point that peaceful means
have been tried and haven't worked, and it is
becoming increasingly dangerous to wait longer,
one can attack without violating 2, I submit--even
though it's conceivable but unlikely that peaceful
means may still work. The Doctrine, if it isn't an
idealistic formalism, has got to be practical--the
sort of thing one can violate in letter but
keep in spirit. We didn't attack when we did because
we were trigger-happy, etc.
The same sort of argument is at the heart
of what's happening now. We maintain that war
is being taken up as a last resort. Peaceful
means have been tried for 12 years and they
haven't worked. And it is becoming increasingly
dangerous to wait longer, because if we wait
till April we won't be able to fight, the troops
can't sit there in the desert, etc. Once
they come home it may be economically
and politically impossible to redeploy.
Then Saddam again kicks out the inspectors
and goes back to producing WMD, including
nukes, etc. The moment of action is now,
in the shadow of a UN resolution that gave
Iraq a 'final chance' to disarm or face 'serious
consequences,' which even France's foreign
minister at the time said meant the use of
force. Nobody believes Iraq has disarmed.
Let the moment pass--after 12 years of
failed peaceful means--and the wrong may
never be righted and that could be
very dangerous. So we are in keeping
with 2.
Obviously many nations disagree with this
argument.
The Doctrine of the Just War is the sort
of practical doctrine that can't be quite right,
practical affairs being what they are,
but one wouldn't want to be without, either.
You may notice that the Doctrine has
been appealed to implicitly and repeatedly
during the international debate.
Had enough? I have a lot more of this
stuff in reserve. People call each other 'jerk'
or whatever and you aint seen nothing yet.
Go ahead, make my day. Best to all
Last edited by jim stone on Wed Mar 19, 2003 9:18 am, edited 3 times in total.
Turner wrote:Zubivka mate, let me try and remember some French from school:
Ignorez nos amis américains, ils ont une manière différente de communiquer. Ne descendez pas sur le même niveau. Je sais que vous êtes un homme de dignité.
Hope you get what i am trying to say
Please do excuse my unexcusable fit of temper.
You're right as usual. Tis true it partly comes down to different styles of expression. I've been shocked here before by the abuse of f-wording, or screwing, by people who apparently f-do or screw the least. It's probably because I'm an old European who cannot resolve to confuse f***ing with "bloody". So, again, you're bloody well right.
PS: I watched all of the Parliament's debates yesterday. UK is, remains more than ever, a democracy. Loved all of it, even Mr Blair's long speech; maybe because there was a debate, which we haven't seen on the other side of the Atlantic. I hope Mr Blair can hold all he promised--on behalf of his American alllies--before the Commons to save his politics and career.
Like putting all the oil incomes of Iraq in a trust fund... Amen.
I guess he didn't have much political choice, so--well--I won't bear him a grudge for using France once more as a scapegoat. We both know that tabloids will automatically give him support in this line. Any politician in the same situation would have used the same trick. He is an intelligent man, and probably of some relative earnest, no-one denies it.
I hope you personnally won't have to manipulate depleted uranium shells, or get close to their targets when every shell ends up a dirty bomb. Mr Blair carefully avoided to answer this issue, as well as the one of fragmented bombs. Just as he carefully dodged the question of who initially sold the "mustard" combat gas key-in-hands factories* and the anthrax samples** to Saddam Hussein's Iraq.
Azalin wrote:Bottom of the Lake eh? We'd be fortunate if you were.
Control yourself, Az. I hope that you'll consider apologizing for this truly evil statement.
Of course, you are right Erik.
To Lake Michigan's wildlife, I sincerely apologize for what I have said. Your lake doesnt need any more polluting, especially not that high toxins-concentrated one. I promise I will never make such a statement again, a statement that could endanger the lives of many of your species for generations to come.
tinuviel,
I am NOT a nazi, I'm not even a conservative. Some people were nasty during WWII, but others risked their lives to help the persecuted persons (and the persecution did not only concern jews). So you can not simplify history by alleging that all europeans were cowards or nazis - what a nonsense!
The medieval pogroms were made by our ancestors? So who were your ancestors 1000 years ago? We - Europeans and (white) Americans - share the same genes. The only differences are cultural. So you shouldn't suppose there is something like an inherited responsibility for the crimes of past centuries.
Yes there are actually neonazis around and I hate them. Many people hate them and try to fight against the new rise of racism. But racism shows its ugly face all over this planet, even in the "Land of the Brave". We (including myself) should stop namecalling and concentrate on real problems.
One final request: would everybody please stop those eternal comparisons with Hitler? I'm just sick of reading that name again and again. The man died long ago and doesn't deserve the honor of this new fame.
tinuviel wrote:Turner, twoj intelligent, na pewno rozumiesz co to jest
Er... would you translate to the majority, please?
I usually understand a good deal of polish, and english (and even yiddish) but only when they come apart, not meddled this way
Ah, an opportunity to continue. Put on your PJs kiddies.
A consequence of the Doctrine of the Just War,
as outllined above, is that the attack on Hiroshima
and Nagasaki was murder. This for two reasons.
First, the specific wrong had been righted, but
we went on fighting. Japan was no longer a
military threat; also Japan was trying to surrender
conditionally. We demanded unconditional surrender,
which meant the right to occupy Japan and
rearrange the government as we did.
Second, we deliberately targeted civilian populations.
This violates law 6--One must never intentionally
kill the innocent. That is, one must never deliberately
kill non-combatants. Indeed, the people we killed
were never consulted about the war--there wasnt'
even the excuse that it was a democracy.
Murder twice over.
Let me say why I think this is mistaken.
First, it would have been irresponsible to leave
the Japanese government
in place because we would probably have had
to fight them again in 10 years and millions
more people would have died. You don't leave
Hitler in place after WWII--that would be crazy,
obviously.
Second, the alternative to the nuclear strikes on civilian
populations was an invasion in which maybe a million
Japanese civilians would have died, many of starvation,
including the people we killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
They would have died principally as a side effect of
the invasion.
I believe it is permissible to kill intentionally innocent
people who are about to die anyhow if doing so
will save many innocent lives.More obscurely, and using the terminology of direct
and oblique intention that I introduced in the
earlier thread, if there is a choice between killing
a few innocent people by direct intention and killing many
innocent people by oblique intention (including probably
the people one would kill by direct intention), it is permissible
to save lives by intentionallly killing the innocent.
Here is a related case:
You are in a village of an obscure Latin American
country. The local death squad is about to
shoot 10 peasants in order to terrorize the
locals. The commander says to you: 'As an honored
tourist, we will let you shoot one of these men.
If you do we will spare the other nine. If you refuse,
we will kill them all, including the man you would
have killed, of course.'
Is it permissible to intentionally kill one of these
innocent people? Best
I take the gun, try and kill the head of the death-squad.
For your Hiroshima-Nagasaki issue,
the alternative you leave is quite limited;
many people to-day believe Pdt Truman wasn't this limited,
and that...
Sh... I'm starting to format my writing like you do, when automatic wraparound is one of the advantages of computer over typewriter...
that the only effect he really wanted to achieve was a demonstration of the US nuclear might to Stalin, not Hiro-Hito. Hindsight having all the famed insight, many agree that in this light, his action was humanly questionable by the Japanese, but politically quite efficient vs USSR.
Sorry--whenever someone offers me an "unescapable" alternative, I tend to find a third way, knowing there may be even more...
Zooby, it's a special gun--only fires when pointed at
peasants. Best, Jim
P. S. Let me just add that the Doctrine of the Just War
entails that those bombings were murders even if done
for the official reasons. That is, if we did it in order to
force an unconditional surrender and avoid an invasion,
it was murder. That's the proposition I dispute.
I believe it's sometimes morally permissible to
intentionally kill innocent people--but the conditions
are very special.
Wow Jim..you definatly managed to bore me Do you talk that much as well? Every time i see your posts I think that you have written a poem, its the way that you lay your text out
Tinuviel dont forget by using the word "Euro" you emcompass all of us, including the English, Scots, Danish, Swedish, Spainish etc etc. As I remeber England...sorry Britian were the ones fighting the Nazis, not handing over our jews to them
Also dont forget, the Nazis were not (and) are not all German, There were French, Polish Dutch nazis also (its not a race, its a belief, a political party), They were the ones handing over the jews!
The normal people in the Street thought that the Jews were off to Poland for a holiday (to settle Poland)
What langauge were you writing in there Tinuviel,
"Turner, twoj intelligent, na pewno rozumiesz co to jest"
you will have to explain that one to me.
Bagfed If you learn Mongolian then i will too, we can talk secretly on the board
Theres no need for one eye comments either
This thread is getting boring now. (cheers Jim ) and too many people have been insulted too (cheers bagfed ) its time for a cease fire. :adminok:
We could go on all day like some drunken old bloke about politics, but at the end of the day we arent going to change each others minds about things are we
We all have our beliefs, thats what makes us individuals I am all for heated discussion, but not where people are getting insulted.
Ok gotta go now, I have an appointment chasing Bagfed round his garden poking him with a stick
Jim, you believe the current/coming war fulfills the six laws. I, on the other hand believe it fails 1, 2, 4 and possibly 6 (depending on who gets to define "innocent"). Believing that, do you blame me for opposing the war?
claudine wrote:tinuviel,
I am NOT a nazi, I'm not even a conservative.
Nazism is not the same as conservatism. In fact, it was a form of socialism.
Some people were nasty during WWII, but others risked their lives to help the persecuted persons (and the persecution did not only concern jews).
Pentecostal Christians were among the persecuted.
So you can not simplify history by alleging that all europeans were cowards or nazis - what a nonsense!
Indeed they weren't. Many Europeans, such as the Ten Booms and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, were not Nazi sympathisers and had the courage of their convictions.
The medieval pogroms were made by our ancestors? So who were your ancestors 1000 years ago? We - Europeans and (white) Americans - share the same genes. The only differences are cultural. So you shouldn't suppose there is something like an inherited responsibility for the crimes of past centuries.
Yes there are actually neonazis around and I hate them. Many people hate them and try to fight against the new rise of racism. But racism shows its ugly face all over this planet, even in the "Land of the Brave".
Yes. There is some disgraceful racism going on right now. I have no shame that some of my ancestry is French, and those who are harassing French people in this country are being short-sighted and bigoted.
We (including myself) should stop namecalling and concentrate on real problems.
One final request: would everybody please stop those eternal comparisons with Hitler? I'm just sick of reading that name again and again. The man died long ago and doesn't deserve the honor of this new fame.
What the Nazi Party did must be remembered, lest the mistakes of the past continue being repeated.
Do you talk that much as well? Every time i see your posts I think that you have written a poem, its the way that you lay your text out 
