Yesterday as i rode the late bus(track practice) i noticed an untended memorial garden for those who lost their lives on 9/11. Weeds and patches of grass plague it. At first it was beautiful. Flowers everywhere and two trees resembling the towers. But after the years people forgot of how we united and some returned to their shelfish ways. Now i'm not saying all of us are like this. I now alot of people that still do things out of good will. But it seems to me that the world around me is like this. This world still has some good in it.
Posted by Gryphonesse (Member # 6651) on :
complacency can be so ugly
I try to actively avoid becoming the kind of person that takes things for granted and chooses to forget difficult memories. I think Khalil Gibran said it best - "the more sorrow carves out of you, the more joy you are able to contain"
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
9-11 was tragic, but the overwhelming outpouring of sympathy and community couldn't be sustained indefinitely. That doesn't minimize the scope of the attacks or it's effects on people, but life moves on, and every day taht it does, 9-11 becomes more of a cultural touchstone that is removed from our daily thoughts.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
How many memorials to the people killed in the War of 1812 do you see around, DP?
Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
It shouldn't require a lifetime commitment to express sympathy for a tragedy.
Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
It does make me feel crabby that people are clamming up and acting shellfish.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
It's still early in the year. It could be that the committee who takes care of the memorial haven't had the opportunity to come out and freshen it up yet.
Posted by Scott R (Member # 567) on :
Stop being such a mussel head.
Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
That's why, like it or not, statues and other stone or metal works make better memorials than gardens. Gardens need tending. But even an untended statue can be moving. Inscriptions in stone do a better job than trees and flowers, at better job of reminding people of the thing that we want never to forget.
Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
But do keep in mind: One reason we forget is that NOBODY SHOWS THE FOOTAGE.
That was a deliberate decision, to avoid inflaming Americans and stirring our passions. And then later to avoid letting pro-Iraq-war candidates from benefitting from the re-arousal of public opinion. The ABSENCE of that footage is a political act.
And it's part of the reason we forget. We take it for granted that everyone "remembers." But memory fades.
I wish someone would have the guts to make copies available on DVD or for download. so maybe we CAN remember.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"I wish someone would have the guts to make copies available on DVD or for download. so maybe we CAN remember."
I'm going to have to disagree with you, y'know. The valuable part of that memory isn't the video of the planes hitting the towers, or of the towers falling -- and plenty of us still have forms of that footage around.
The valuable part, the part worth remembering, is how the entire country took a deep breath and, for a brief second, was united in mourning if not in purpose. And that wasn't on TV.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
I know this post might be seen as controversial, but how about putting a memorial beside it for the innocent Iraqis and even Afghanistanis that died in the War on Terror.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"I know this post might be seen as controversial, but how about putting a memorial beside it for the innocent Iraqis and even Afghanistanis that died in the War on Terror."
I don't think we should associate the 9/11 attack with our "War on Terror," period; a memorial doing so would not only be subversive but pointless.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Morbo, your first link doesn't haave any video (it has links to it, but the video itself is no longer there) and a lot of the links in the secon are broken. It's basically all been taken down.
Hobbes Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
I would say that the images and video are necessary to remember. Without understanding the true horror of this atrocity, what are we remembering, after all?
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Thanks for pointing that out, Hobbes. I don't have Realplayer so I didn't check.
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
quote: I don't think we should associate the 9/11 attack with our "War on Terror," period; a memorial doing so would not only be subversive but pointless.
Tom, I disagree with putting a memorial to innocent victims of Iraq and Afghanistan next to a 9-11 memorial. Having said that, it's naive to think that the two are unconnected. Our "War on Terror" would never have happened if not for 9-11.
Posted by Dagonee (Member # 5818) on :
quote:how about putting a memorial beside it for the innocent Iraqis and even Afghanistanis that died in the War on Terror.
If we put a memorial to the Taliban's and Sadaam's victims right alongside it.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
We declared War on Terror after the terrorists struck us at home. This is a war on TERROR, not a war specifically on bin laden or al-queda. The videos should be shown, and shown a lot more than it is.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
and a memorial for the innocent Kosovians we bombed from 30,000 feet. Oh wait, different President...
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
One of the biggest tragedies of post-9/11 for me was that there was this tremendous opportunity for transforming America's social character that wasn't used to bring us closer together. Our leaders (on both sides of the aisle in politics, as well as those in industry, religion, entertainment, acedemia, etc.) were either unable or unwilling to work for this.
---
I don't know about the video argument. While I don't know that the hypersensitivity that we displayed was a healthy thing to do, I feel that people who need to see the pictures and videos to feel the "real impact" of the event are incapable of actually understadning the real impact. Rather, the impact people are talking about is a largely emotional gut reaction that I think is not well linked to actually understanding the impact. Indeed, as the Bush Adminstration's successful attempts to link 9/11 to Iraq showed, the emotional impact of this event can and was put to the purpose of clouding people's judgement.
[ May 06, 2005, 01:09 PM: Message edited by: MrSquicky ]
Posted by Antony (Member # 7947) on :
If we put a memorial to the Taliban's and Sadaam's victims right alongside it.
----
good point! I forgot about how we brought Saddam and the Taliban to power in the first place and are therefor partially responsible, thanks for reminding me.
Posted by estavares (Member # 7170) on :
The power of remembering:
Did anyone else see that "Frontline" on PBS earlier this week showing the lost footage of what allied forces found when they liberated various German concentration camps? Filmmakers (including Alfred Hitchcock) showed the thousands and thousands of bodies being thrown into pits, some of the most horrific footage I've ever seen in my life.
The point? A memory has been passed on to ME. The holocaust wasn't simply a movie, or an exaggeration. It was real. It's wasn't just about Jews––though 6 million died, there were 11 million in total, millions of all nationalities, religions.
Though a garden is tough to keep up, there are some things that need remembering so it never happens again. Hopefully 9/11, and its implications, will be taught for many years to come.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"Though a garden is tough to keep up, there are some things that need remembering so it never happens again."
I would argue that 9/11 isn't one of those things, however; it teaches us no lessons.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
Well, 9-11 taught some of us very valuable lessons and others it taught nothing
Posted by Evo (Member # 7940) on :
9/11 will be in history books for many years to come, not only for the tragedy suffered that day, but for many of the actions it spurned. Good and Bad.
A memorial is an offering to the dead, a little something to let them be remembered by. Its not so we remeber the event, but so we remember all those who died in the event.
A garden, in my opinion, is not a long term memorial. I personally believe a long term memorial will be integrated into whatever is built where the twin towers once stood. At least i hope so.
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
Evo, I think you mean "spawned." Although we did spurn the UN.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
I beg to differ. A garden is a perfect memorial. It DOES change, just the way life goes on. When we come together, it flourishes beautifully. When we don't, it goes wild, but it still LIVES.
9/11 is my birthday. There has to be life, and going on, and not a dwelling in darkness. One should never forget the death that always exists in life, and the life that death makes possible.
When my husband and I were dating, he took me to a monument at his workplace. On it were the names of company workers who had died in a plane crash while on a business trip. It was a reminder to live each moment fully, for your time may come unexpectedly.
I think that is what we need to remember. A garden heals. I think that's what it's for.
As for replaying the events of 9/11/01 - why? Why keep playing over horror? I'm not saying we should forget or gloss it over. But it's important to recognize a moment and then go on best we can with what we've learned from it. No one is healed by dwelling in depression or fixating on the past.
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
9-11 teaches us no lessons??!
That is beyond ridiculous. The fact of the matter is the event brought home to everyone just how vulnerable we were and helps us keep assessing how vulnerable we still are. It was a wake-up call to everyone in the world. It told us that our life is now different - there is an enemy nearby, one who is a religious fanatic, one who does not value human life and hates us all, innocent or not. We were onto the problem a long time ago, we knew Usama was in Afghanistan training up terrorists but before we did nothing of any effect. 9-11 taught us that you cannot wait for the enemy to make the first attack, this is not like the Cold War and MAD, there is no specific place to launch our missiles, in fact the missiles don't do us a whole lot of good on this type of enemy, something we never would have found out if it wasnt for 9-11 and our swift and successful response.
Someone above said it well, the Iraq War and the battles in Afghanistan were not seperate enterprises, they both had the same goal in mind, intimidating and eradicating all who would endanger freedom-loving citizens of the world. 9-11 is the only response to those who question the policy of pre-emption. 9-11 has now ushered in a new era of freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq, and those countries will forever serve as a beacon of liberty to the rest of the middle east and as a constant reminder of the long arm of the American military. God willing, 9-11 will help us to never forget that our freedom is not free and that it has been and will continue to be paid for by selfless and courageous Americans.
Posted by estavares (Member # 7170) on :
quote: I would argue that 9/11 isn't one of those things, however; it teaches us no lessons
Tom, for someone as liberal and smart as you appear to be, you must be able to see the far-reaching ripples this event has and will have of the course of human events...even if it doesn't agree with your politics.
9/11 has resonance more for its symbolism than the death toll or monetary damage. It represents a powerful catalyst that will lead to a much different Middle East over the next fifty years.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: That is beyond ridiculous. The fact of the matter is the event brought home to everyone just how vulnerable we were and helps us keep assessing how vulnerable we still are. It was a wake-up call to everyone in the world. It told us that our life is now different - there is an enemy nearby, one who is a religious fanatic, one who does not value human life and hates us all, innocent or not.
If that's the singular "lesson" you "learned" from this, I'm profoundly sorry for you.
quote: It represents a powerful catalyst that will lead to a much different Middle East over the next fifty years.
Except that it doesn't. The decision to invade Iraq, for example, was made well before the attacks; a justification would have been found if one had not presented itself. Had we used the near-universal goodwill resulting from that event to any productive end, perhaps it would indeed have been a "catalyst" for change; as it is, it's merely one of those landmark, symptomatic events -- like the sinking of the Maine -- that is mistaken for a cause.
[ May 06, 2005, 10:38 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Jenny, I definitly I appreciate that aspect, but it also seems to me that the point of a memorial is to keep that part of history/the world from being changed. The fact that life changes at all is why we have memorials. Or that's how it looks to me but that's just a gut reaction I guess.
Hobbes Posted by Antony (Member # 7947) on :
I think some of you have made beautiful points in this post
I just hope we don't let our fear overcome our reason.
Posted by estavares (Member # 7170) on :
I don't say that 9/11 was the sole cause of recent events, but I do think it was the shout that loosened the heavy snow that made the avalanche.
I am of the belief that this business in Iraq, right or wrong (I think it's a bit of both), was advanced due to 9/11. That event has led to Homeland Security and those great Orange Alerts, the era of an updated Intelligence system, action in Afganistan, and the seeds of democratic changes in many Middle Eastern nations.
I doubt that Bush would have driven so hard into Iraq without 9/11. The disaster gave him moral credence, at least in his eyes. I wonder what people would have thought if he had done nothing?
To presume that such an event has no long-term effects is exactly what causes civilizations to repeat their mistakes. Nothing happens in a vaccum. Clearly the effects are regarded as having more weight; this topic didn't get started regarding the Oklahoma City bombing, did it?
Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
I'd love to be on a moral high-horse and make like I'm so enlightened that acts of terrorism have no effect on me...
...but if that is what enlightenment means, I'll have none of it. Furthermore, if the sight of people falling off the towers doesn't raise emotion, than there is something wrong with the viewer.
Ya know what? I don't really care how mad the terrorists are. If murder is wrong, it doesn't become any less wrong because the murderer is "angry". That's a pathetic excuse for cowardice and failure to oppose evil. If not a sneaky way to embrace the evil because we think, down inside, that it might further our own agenda.
We should remember. We should learn the lesson that there are people who hate us enough to kill us. And we should learn and live the lesson that we should do what we must to stop them. Not because we hate them, but for our own survival. In memory of our God, our religion and freedom, and our peace, our wives, and our children.
[ May 08, 2005, 02:00 AM: Message edited by: tern ]
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I don't know tern, so I'm not sure whether that's subtle anti-Bush/fundamentalist Christian satire or not. If it is, it's well done.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"Furthermore, if the sight of people falling off the towers doesn't raise emotion, than there is something wrong with the viewer."
Not everything which provokes an emotion teaches a lesson worth learning, I'm afraid. In fact, I'd argue that the vast majority of things that provoke emotion are ill-suited to teaching anyone anything.
"Ya know what? I don't really care how mad the terrorists are. If murder is wrong, it doesn't become any less wrong because the murderer is 'angry.'"
I don't see anyone here making this argument. To whom are you speaking?
"We should remember. We should learn the lesson that there are people who hate us enough to kill us."
Explain to me again why this is a valuable lesson...?
-------
"this topic didn't get started regarding the Oklahoma City bombing, did it?"
Has anyone been to the Oklahoma City memorial lately? How's it looking?
[ May 08, 2005, 11:36 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by Orson Scott Card (Member # 209) on :
Wouldn't it be interesting if 9/11 were the only historical event in ... er ... history that had no lessons to teach us.
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
In prehistoric times, as man was learning to understand the world around him, he might have stumbled upon the fact that poisonous snakes can kill you if you let them get too close.
This would have been a valuable lesson for him to learn, it would increase his chances of survival and allow him (if he was smart and wanted to survive) to change his behavior to lessen the amount of danger facing him due to snakes.
That is the type of lesson that I am speaking of when I refer to 9-11 and its lessons.
We now see just how dangerous the poisonous snakes of the world have become and we must face them head on.
There are only three options in dealing with poisonous snakes that you want to avoid being killed by, you must either destroy them, hide from them or remove their venom.
The past battles in Afghanistan and Iraq were efforts to destroy them, the current efforts in those countries are efforts to remove their venom by bringing democracy, hope and healing to places where they have never been before.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"Wouldn't it be interesting if 9/11 were the only historical event in ... er ... history that had no lessons to teach us."
It would. But it wouldn't be the first such event.
9/11 is a convenient blank slate onto which people can project their own meanings; there's a lot of emotion attached, so it's very easy for someone to seize hold of that emotion and say, "Look, because we care SO MUCH about this, because we're SO emotional, this event -- which clearly means THIS specific thing -- is of vital importance, and thus we need to pay heed to the lesson that I believe it teaches us."
But it's like interpreting scripture, or trying to read tea leaves, or any number of other things -- like, say, the time your uncle nearly died of cancer but got better -- that we can SAY have meaning, but which ultimately only have the meaning we bring to it.
The "lesson" of 9/11 is that desperate people will do desperate things. We can project other imaginary lessons onto the event, but that's all those "lessons" are: projections, possible interpretations from hindsight and bias.
Looking at Roy's post, for example, we see that he has learned no lesson; he clearly started out believing that there are poisonous snakes in the world, and that poisonous snakes should be killed. He sees the "lesson" of 9/11 here: a mirror of something he already believed, a kind of justification for his existing worldview.
Most people do that, liberal OR conservative. And that's the danger of "lessons:" they always somehow wind up saying what you want them to say, and carry with them the emotional impact of the event -- thus becoming a sort of gospel. How dare someone challenge your interpretation of this huge, emotionally-loaded thing, after all?
But that's not a good way to respond. It's certainly not a good way to learn any lessons, at least not when you want to learn anything true.
So I'm always very leery of people who're willing to use events like 9/11 as shorthand for their own ambitions. It always stinks of convenience.
Posted by estavares (Member # 7170) on :
It sounds like an issue of semantics. True, we will judge the lessons of 9/11 based on who's ultimately writing its history––the lessons of Pearl Harbor may be much different in Japanese textbooks than in the U.S. A "lesson" is in the eye of the beholder.
But to presume 9/11 holds no special significance at all, that it is simply the holy grail of those whose politics you disagree, smacks of being so narrow-minded I wonder if you're just saying it to get a rise out of us. Regardless of one's feelings on the matter, the event happened, people responded, and those behaviors have changed our society in subtle (and not so subtle) ways. I believe this current action has led the Middle East down a path that will make it a far different place over the next couple of decades.
I'd love to see the evidence that Bush would have followed the same course of action without 9/11.
History is a funny thing. If the Japanese hadn't bombed Pearl Harbor my grandfather (who was there in the middle of it) wouldn't have been moved to a different ship which was berthed in a different town which led to his meeting my grandmother which led to their marriage and the creation of my mother which soon led to their moving to a place where my mother met my father and that led to the creation of me.
If Pearl Harbor didn't exist, neither would I. And if 9/11 didn't exist, current events would be much different. What lessons there are in that, I suppose, are up to each of us.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"I'd love to see the evidence that Bush would have followed the same course of action without 9/11."
Bush had already begun talking about plans for an invasion of Iraq several months before 9/11, and his Defense Secretary belonged to a PAC that specifically recommended inventing an excuse -- if necessary -- to invade Iraq in order to begin projecting American power in the region. An invasion, once Bush was elected, was inevitable; all that remained was the excuse.
9/11 was convenient for Bush, but it also meant that he had to invade a country he didn't really care about -- Afghanistan -- in order to get the deployment in order for Iraq.
I have no doubt that it also led him to seriously reconsider some American policies, and firmly committed him to the neocons in his cabinet. It had, in other words, some effect.
But there's no need to give it any more importance than it deserves. It was a terrible, terrible thing, yes -- but the "lessons" most people project onto it are lessons they wish everyone to embrace, not lessons they've actually learned. Frankly, I suspect that the whole conduct of the "War on Terror" will be, in ten years' time, a far more important object lesson -- one way or another. If it works, people will take valuable lessons from it; if it does not work, people will take valuable lessons from that. And that's perfectly normal and understandable. But there simply aren't that many valuable "lessons" to take away from 9/11, especially not this close to the attack itself.
Posted by Antony (Member # 7947) on :
I think this Tom Davidson chap is a genius in saying that people take whatever lesson they want from things to try and prove what they already believe...
One may say 9/11 is proof that we have enemies we must fight... One may say 9/11 is proof of the failure of American foreign policy and imperialism...
---
Ray Hobbs: We now see just how dangerous the poisonous snakes of the world have become and we must face them head on.
Would you ever consider that under some circumstances WE can be the poisonous snake?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Now, in Roy's defense, I do not believe that America in this specific case has been a "poisonous snake" to Arabia. We're certainly a threat to what some of them consider their way of life -- we're expansionist fundamentalist Christians that have built a society on the manipulation of debt and principles of social and fiscal equity, after all -- and so I can understand their fear and hostility, but I do not consider those to be valid justifications for killing three thousand civilians in cold blood.
Our own sins -- which are many -- should not be used as excuses by our enemies. For that matter, the sins of our enemies should not be used as convenient excuses to visit atrocity unto them.
Posted by estavares (Member # 7170) on :
So what should our response to 9/11 have been?
Posted by Antony (Member # 7947) on :
Certainly not invade Iraq, a sovereign state that has never threatened to attack us or one of our allies, nor had the ability to do so and had no hand in Spetember 11th whatsoever.
I must make it absolutely clear that I have not and do not think 9/11 was or can be justified in any way, I just don't think using it as an excuse to throw our weight around and kill more innocent people for the interests of those who decieved us into complying was an apt response. If anything this has created MORE anti-American feeling and puts the west at MORE risk of terrorist attack.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: Certainly not invade Iraq, a sovereign state that has never threatened to attack us or one of our allies...
Let's be fair, here. Hussein had in fact threatened to destroy us many times, and has attacked our allies. Moreover, Iraq was clearly in violation of its terms of surrender, and thus the United Nations should have seen fit -- although they did not -- to approve our casus belli.
Iraq was hardly an innocent little lamb.
[ May 09, 2005, 01:43 PM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by TheHumanTarget (Member # 7129) on :
quote: 9-11 teaches us no lessons??!
That is beyond ridiculous. The fact of the matter is the event brought home to everyone just how vulnerable we were and helps us keep assessing how vulnerable we still are.
We learned many lessons but have implemented almost nothing to avoid the exact same situation. A wonderful example of this was when a major U.S. agency decided that it was too expensive to close a major loop-hole in our security because the proposal provided was too expensive. Not deemed unecesary or unreasonable, just too expensive to do.
Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
Just because an event merely reinforces a previously held belief doesn't make it not a lesson.
A lesson doesn't have to be something new - this is something I observe in my math courses quite a bit.
quote: I don't know tern, so I'm not sure whether that's subtle anti-Bush/fundamentalist Christian satire or not. If it is, it's well done.
Dang! Almost wish that I wasn't somewhat of a "Christian fundie" (as defined these days...) Alas, it's hyperbole, that being something I'm rather fond of.
TD, the part about anger being an excuse wasn't directed at anyone on this board necessarily, but rather at the attitudes prevalent at what passes for my university. Ya know, roosting chickens & whatnot. I'm curious - how is learning that someone wants to kill us not a valuable lesson.
If I know that say, my neighbor hates me (maybe because in this fantasy, I have a really really nice house, and he has a trailer, and he's jealous, maybe because my wild parties keep him up all night), would that be useful to know so that I can take precautions?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"I'm curious - how is learning that someone wants to kill us not a valuable lesson."
Ah. I wasn't aware that, besides perhaps Dennis Miller, people were actually surprised by the fact that there were individuals out there who hated the United States and wished to do its citizens harm. I suppose that someone falling into this category might find a terrorist attack instructive.
I certainly hope, however, that our government did not rely on 9/11 to discover this bit of information. Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
First, I would like to say that I have loved discussing this topic with the varied and intelligent people on this forum.
Secondly, I think that Tom and estavares are exactly right. 9-11 is an event that happened. Planes piloted by muslim extremists from the middle east were flown into the Twin Towers in NY and the Pentagon in DC and another was flown into the ground in PA after passengers resisted the hijackers.
These are a few of the facts of that day. It is true that anything else that we attach onto those facts, meaning in other words, is an individual choice.
That action of attaching meaning to otherwise inert events is the process of being alive and being human.
Cats and dogs do not have the ability to attach meaning to stimuli. All their actions are simply instinct - you can condition them to respond slightly differently than they normally would in the wild, but you cannot condition a cat to trumpet like an elephant, it is simply impossible - animals simply respond to stimuli, without thinking.
There is no meaning to any event to an animal, there cannot ever be any meaning to an event for an animal.
The argument that every event is a blank slate that means nothing until we attach meaning to it is exactly true. The famous story is of Michael Jordan being cut from his hs basketball team. What does that event mean? What is the lesson that it teaches? To most people the "lesson" that it teaches is that you are not a good basketball player and that you will probably never be that good, you should probably find a new sport and that some obstacles are too tough. To Jordan, the "lesson" that he took from that inert event of being cut was that he needed to work harder, being cut from the team was just a small obstacle that he would overcome in his quest to make it to the NBA.
Who was right? The thousands of kids who have been cut and never played again or Michael Jordan, who went on to be one of the greatest players of all time?
We can all sit and argue both sides of the issue until our faces turn blue and we would still come down to this fact: The event meant something different to different people. This difference in interpretation of the events changed their actions. Those differences in actions changed the world.
So the real question is (if you choose to accept it) How do you make the world a better place.
And who decides anyway?
Since the beginning of time, through the Enlightenment and Locke, Madison, Bastiat, Smith and others, to modern day and men like Lincoln, Churchill, Eisenhower, Reagan and now George W Bush, man has struggled to bring "meaning" into his life to figure out the best way to do things. The great men in history did not sit on their hands and say, "You're right, I'm right we're both right. I cant tell you what to do because how can I ever prove that my way is best, 100% of the time??"
This sort of attitude can lead to inaction.
That is why we humans (or was it God? or Allah?) invented morals, and values and ethics and tried to judge peoples actions according to a standard. People decided to try and measure an action according to how much it was ethical and moral, completely revolutionary concepts to creatures just past the animal stage. That is why men like the aforementioned did what they did, they were united by beliefs that would give each man the chance to make the right decision, a decision that makes sense to him morally.
Now, what happens when people with different morals, different ways of seeing the world, different ways of interpreting inert events, come in contact with each other?
That is where wars begin and people are killed and gum is stolen from the corner store and adultery is committed and where government begins.
There is no country in the world where acts of murder on innocent non combatants is acceptable.
Notice I used the word innocent, I am able to use a descriptive word of that sort, a word which has meaning, because I have a set of morals that I adhere to, and in my set of morals no person, no matter how desperate or angry has the right to kill innocent civilians. If I was in an alley with people who believed differently about that and were going to prove it starting with me and my family, I would not ask if they were desperate or angry or if they disliked my wealth, I would kill them.
Any other reaction by someone in that situation, by my standards, is unacceptable.
The reason why 9-11 was/is the powerful event that it was, is because it allowed the president, (who, as people have noted, had already begun noticing the problem of terrorism, esp foreign powers with WMDs)(do we really need to argue that point? Everyone in the world, Russia, UK, UN, and USA believed that Saddam had WMDs, and they still could be out there) the moral justification to begin hunting down and destroying (or converting, I am fine with that too, just as long as they no longer believe that killing innocent civilians in peacetime is ok) all those who would destroy the USA and the advancement and progress that we represent.
That is my final word (dont hold me to that, I may start rambling again anytime) I would love to hear other opinions, and if Mr Card would deign to bring more light to the situation we would all be much obliged.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"Notice I used the word innocent, I am able to use a descriptive word of that sort, a word which has meaning, because I have a set of morals that I adhere to, and in my set of morals no person, no matter how desperate or angry has the right to kill innocent civilians."
Except in war?
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
ha, I knew this would come up! The Iraq and Afghanistan battles have been the most safe and accurate in the history of warfighting as far as civilian casualties. I would direct you to an OSC article on ornery.org for more info.
The question you must ask yourself, if one innocent person dies in our endeavor in the middle east, is that endeavor therefore unjustifiable?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"The question you must ask yourself, if one innocent person dies in our endeavor in the middle east, is that endeavor therefore unjustifiable?"
So what you're saying, then, is that in the set of morals to which you adhere, a person -- no matter how desperate or angry -- has the right to kill innocent civilians if it's really important that he kill other people and the civilians get in the way?
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
I dont have all the answers to these questions, Im struggling with them as many people are but... I do know that sometimes people who have a lot of responsibility must weigh the consequences of their actions and decide which is best. They would do this by looking at that action according to their set of morals. Sometimes actions lead to people dying, sometimes inaction leads to people dying. That is why a person must make the best decision he can, that is all he can do.
Every action someone makes or does not make is made by a set of morals, whether that person knows it or not. When someone makes an action that some people find morally reprehensible, they, as a society, punish him. Sometimes they do this by completely removing that person from that society by the death penalty.
Its not a matter of just being important, its a matter of being the right thing to do. As I outlined previously, the example of the hoodlum in the alley, if he threatened my family I would not wonder if he was desperate or if my money was important to him or if he disliked the brand of clothes that I wore, those actions do not measure up to me morally, the only actions that fit my criteria of being morally acceptable is one that allows me to protect my family and remove the threat of that person from my family. I would do this by any means necessary.
People always will come into conflict with one another, we can dream of a time when we are all so morally advanced that other points of view are accepted, but that is almost contradictory. To even have the idea of moral progress you must have a goal, an ideal to which you as a society, you as a person aspire to, a place that you progress toward. Sometimes people endanger that progress, sometimes people are not as far on that path as others, this is a sad fact of life. Some people just have not put in the time and study to even begin to grapple with the issues that we are discussing.
The people that I believe offer the best chance for a free, democratic, self-determining world (that is the place I mentioned that all humans strive toward) are the people of America, UK, Japan and many other countries whose message of freedom, hope and responsibility is being embraced in countries all over the world in places where this previously seemed impossible.
When something endangers this progress that thing should be stopped at all costs. That is what I believe and what I will always believe.
Some ask whether this is fair to someone raised in another culture.
If that is a culture in which flying planes into buildings is not considered a morally reprehensible act, but an act of righteousness worthy of emulation and admiration, that culture does not deserve an understanding nod or a slap on the wrist, that culture deserves to be annihilated, or so completely changed that it is hardly recognizable.
Posted by Silifi (Member # 7901) on :
The lesson we should have learned, although we haven't, as a whole, is that we are still vulnerable.
It is too easy for people in this country to have a false sense of security. We're the most powerful country in the world, with allies on all borders, we all have great lives. It makes us feel very safe. When we heard about terrorism in Israel, genocide in the Congo, ethnic clensing in Serbia, we seperated ourselves from it. Those millions of people dying, that's not us. That's not people, it's a number .
What September 11th did was show us that we aren't safe. We won't be safe. It put into perspective all that happens in the world. It opened up our eyes and told everyone, "It's not just a number. These are real people, with real families. People just like you."
But like I said, that's what it should have taught us. Whether or not it did is still a question up to debate. If it didn't, it's because we're still being controlled by the top minority that directs world affairs, that moves it's chess peices into place to gain more power. They don't want us to feel vulnerable, they don't want us to have passions about an event that touched us deeply. Not unless it suits their own aims, their own gains.
They really do need to make the footage public. This is something that needs to heal itself, not something that we can simply ignore.
Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
So if one innocent civilian dies in the prosecution of a just war, the war all of a sudden becomes unjust?
So what of World War II? I think most people would say that was a just war, and that ending that Holocaust was a noble deed. But we sure killed a lot of innocent civilians in that war - does that erase the good we did?
I believe that the fights in Afghanistan and Iraq were just. I believe that they freed people from genocidal regimes and that they truly did make us more safe. Did we kill innocent civilians in the process? Yes. Did we try to avoid this? Also, yes. Unfortunately, collateral damage is impossible. However, what we did was still just, was still worth doing, and it still stopped some evil.
I think that arguments like this are just conveniences to attack things that are disagreed with. It's just like during the Cold War - the Soviets did all these horrible things, millions of their own people died in gulags - yet in the minds of some deluded people, the United States was the bad person. Today, terrorists deliberately target innocent people, yet when we accidentally kill innocent people while going after the terrorists, we become the bad guy.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: When something endangers this progress that thing should be stopped at all costs. That is what I believe and what I will always believe.
Some ask whether this is fair to someone raised in another culture.
If that is a culture in which flying planes into buildings is not considered a morally reprehensible act, but an act of righteousness worthy of emulation and admiration, that culture does not deserve an understanding nod or a slap on the wrist, that culture deserves to be annihilated.
Roy, look at what you wrote. This process -- the process of democratization and cultural homogenation -- should be continued at all costs.
If that cost included flying an airplane into a building, would that be okay? Or is it indeed true that this process should be continued at, say, only most costs?
Consider an example in which, rather than flying an airplane into a building, we instead drop a bomb that kills tens of thousands of people -- but stops a war that might have, had it continued, killed hundreds of thousands. That's an okay cost, right?
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"It's just like during the Cold War - the Soviets did all these horrible things, millions of their own people died in gulags - yet in the minds of some deluded people, the United States was the bad person."
I think by someone who lived in an unaligned state at the time, both the USSR and the United States could have easily been called "bad persons." Opposing a villain does not make someone a hero.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
"Consider an example in which, rather than flying an airplane into a building, we instead drop a bomb that kills tens of thousands of people -- but stops a war that might have, had it continued, killed hundreds of thousands. That's an okay cost, right?" Yes. We did this (twice) to end the war with Japan.
"I think by someone who lived in an unaligned state at the time, both the USSR and the United States could have easily been called "bad persons." Opposing a villain does not make someone a hero." Yes, it does. That's what heroes do, they oppose the villian instead of sitting idly by and let someone else do the opposing.
Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
Heroes aren't the only ones that oppose villans. Sometimes they are just competing villans.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
Even a villian can be a hero if they are doing the right thing
Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
Just because you are against something bad doesn't mean you are doing something good.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"Even a villian can be a hero if they are doing the right thing."
That's a big if, I think. Are we assuming that anyone opposing a villain is doing the right thing?
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
Nope, it is a big IF and needs to be the right thing, which yes, is a subjective thing
Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
quote: Opposing a villain does not make someone a hero." Yes, it does.
So you are willing to admit that this is not completely true?
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
Nope, because in the context that I wrote it the statement is true
Posted by TheDisgruntledPostman (Member # 7200) on :
Im not sure if this is the topic that started to come up from my beggining post but im gonna say it anyway. Some people in America(hopefully all of us) want peace. We dont like sending off Moms, Dads, Brothers Sisters off to fight wars. We dont like hearing the countless deaths, nobody does(hopefully). But when your trying to have peace with a country that dispises you, hates you for having freedom that we died for, hates women with rights, you cant really say lets put down our guns. These people that we are fighting dont sign treaties, their form of peace is us crying over death and us giving up. We tried didnt we. Mr.Bush asked nicely, even on the Tube. You think he likes being called a Nazi for starting a war, you think he enjoys people protesting against him cause he had to start a war. No, and dont go all up in my face saying yes. He wants to eracticate them at the source, so they dont attack on home soil again, so those cowards who hide in their little holes and tunnels can try to bring down a country that already has enured so much. The answer was war, i want peace just like any other normal person, but you cant put out a forest fire with just a little gardening hose.
Posted by estavares (Member # 7170) on :
Tom, I'm still curious as to your take on how the U.S. should have responded to 9/11.
What could the nation have done to see justice accomplished in a way befitting the crime? What does anyone else have to say on this?
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
The process of "doing the right thing" and "opposing the villains" of the world is something that is done at all costs.
The question of the degree and the appropriateness of the response that this opposition should take is a silly one.
What you are asking is like a stranger to the game of football asking a player whether he really thinks that it is appropriate for that player to use the violence of a tackle on another player, and whether that action was morally appropriate. Of course it is appropriate, the player would reply.
Inside the context of the game, it is tackle or be tackled, if you pause to discuss the relevance of the rules of the game while you are in the process of playing, you are going to lose.
In the international game of survival that we are playing in right now, I believe that care and planning should be put into the research of the methods that we use to win the game. But, this care, this self-questioning nature of our country is not appropriate while the game is on.
During wartime, that self-quesioning nature, that questing search for what is right actually hinders rather than helps us achieve our goal.
Do not partake in the backdoor protest of an action by questioning the degree or method of acheiving it while claiming that you are in favor of it, that is a trick being used widely today.
If you would like to protest the validity and morality of an action, by all means protest it, before the game starts. During the game, while you are in danger of being knocked down and stomped on, the question should not be whether we should be playing, that is already decided, the real question we should be asking is "How do we win the game?"
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: But when your trying to have peace with a country that dispises you, hates you for having freedom that we died for, hates women with rights...
Two points: I seriously doubt the 9/11 terrorists OR Saddam Hussein hated us for our freedom. And I really doubt that "women with rights" played a major role in the selection of our enemies, or else we'd've invaded Saudi Arabia well before Iraq.
quote:Mr.Bush asked nicely, even on the Tube.
When was this? I may have been briefly distracted by an amusing anecdote for a few seconds when this happened. Was it on a Wednesday?
quote:You think he likes being called a Nazi for starting a war, you think he enjoys people protesting against him cause he had to start a war. No, and dont go all up in my face saying yes.
I'm baffled. You think the issue is whether or not Bush likes being protested? You honestly expected me to disagree with you on that score? I'm surprised by this. The evidence very clearly shows that Bush strongly dislikes having people disagree with him.
quote:He wants to eracticate them at the source, so they dont attack on home soil again, so those cowards who hide in their little holes and tunnels can try to bring down a country that already has enured so much.
Again, a few more points: the citizens of America have endured a lot less than those of either Afghanistan or Iraq. Furthermore, I'm not sure you can call Al Qaeda "cowardly" for using caves and tunnels to evade American recon and air support; as it's enabled them to continue operations despite our best efforts and has kept Bin Laden out of our hands, I think the word you're actually looking for is "smart."
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quote: I'm still curious as to your take on how the U.S. should have responded to 9/11.
In hindsight, it's easy for me to say what I think we should have done; I'm not a big fan of armchair quarterbacking. But at the time, I suggested that we go to the World Court with an ultimatum that Osama bin Laden be turned over to justice, or else we'd declare war on his extranational organization in the same way that we once declared war on the Barbary Pirates. But, then, I think there's this bizarre mental connection that people make between Bin Laden's attack on the Twin Towers and Hussein's Iraq; I don't think invading Iraq made any sense, especially since it's my opinion that, had an invasion of Afghanistan ultimately proved necessary, the reconstruction of that country would have been a better focus for us. Of course, Afghanistan lacks the resources necessary to be a major player in the region, and we wanted control of a major player: ergo Iraq.
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quote: The process of 'doing the right thing' and 'opposing the villains' of the world is something that is done at all costs. The question of the degree and the appropriateness of the response that this opposition should take is a silly one.
No, see, you make the same mistake again. You use the phrase "at all costs," and then suggest that there's such a thing as "degree and appropriateness of the response." It's either one or the other. Either we conduct this opposition "at all costs," or we indeed accept that there are costs -- like, say, the murder of innocents -- we are unwilling to pay.
In fact, I submit for your approval the suggestion that "war at all costs" is exactly what Al Qaeda was attempting to conduct.
quote: In the international game of survival that we are playing in right now, I believe that care and planning should be put into the research of the methods that we use to win the game. But, this care, this self-questioning nature of our country is not appropriate while the game is on.
Which is why we previously established rules for this "game." The Geneva Conventions, for example. Our requirement that Congress approve all uses of force. Agreements with NATO and the United Nations involving military action.
We have broken many of these rules, and bent many more, to conduct a war "at all costs."
To use your football analogy: it's like deciding that we need to win the game, so we start deliberately injuring the other team, cheating whenever the ref isn't looking (and insulting the ref when he does catch us), and paying the guy in charge of the scoreboard to give us a few free points.
If the only goal of the game is to "win at all costs," then this behavior is okay. If the goal is to win in accordance with the rules we previously agreed upon -- the rules of football or of war -- then it is not.
I may be a Dolphins fan (to use a random team), but that doesn't mean I should look the other way if Marino punches somebody in the face -- or tell other fans, "Hey, don't you support the team?"
Arguing, in other words, that we should turn a blind eye to the misdeeds of our own government merely because it has decided to engage in an optional war is, as far as I'm concerned, about as evil as nationalism gets.
Posted by signine (Member # 7671) on :
quote:The process of "doing the right thing" and "opposing the villains" of the world is something that is done at all costs.
Sounds like somebody's been reading the same comic books as George W. The only villians in this world that we as Americans see are those who oppose our way of life. It's interesting to think that for the most part, they would resent being forced into our way of life just as much if not more so than being stuck with the one we view as abhorrent. The "lessons learned from 9-11" weren't that we should "crush," "destroy," or "annihilate" enemies of the United States, but rather that our foreign policy and national security both need a lot of work. What's happened instead is we've been given less privacy, the illusion of security, and a long-term war against an insurgency.
quote:The question of the degree and the appropriateness of the response that this opposition should take is a silly one.
I would tend to agree if the response were against an action. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and barely had a military (as we saw during the invasion). Their WMD program was non-existant as far as the UN was able to discover, whereas North Korea and Iran both had very public and very obvious WMD facilities. Why did we invade Iraq? Because it was easy, and it gave us a foothold in the middle east. In the long-term one might even think it's useful, but 9-11 (and the first Gulf War, and the Iran-Contra affair, and...and..) reminded us that our foreign policy in the Middle East leaves MUCH to be desired. Perhaps a foothold there isn't what we need so much as a definitive absence.
quote:What you are asking is like a stranger to the game of football asking a player whether he really thinks that it is appropriate for that player to use the violence of a tackle on another player, and whether that action was morally appropriate. Of course it is appropriate, the player would reply.
No, what he's saying is because one black man punches you in the mouth you don't hate all black men for the rest of time. A few crazy Arabs flew planes into buildings, does that mean all Muslims are bad? Apparently in some people's world it is. Toby Keith and Ann Coulter are good examples of those. A radical fundamentalist is not the same thing as the average member of the religion they claim to represent. What if suddenly everyone in America started hating Baptists because of the Abortion Clinic bombings? What if everyone started hating the Catholics because the molestation charges?
quote:Inside the context of the game, it is tackle or be tackled, if you pause to discuss the relevance of the rules of the game while you are in the process of playing, you are going to lose.
That's funny, because inside the context of the game you also have referees who do determine, interpret, and enforce the rules, much like the United Nations is supposed to do.
quote:In the international game of survival that we are playing in right now, I believe that care and planning should be put into the research of the methods that we use to win the game. But, this care, this self-questioning nature of our country is not appropriate while the game is on.
During wartime, that self-quesioning nature, that questing search for what is right actually hinders rather than helps us achieve our goal.
Do not partake in the backdoor protest of an action by questioning the degree or method of acheiving it while claiming that you are in favor of it, that is a trick being used widely today.
No offense sir, but you disgust me. A true patriot in this nation constantly questions and analyzes the actions of his or her government.
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. (1918) - Theodore Rosevelt
EDIT: (I hate to do this, I'm not normally a quote fanatic but there are certainly a few that need to be represented here) Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. - Harry S Truman
Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeed -- and no republic can survive. - John F Kennedy /EDIT
It is morally reprehensible to me to say that as soon as the government makes a decision and involves itself in warfare that it is my civic duty to support that war until the government has decided that we should no longer do so. Not only is this servile and foolish, but it's counterintuitive as we live in a Republic and in a Republic the government represents the citizens. As a citizen I do not support these actions, and I will question them to my heart's content.
quote:If you would like to protest the validity and morality of an action, by all means protest it, before the game starts. During the game, while you are in danger of being knocked down and stomped on, the question should not be whether we should be playing, that is already decided, the real question we should be asking is "How do we win the game?"
I cannot comprehend how this might actually make sense to you, so I'll just quote the movie War Games.
Joshua: A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
[ May 11, 2005, 10:55 PM: Message edited by: signine ]
Posted by TheDisgruntledPostman (Member # 7200) on :
Sigine, i must totally agree with you(war games was a great movie). Wether this war was because we wanted that little control in the middle east, or because we truely want to liberate a country, it all started because of 9/11. A scab that has been there for a while, was ripped open.
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
"That's funny, because inside the context of the game you also have referees who do determine, interpret, and enforce the rules, much like the United Nations is supposed to do."
The point I was trying to make was that we thought we understood the rules of the game, the tactics that teams used and the tendencies of our opponents, on 9-11 we realized that not only was our opponent not playing by the rules, he had left the field, and set fire to our house while we stood and bickered with officials.
The game we were playing is over.
Your option is to complain to the old refs or challenge them to a game on the old field, but that does not do any good.
Your option leaves America clinging to tradition, rules and politeness when we are dealing with a pack of rabid dogs. You do not make treaties with rabid dogs. Rabid dogs do not have the slightest inclination to obey them.
I do not understand your logic. Terrorists kill people. We kill terrorists.
Therefore, we are the same? The actions carry the same moral weight?
I believe the actions are completely different in motivation, execution, design and intent. Not to mention that we are acting in self defense.
Of course we live in a republic and taking advantage of those rights and voting is a fundamental part of keeping them, but after you have elected your representatives, the citizens job is basically over.
The discussions we are having right now is a fundamental part of educating ourselves so that we can more clearly articulate what we look for in a candidate.
After the candidate is elected it is his job to make the best decisions that they can, not to cater to the whims of the media and the elite.
Posted by signine (Member # 7671) on :
TheDisgruntledPostman
Thank you, but unfortunately this war in Iraq wasn't really a reaction to 9/11 at all. There are multiple memos, leaks, and white house staffers who have said that Bush was looking for a reason to sponsor a regime-change in before 9/11 (March of 2000 was the first report, I believe). 9/11 just turned out to give him enough political ammunition to go for it. It's not really that he duped the population or the international community, but he also duped congress.
quote:107th Congress 2nd Session HJ114 JOINT RESOLUTION To authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.
<snip> SEC. 3. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES. (a) AUTHORIZATION- The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to-- (1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and (2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq. (b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION- In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon thereafter as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that-- (1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and (2) acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001. </snip>
So Congress only voted to authorize Military Force in the case that all diplomatic means failed and that the use of force was the only way to ensure the National Security of the United States of America. This of course assumes that he could not prove that Iraq was behind 9/11, which of course he cannot.
I'm really surprised people aren't even more ticked off by this, because I'm certain this resolution never would have made it through congress if it said "and the President can invade Iraq whenever he chooses going against UN Resolutions, UNSC decisions, and without any definitive proof of Iraqs involvement in 9/11 or capability to threaten the National Security of the USA."
Posted by signine (Member # 7671) on :
RoyHobbs
quote:The point I was trying to make was that we thought we understood the rules of the game, the tactics that teams used and the tendencies of our opponents, on 9-11 we realized that not only was our opponent not playing by the rules, he had left the field, and set fire to our house while we stood and bickered with officials.
The game we were playing is over.
No, a ragtag team of Islamic fundamentalists took advantage of our lax security measures at airports and made a massive attack. The same kind of thing (on a different scale) has been happening in Israel for years. Usually Israel uses covert ops teams to locate and destroy the terrorist cells causing the damage whenever they can, and they will use their military force to occupy the neighborhoods known to harbor said terrorists in the case that they cannot handle them with covert ops alone. Often times, Mossad agents will bomb terrorist hideouts, there's even more than a few reports of them using car bombs, bombs implanted in cell phones, and other similar "terrorist" techniques to fight terrorism.
As far as the "game we're playing" it's not a game and it never was. It's the global stage, it's world politics. No country was responsible for 9/11, zero, zilch, none. Al Queda used Afghanistan because it was a fundamentalist Islamic nation with little to no policing capability. They could and did do whatever they wanted to there, but the Al Queda operatives behind 9/11 operated inside the United States.
Additionally, as everyone who actually follows the facts knows, Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Saddam Hussein wasn't exactly a friend of America, but he hated Islamic extremists just as much as any of us do today. Al Queda probably would still be trapped like rats in Afghanistan if we hadn't destabilized a nation near their hiding grounds for them to happily run amok through, even creating a lot of public dissent against ourselves to make hiding themselves even easier.
quote:Your option is to complain to the old refs or challenge them to a game on the old field, but that does not do any good.
Your option leaves America clinging to tradition, rules and politeness when we are dealing with a pack of rabid dogs. You do not make treaties with rabid dogs. Rabid dogs do not have the slightest inclination to obey them.
No, my "option" is to not blatantly disrespect an organization that was established to prevent World War II. My "option" is to not invade sovereign nations unless they are preventing us from finding and bringing enemies of the state to justice. My "option" clings to tradition far less than yours does, mine supports blaming only those responsible for actions taken against our nation and our people. Your option is to invade every nation which could possibly be a threat to our national security. That idea went over really well in Vietnam. It also could have gone over quite well in Russia. It might even go over well in North Korea.
America is not and cannot be the worlds police force. We cannot and should not invade every country that has a fundamental difference with our own.
quote:I do not understand your logic. Terrorists kill people. We kill terrorists.
I don't understand your lack of logic.
Terrorists killed roughly 4000 people during 9/11. We kill some terrorists. We kill all members of a foreign military not harboring terrorists that wanted to protect their sovereignity. We kill over 100,000 people, most of whom are civilians, members of non-terrorist foreign militaries. We completely destroy two foreign governments (admittedly both abhorrent).
I think our reaction was a tad bit unjustified.
quote:Therefore, we are the same? The actions carry the same moral weight?
Sorry, see above. Completely different things.
quote:I believe the actions are completely different in motivation, execution, design and intent. Not to mention that we are acting in self defense.
Acting in self-defense is protecting yourself from an aggressor who has harmed you and can continue to harm you. What we did during the early days of Afghanistan was self-defense. What we did in Iraq was not. What we continued to do in Afghanistan was not.
quote:Of course we live in a republic and taking advantage of those rights and voting is a fundamental part of keeping them, but after you have elected your representatives, the citizens job is basically over.
Excuse me? So if we elect representatives who completely go against everything we stand for we're supposed to stand idly by and accept their treachery? No. I encourage you to read the First Amendment and take a civics class. The duty of a citizen is not to remain humbly complacent about what our leaders do, it's to make sure they continue to represent us. Thinking anything else is downright foolish.
quote:The discussions we are having right now is a fundamental part of educating ourselves so that we can more clearly articulate what we look for in a candidate.
After the candidate is elected it is his job to make the best decisions that they can, not to cater to the whims of the media and the elite.
Once again, incorrect. It is the job of a representative to represent his people, not represent his own personal interests. We call the latter "corruption" and was one of the reasons the Roman empire fell.
Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
So, would you say that if we had reason to believe that another regime was an unacceptable danger to our nation, that we have the right to do what we have to do to end that threat? (And no, I'm not just talking about WMDs)
I believe that we have the responsibility to do what we need to do. A nation unwilling to protect it's civilians is no nation at all. And I would rather that our leaders make mistakes while trying to protect us than to do nothing.
I believe that there is a need to evaluate what we do as a nation, but I think that all too often, these days, thoughtful evaluation has disintegrated into partisan carping. Why are some people always willing to believe the very worst of our nation, and the very best of our enemies?
It's so easy to second-guess and say that things would have been so much better if we hadn't done thus and such. And this too frequently becomes the isolationist belief that things would have been perfect if we'd just pulled every American back, locked up our borders, forced our corporations to get rid of all their foriegn assets, and crouched down pretending that the rest of the world wasn't there and didn't affect us. Even more frequently, this becomes the other side of this rotten coin, the socialist idea that if we'd just roll over and give evil people everything they want that they would somehow morph into good people.
I actually doubt that the Left truly believes that they can change into good people, or that such a change is even important. My suspicions are is that they symphasize with their beliefs and hate America for not implementing their own idealogical agenda, that they think that if the terrorists tear down America that the Left can build up a bright shining socialist paradise that somehow will work this time and not murder tens of millions of people and enslave the rest.
Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world with imperfect people, and we have imperfect leaders. And we have enemies, people who see us, and in many cases rightfully so, as their opposition, keeping them from getting what they want. Which I for one am thankful for, as a one-world communism or Islamic caliphate isn't anything that I'm willing to live under.
Back on the 9/11 topic, it was a lesson. Saying that it was just an "event" and that "it only has the meaning we assign it" is simply moral relativism. I wonder if that's what Hitler thought when he invaded Russia, that what happened to Napoleon was "just an event" and that he wasn't going to "assign a meaning" to it. Well, he certainly learned that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.
And 9/11 was a lesson. Some of us learned the right lesson from it. Some of us didn't. I hope that I am in the first group, but only time will tell. But there is a right lesson from it, a true lesson. And those who didn't learn it will repeat it.
It seems to me like there are people here, very well-spoken, yet with foul beliefs, who follow only idealogical partisanship. Ask yourself - can Bush ever be right? Can he be right and you be wrong? Is there that possibility? If the answer to all three of these is no, and answer honestly - then you are a close-minded idealogical bigot.
The meaning of right and wrong isn't determined by you. Or by me. Or by group consensus. It's determined by something Larger. That's why we should always be questioning what we believe. And I believe that even my enemies can be right at times, and if so, I want to identify it and learn it. But hey, what do I know? I'm not a "free-thinker". Whatever that really means.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"My suspicions are is that they symphasize with their beliefs and hate America for not implementing their own idealogical agenda...."
Let me assure you that this is not the case. While I don't doubt that, in a nation of millions, there may indeed be a Leftist or two who believes this -- in the same way that there might be a member or two of the Religious Right who's hastening to bring about the Apocalypse -- I can say with absolute certainty that it's not a common motivator.
While I'm hardly a "Leftist," everyone I know who opposed the invasion of Iraq, has disapproved of the way the Afghan reconstruction has been conducted, and has otherwise disliked the results of the Bush presidency is not in fact motivated by a desire to tear down America.
quote: Saying that it was just an "event" and that "it only has the meaning we assign it" is simply moral relativism. I wonder if that's what Hitler thought when he invaded Russia, that what happened to Napoleon was "just an event" and that he wasn't going to "assign a meaning" to it.
I think you're confusing moral relativism with lessons on military tactics. The lesson Hitler should have learned from Napoleon's invasion of Russia was that invading Russia just before winter was a bad idea -- and that's not a moral lesson at all. (By the same token, I submit that Bush's team could have learned some lessons about Afghanistan from the Russians. But YMMV.)
That said, military strategy isn't the kind of lesson we're discussing here. Otherwise, the "lessons" of 9/11 put forward would have been purely practical things, like "build double-core skyscrapers." And I think we have learned those lessons, because tactical lessons are always perceived faster than moral ones.
quote:
It seems to me like there are people here, very well-spoken, yet with foul beliefs, who follow only idealogical partisanship. Ask yourself - can Bush ever be right? Can he be right and you be wrong? Is there that possibility? If the answer to all three of these is no, and answer honestly - then you are a close-minded idealogical bigot.
*wipes brow* Whew. I was worried for a second, there, but you've absolved me.
You go on, however, to argue that moral relativism is a shallow philosophy in the shadow of "something Larger." Let me point out that agreements on what this "something Larger" is are unlikely to be universal, and this is precisely why moral relativism is a far more sensible philosophy in a diverse society. As you've pointed out, even your enemies can be right at times.
Me, I'm a free-thinker. I work pretty hard to be a free-thinker. Because if you're not thinking freely, you're not actually thinking.
[ May 12, 2005, 10:58 AM: Message edited by: TomDavidson ]
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
Holy Moly, I go away for a few hours and everyone types a book I'll try to catch up...
"Terrorists killed roughly 4000 people during 9/11." Yes, but I guess we should forget all the other people killed in terrorist attacks around the world, and funny how they are just 4000 people not innocent civilians like we kill on purpose "We kill some terrorists." Indeed we did. "We kill all members of a foreign military not harboring terrorists that wanted to protect their sovereignity." We killed all members? All of them? I thought that they were giving up by the thousands. Afghanistan was not harboring terrorists? The Taliban had nothing to do with terrorists? Terrorists from Afghanistan didn't flee to Iraq? Iraq didn't pay the families of suicide bombers? "We kill over 100,000 people, most of whom are civilians, members of non-terrorist foreign militaries." Since most of that number is attributed to sanctions wouldn't that mean that the UN under Kofi and Iraq under Saddam killed them? I mean since Saddam agreed to terms of surrender after the first gulf war, then he blatantly violated those terms so the world imposed sanctions on Iraq shouldn't the UN get the blame? Of course Saddam starved his people so we (meaning the members of the UN) started the Money for Kofi and his family & Saddam program, I mean the Oil for Food program to help out. But I suppose those deaths are our fault since we could have just let bygones be bygones like we did after WWII (Japan is still not allowed to have a military because of their terms of surrender). And are they truly non-terrorist foreign militaries if their leaders support terrorism?How come our military is the puppet of the evil overlord Bush, or Cheney, or is it Rove but they are just simple non-terrorist foreign militaries. "We completely destroy two foreign governments (admittedly both abhorrent)." Or stated another way, we liberated two countries from abhorrent dictators
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I think your attempts at sarcasm are obfuscating your points, DK.
Posted by Jenny Gardener (Member # 903) on :
War, war, justification of war. How ugly is all this?
Wars are ugly. Killing people is ugly.
I think the bravest thing to do is to decide how to LIVE. Not to waste time arguing coulda-woulda-shoulda. Not to waste time hating people and trying to get back what was lost. Dead people don't come back to life.
I will die someday, perhaps unexpectedly. So will you. So, the lesson from 9/11 is simply this:
How you live, what you choose to do with the time you have, is IMPORTANT. Don't waste it.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
I love obfuscating...I mean the word, not actually doing it. The word is just like it sounds "obfuscate" it's even a little confusing to say! Not like redundant. Redundant should be something like redundantredundant. That would be funnier Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
quote: I think you're confusing moral relativism with lessons on military tactics. The lesson Hitler should have learned from Napoleon's invasion of Russia was that invading Russia just before winter was a bad idea -- and that's not a moral lesson at all. (
What happened in 9/11 was a military operation. And morals are inextricably intertwined with this.
quote: Let me point out that agreements on what this "something Larger" is are unlikely to be universal, and this is precisely why moral relativism is a far more sensible philosophy in a diverse society.
Agreements on what this something Larger may not be universal, but as I said, it's not up for a vote. There is an absolute morality, which is right, and being right it is the most sensible philosophy, regardless of diversity of society. I'm not saying that I know everything about this absolute morality - or even anything - but I'm searching to learn more. Moral relativity is a copout, it's the equivalent of saying that whatever I believe is right is right for you, whatever you believe is right is right for you...and if you believed that then you wouldn't be bothering to have this discussion, would you?
I believe that I am a free-thinker - a real one. But when my professors use it, what they mean is "someone who follows my opinions in lockstep."
quote: Wars are ugly. Killing people is ugly.
General Sherman, marching though Atlanta: "War is Hell".
There are worse things, however. And brave men will be willng to go through Hell to protect what they consider is important.
I'm curious, for those of you who are "antiwar". Is there ever a time when war is necessary? Not just for us, but for any given group/nation? How should a nation rationally deal with another who is irrational?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:What happened in 9/11 was a military operation.
I'm not sure you get my point. Or if you do, I'm absolutely certain I don't get yours.
quote:There is an absolute morality, which is right, and being right it is the most sensible philosophy, regardless of diversity of society.
Fine. Prove it.
quote: Is there ever a time when war is necessary?
Absolutely. It's never right, but it's occasionally necessary.
Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
quote:
quote: There is an absolute morality, which is right, and being right it is the most sensible philosophy, regardless of diversity of society.
Fine. Prove it.
Disprove it.
quote: Absolutely. It's never right, but it's occasionally necessary.
How does that work? Also, if you are a moral relativist, how can you state that something is never right?
Posted by TheDisgruntledPostman (Member # 7200) on :
So many things to deffend both sides of the table. Killing the innocent, but remember 9/11. The fact is, no matter what any one or any one says, were fighting war. We can point fingers and say this and that, but this war is already in play, and i think we will be in there for a little longer then planned. But think about it, two country's have been liberated. And for saying about all of the innocent people that are dying. It is a war, people die. Also, if some of you remember Saddam Huesaine would pull people off of the streets and shoot them, just take away their life in a minute. We've freed the people of their fear of death(unless you count their fear of us). Crowds of Irag's stood around the falling statue of their dictator, they cheered. These people are willing to take the chance to be free from Evil's rule. Of course some people want us out, but others want us to stay and help. Were making the terriost scared, they are attacking and attacking to try to kill us, but they can't. Were even training Iraqies for police and military work. Wether we use the outcome the war for our benefits or not, we are giving people freedom.
In most( notice the word to the left) of our wars we didn't fight for us. WW1 and WW2 we fought for European country's. We helped get rid of necesary evils. Now we are doing the same(i know someone on this board is gonna qoute me and say some right back) we are fighting a country for its own good. We are fighting it to free the people who want to be free.
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
If you want evidence that there is an absolute moral standard, "something larger", I invite you to look at a former atheists take on the subject, C.S. Lewis in "Mere Christianity". His scientific, systemic movement from point to point is difficult, if not impossible to refute.
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
quote: Absolutely. It's never right, but it's occasionally necessary.
"How does that work? Also, if you are a moral relativist, how can you state that something is never right?"
(Tom)>>>>> Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: Disprove it.
You want me to disprove the existence of something? Tell you what: I'll get around to that when you finish proving that a giant purple panda did not create the universe, and that we're all not going to go to the Hell of a Million Fish after death if we don't eat spareribs at every meal.
If you're going to try to dictate behavior based on a universal ethical standard, bucko, the burden of proof lies on your claim that such a standard exists.
quote: How does that work? Also, if you are a moral relativist, how can you state that something is never right?
I never said I was a moral relativist -- although I suspect that I'm a great deal more relative than you are. Like you, I believe that some things are empirically better than others, and some things are empirically worse. In my moral code, the killing of innocents is always wrong. But it is also occasionally necessary. This isn't as oxymoronic as it sounds; rather, the truly moral thing to do is to arrange matters so that it is not necessary to kill innocents in order to achieve other necessary goals.
That said, I believe that government and public discourse -- particularly in a democracy -- have to be relativist and secular in nature in order to function sensibly. If you can't defend an ethical construct with sound philosophy, it shouldn't be written into law or used as justification for law.
I would argue that there's a huge difference between "society should be able to produce secular, internally logical arguments for its ethical codes" and what is traditionally called moral relativism: the idea that any society is entitled to its own beliefs, and that no ethical code is any better than any other.
I believe that some ethical codes are indeed better than others. But you're going to have to convince me that yours is better than mine through some method considerably more convincing than claiming it was handed down to you by "something Larger."
quote: His scientific, systemic movement from point to point is difficult, if not impossible to refute.
Read it. Sorry. I thought it was a load of crap. The whole "triune paradox" in particular is laughably bad. Basically, Mere Christianity is another one of those apologetics that only winds up sounding compelling if you're already in the choir. The "liar/devil/madman" option is almost but not quite as weak a proof as "God exists because we can imagine a perfect being, and something perfect would by definition be more perfect if it existed than if it didn't exist, so therefore God must exist." Which was the reigning example of "scientific proof" for quite some time, believe it or not.
Lewis talked himself into believing, but it's a real stretch to think he applied any kind of scientific "standard" to his search for God; any skeptical read of Mere Christianity reveals holes through which you could drive a truck.
Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
quote: Basically, Mere Christianity is another one of those apologetics that only winds up sounding compelling if you're already in the choir.
Whereas, if you are tone-deaf, it holds no appeal for you.
When you ask me to prove the existance of absolute morality, you are asking me to prove something which has been the guiding belief of the world's greatest religions and even philosophers for many thousands of years over a new and untested theory which only sounds compelling if you are in the choir.
Let me give you a mathematical analogy. You aren't asking me to prove that 1 + 1 = 2 as opposed to 1 + 1 = 3. You are asking me to prove the existance of the system of mathematics, a group of absolute rules which have been proven by people far smarter than myself, and claiming that if I can't prove it, that your theory is valid that if one person thinks that 1 + 1 = 2 and another person thinks that 1 + 1 = 3 are equally valid.
And there is no middle ground between absolute morality and moral relativity. If absolute morality doesn't exist in even one part, then it isn't absolute, now, is it?
Of course, moral relativity is impossible to prove. How can you prove the theory that nothing is provable?
But I don't believe you are a moral relativist at all, nor do I believe that anyone is. Everyone sees their own beliefs as absolute, that their belief of what is right and wrong is the correct theory of right and wrong. Our difference is that I appeal to a higher power as my source of my beliefs, and you appeal to...you. This sets you up as your own God, the final arbitrar of right and wrong. Your feelings and your thoughts are all that define what is moral and what is not. The biggest difference between this is that my basis for my beliefs provides me a self-correcting mechanism, the question "Are my beliefs in line with God?". Yours has no such mechanism. I can have a conversation with another moral absolutist, because we are both exploring the nature of morals, just as one mathematican can have a conversation with another about proofs.
The truth of the moral relativists is that they believe that they are absolutely right, and they use "moral relativism" as a smokescreen to sucker people into not fighting for their own beliefs as hard as the "moral relativists" are for theirs. It's all a lie.
Far too many people confuse situational ethics with moral relativism. I believe firmly in situational ethics, and my ethics in any particular position are based upon my understanding of the laws of absolute morality. I ask myself, is there a higher law which applies, are there any mitigating factors. So shooting someone who is trying to kill my wife is moral, but shooting someone because I want their wallet is immoral. It's the same action - shooting someone - but in one situation it is moral, in the other it is not. This isn't moral relativism.
Just because someone thinks he's right doesn't mean he's right. John C. Calhoun thought slavery was right, Hermann Goering thought that killing all the Jews was right, Vlad Tepes thought that impaling twenty thousand people was right, and the drug addict who burned down her own house because her adult children wouldn't give her more money for cocaine thought she was right.
Likewise, the people who caused 9/11 thought they were right. Were they? No, and that is a topic for discussion. But it's sad, we have a discussion about "O How some of us forget" and some people are like, "What's to forget", that there was really nothing to it and that in their scheme of things it wasn't important. How callous. And how blind.
Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
quote:Absolutely. It's never right, but it's occasionally necessary.
Tom, it seems that you are using a definition of "right" that is different from the common usage.
If it is never right, are you saying that going to war is always wrong?
Posted by alluvion (Member # 7462) on :
Porta,
If I may interject, war is wrought by fools on both sides. But, it's natural and it culls the herd (unlike that possessive apostrophe [see this sentence] - egads!).
mike
Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
quote: If I may interject, war is wrought by fools on both sides. But, it's natural and it culls the herd
That's an extremely demeaning and extraordinarily condescending way to look at the honorable and brave men in our military.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: a group of absolute rules which have been proven by people far smarter than myself, and claiming that if I can't prove it
Tell you what. Show me one conclusive "proof" of your morality. Even if you can't understand it, and follow it only because men wiser than you have put it forward, let me see what you consider a valid argument for those "absolute rules." The fact that people have used 'em for years isn't proof; people believed for thousands of years that the planet was flat, or made out of the body of a dead giant. Popularity is not exactly evidence of accuracy.
quote:Our difference is that I appeal to a higher power as my source of my beliefs, and you appeal to...you. This sets you up as your own God, the final arbitrar of right and wrong.
Ah. See, I would disagree. Whereas you appeal to your idea of what God is, I appeal to fairly rigorous logic. I submit that mine is in fact the far higher standard, as logic is something that, unlike God, is actually exposed to regular scrutiny and is not permitted to hide behind assertions of ineffability. I also submit that if you consider God to be merely the arbiter of moral systems -- if, for example, someone appealing to someone else as the arbiter of their morality is all that's necessary to set the second person up as a "God" -- then my requirements for Godhood are considerably more stringent than your own.
quote: This isn't moral relativism.
No, see, I think most moral relativists would say that it is. But I understand why you'd feel reluctant to admit to sharing their opinions on some issues; it's clearly a matter of pride for you that you cannot.
quote: How callous. And how blind.
Hm. I believe you're calling me both callous and blind. What have you read that would suggest that I neither understand the impact of the attack on the Twin Towers nor feel sorrow for those killed?
quote: Tom, it seems that you are using a definition of "right" that is different from the common usage.
Yep. I think we misuse the word "right;" we tend to apply it to moral dilemmas where we should use the word "justified" instead.
Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
quote:I think we misuse the word "right;" we tend to apply it to moral dilemmas where we should use the word "justified" instead.
I've seen you use a definition of "right" before which (to me) didn't quite make any sense. IIRC, it was in your Rules to Live By.
Would you care to elaborate on what "right" means to you?
Also, please explain why "right" is wrong in certain moral dilemas.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: Also, please explain why "right" is wrong in certain moral dilemas.
Because it's short-sighted to think of a moral dilemma as existing in isolation, in my opinion. When someone is pointing a gun at you and taking your purse, this has happened for a reason; something turned that person to armed robbery, and something made you a target of that robbery.
A far better way to "solve" this dilemma is to arrange matters in advance so that you are not a target, or -- even better -- the aggressor is not compelled to rob anyone.
You often hear questions like "if a speeding train is careening down a track which switches towards an old man or a pregnant woman, what would you do?" Such questions miss the point -- because the right choice is to keep the train under control in the first place.
In other words, ethical dilemmas become dilemmas only because someone, somewhere, screwed things up originally, when they had the chance to prevent the problem altogether.
War -- with all its attendant human misery -- can sometimes be the most sensible and least evil of the options available to a nation at a given point of time. But the first evil, the greater evil, the one that people tend to overlook, is the one that made war the most efficient option in the first place.
So, yeah, war is never right. It's never a good thing to do. But it can sometimes be the best thing left to do.
Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
What would the opposite of right be to you? It's obviously not wrong. It's not wrong to cause pain to somebody who is trying to mug you, and you you claim it's not right either.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: It's not wrong to cause pain to somebody who is trying to mug you, and you you claim it's not right either.
No, see, it IS wrong. It's just also justifiable. I think the issue is not how I define "right," but rather how I define "wrong." Posted by Portabello (Member # 7710) on :
OK then, go ahead and explain. Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I believe that something can still be wrong even if it's the least miserable of a bunch of bad choices. There's no need to dignify settling for the lesser evil by calling that "right."
Posted by estavares (Member # 7170) on :
That the conundrum of this entire issue. There are so many versions of what is "right" and what is "wrong" that there will never be consensus on the nation's response to 9/11.
(Hey, I used both "conundrum" AND "consensus" in the same sentence. My teachers would be proud.)
I do think the focus of the discussion is based on "justified" as in do the means justify the end? So many critics have blasted Bush for his decisions regarding Iraq, citing he planned to do this all along. So what is the motive? What end does this action in Iraq supposedly justify?
(And please, none of this "blood for oil" business. The current price of gas proves full well we haven't gained anything by securing Iraq's oil supply.)
Posted by TheDisgruntledPostman (Member # 7200) on :
Well since this war has been started we are going to have to end it. So what will we do once everything ends, probally the same thing we did in Japan after Hiroshima, we'll rebuild them. Now don't get me wrong, we are already doing that, but that goes to show you, that country will become more "civilized". Of course we will get prizes of war. But tell me what makes the attack on pearl harbor different(in metaphorical terms, not that same exact thing.) We saw a submirine in the waters of the harbor but did they do anything. We new of the threats before 9/11. Now America attacked Japan following the attack, hmmm how history repeats itself in this small world of ours.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Your whole post was like a Gollum/Smeagol conversation. Posted by TheDisgruntledPostman (Member # 7200) on :
Haha, yea
Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
quote: Whereas you appeal to your idea of what God is, I appeal to fairly rigorous logic. I submit that mine is in fact the far higher standard, as logic is something that, unlike God, is actually exposed to regular scrutiny and is not permitted to hide behind assertions of ineffability.
Logic by itself is amoral.
"Logic is neither a science nor an art, but a dodge" - Benjamin Jowett.
"Logic: an instrument for bolstering a prejudice" - Elbert Hubbard.
And my favorite: "Logic is the art of going wrong with confidence" - Joseph Wood Krutch.
quote: I believe that something can still be wrong even if it's the least miserable of a bunch of bad choices. There's no need to dignify settling for the lesser evil by calling that "right."
quote: Because it's short-sighted to think of a moral dilemma as existing in isolation, in my opinion. When someone is pointing a gun at you and taking your purse, this has happened for a reason; something turned that person to armed robbery, and something made you a target of that robbery.
A far better way to "solve" this dilemma is to arrange matters in advance so that you are not a target, or -- even better -- the aggressor is not compelled to rob anyone.
You often hear questions like "if a speeding train is careening down a track which switches towards an old man or a pregnant woman, what would you do?" Such questions miss the point -- because the right choice is to keep the train under control in the first place.
I think that this is not realistic. I agree that choices between two bad situations arise because of someone's poor choices earlier, but that's not useful when you are facing the immediate situation. Say you are getting mugged - you don't know the mugger, you have no concievable way of having known the mugger or any reasonable way of having known what to do to "help him" - unless we're omniscient, of course - so you have two "bad" choices - knock him out or let him steal your money. But are they bad for you? How are you responsible for him becoming a mugger?
Your ideas don't account for human imperfection. We're not going to do everything right, no matter how much we know or how well meaning we are. Going by your reasoning, we're wrong no matter what we do - that the only discussion is how wrong we are. That's pretty Augustinian, for an atheist.
Posted by signine (Member # 7671) on :
quote:It seems to me like there are people here, very well-spoken, yet with foul beliefs, who follow only idealogical partisanship. Ask yourself - can Bush ever be right? Can he be right and you be wrong? Is there that possibility? If the answer to all three of these is no, and answer honestly - then you are a close-minded idealogical bigot.
Of course he can do things right. He was certainly right in how he handled that huge fiasco with the spy plane going down in China after knocking one of their fighters out of the sky. Thus far his handling of politics with North Korea has been exemplary. 9/11 was certainly not entirely his fault either, the blame on that one falls on Bush Sr. and Clinton as well. His initial handling of 9/11 was the best anyone could have hoped for. There were no instant military strikes, Wall St. was shut down, commercial air travel was halted while security screening took a massive jump. It was all intelligent thoughtful response. Even the initial push to pursue Al Queda in Afghanistan was well done, bringing Pakistan and the US closer, which will invariably end up easing the diplomatic stress between Pakistan and India.
What is true, however, is that no one ever proved that Iraq was a clear and present danger to the National Security of the United States of America. If every nation that "might have" WMDs should be invaded, our list before Iraq (in order) would have looked like this: 1. North Korea 2. Iran 3. Libya 4. Israel 5. Iraq
If we change this to nations that "might have" ties to terrorist organizations and/or have supported Al Queda: 1. Afghanistan 2. Saudia Arabia 3. Iran 4. Iraq
Once again, these are "might haves" and we shouldn't go to war based on "maybe." The US should not be the world's police force, it simply doesn't make sense for us to do that. In the case of genocide, yes, by all means, intervene. We've got a pretty good track record of doing that. Unfortunately we ignored that whole genocide thing with the Kurds the first three times Iraq tried it. We waited until they invaded a nation willing to pay us money to push them back out before we did anything.
I do tend to sound like my heart bleeds and I hug trees, but the truth is I hate "right" and "left" more or less equally and for entirely different reasons. The most important thing on earth is that we respect each other's beliefs and do not try to inhibit each other's freedom. Neither right nor left has succeeded at holding that true, and frankly that's the whole reason we're in the mess we're in right now. It's ironic that a nation with more freedom than any other nation on Earth doesn't allow other cultures or nations permission to disagree with our views.
The right would call me a terrorist sympathizer for saying that.
The left would call it a right-wing conspiracy.
What I see now is that we've done something that, in the long run, is a fantastic idea. We're committed to it now so we might as well follow through. On the same coin I see our military stretched far too thin, a war started with a country that had no capability to hurt us, and a destabilized muslim nation now full of people who now have reasons to hate America when before they only had hearsay.
It wasn't a good idea, and it wasn't an appropriate response.
Admittedly now all I'm doing is crying over spilled milk, but I feel as if everyone believes that this milk is just supposed to be all over the floor.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
You know, there are people, quite a few in fact, who supported the Iraq war and put themselves out there to defend it who have since been outraged to find out the level of deceit, contempt, and incompetence that the Bush administration used in selling it and prosecuting it. I've had to go around and appologize to my friends who I called paranoid because they told me the assurances that we knew that there were WMD's were Gulf of Tonkin-esque bald-face lies. I watched them push the "duck and cover" terror level alerts and duct tape and plastic sheeting bs on the public and was horrified by their callous fear manipulation of the public. I saw that the only reason we had a 9/11 commission, which the President was unwilling to stand before on his own, was that the families of the 9/11 victims used their considerable political clout to force the issue. I also saw, as part of this hearing, that the President did not in fact know, 2 1/2 years after the event, that the FBI's reports of having 70 agents following reports of a possible terrorist plot that involved hijacking American planes were completely inaccurate, which suggests to me that his administration was not all that interested in actually figuring out what went wrong. I watched them cover their asses and deny responsibility and accountability and it freakin scares me. I started a thread on what the case for the war sort of looked like to me. I saw them commit a felony by outing a CIA operative, spread lies about people who disagreed with them, and push Colin Powell, the lone voice of dissent, to the outside. I saw their disdain for the troops in the "Name that tune" style invasion, where Secretary Rumfeld said, "I can win this war in only five notes." and their continuing lies about the level and nature of the resistence.
It's possible that I'm just a Bush hater who only seems these phantasms of my imagination because I'm consumed with rage that he's the President, although I am actually a registered Republican who worked on John McCain's 2000 campaign. Or maybe, I don't actually like President Bush and think he's done a bad job because he's done such a bad job and shown me contempt, lied to me, and put my life and the lives of my people in danger.
---
What would I have liked to have been the response to 9/11? Well, I've already said that there was a tremendous opportunity to bring the nation together, but he and his administration have been dividers and not uniters. I think that we should have been concerned with analyzing what went wrong and how to prevent from happening again as opposed to going into the pre-conceived notions of what some people were looking for excuses (or rather a "Pearl Harbor" type event) to do and claiming that it wasn't my fault and no one could have predicted that people would do something from a Tom Clancy novel or World War II history and use planes as a weapon.
I would have liked the U.S. to capitalize the enormous goodwill we received from the rest of the world after this tragedy to lead a world-wide hunt in breaking down terrorist organizations instead of lying to and spitting in the faces of the rest of the world (and I don't think they're all that great either). We didn't need to attack Iraq. It was unrelated to 9/11 and to terrorism as a whole. It didn't make us safer and main connections to terrorism it had and has is that terrorists poured into the country to fight us and that our actions created more terrorists. And, although I still believe that we had a legitimate case for bringing military force to Iraq, the way this case we made was abominable. So, I would have hoped that if we were going into Iraq, we'd have done it much differently. I also would have hoped that contrary to the President statements, that had we done so, capturing the leaders of al-Queda, including Osama bin Laden, would have remained a top priority.
I'm ambivilent to theoretical invasion of Iraq as am I to the pre-emptive war to spread democracy prardigm they've been selling. However, both of those would require leadership who were relatively honest, trustworthy, and competent, none of which describes the actions of a president who couldn't even run for re-election on his past record.
edit: Here and here are some of the posts that more fully flesh out what I was saying here.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Also, there are two separate things that we could be memorializing with say a Twin Towers garden. It could be in memory of the people who died or it could be the fact of a wide-scale foreign terrorist attacks on American soil. If it's the first, then it's sad that so many died needlessly, but this is year that saw an order of magnitude (I think) more die in a tsunami.
If it's the second, that's more of a ongoing piece of something and also one that has been used for so many self-serving purposes that it's hard to know what we'd be taking out of it. The clear lessons are, to me, that our intelligence services were unprepared and full of systemic problems and that the nature of offensive versus defensive war is heavily tilted towards the offensive side. However, the "lessons" people often seem to be pushing is that we need to engage in pre-emptive wars and that all people we think are bad are on the same team (oh and Freedom 1) means whatever the President says it means and 2) solves everything), none of which are at all clear.
Posted by Jimmy M (Member # 8043) on :
quote: our list before Iraq (in order) would have looked like this: 1. North Korea 2. Iran 3. Libya 4. Israel 5. Iraq
I couldn't take your post seriously [signine] because of this list. Israel is our ally and we provide them with most of their military equipment, including nuclear technology, there is no way we would ever attack them.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Jimmy, At one point, Iraq was our ally who we provided with most of their military equipment, including chemical weapons. While our relationship with Israel is significantly different, I think saying we'd never attack them is a bit overbold.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"Logic by itself is amoral."
Surely. But so is faith. Both are merely ways of reaching a conclusion. And both are capable of producing both moral and immoral behaviors, depending on rationale.
Logic relies on deduction for its conclusion; faith relies on appeals to authority. I prefer the former.
There's nothing wrong with the latter, I believe, except that it's going to be inherently unconvincing to someone who doesn't share the same precepts -- whereas I believe most people are capable of following deductive logic, something that makes it sort of a lowest common denominator for human behavior.
Posted by signine (Member # 7671) on :
JimmyM
quote:I couldn't take your post seriously [signine] because of this list. Israel is our ally and we provide them with most of their military equipment, including nuclear technology, there is no way we would ever attack them.
Iraq was once our ally and we provided them most of their equipment. The Taliban were once our allies and we provided them most of their equipment. Israel is not officially a nuclear power, and in fact is a signator on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Yet everyone knows they have nukes, and they built them on their own. We did not provide them with the technology. Israel is also in the unfortunate position of being a nation highly likely to use nuclear weapons in combat, so if we were going to go after nations with unregistered WMDs, Israel would top the list.
Sorry you can't take that seriously.
I know, I can't let a bad thread die.
Posted by Jimmy M (Member # 8043) on :
There's a difference between an ally and the 'lesser of two evils'. In a war between Iran and Iraq, the Taliban and the Soviets, we sided with the enemies of our enemies not our allies. ( Quite a difference from our long standing relationship with Isreal ) Yes, maybe someday our relationship with Israel may go sour, just as our relationship with the Soviet Union deteriorated after World War II. My point was, given the present climate of the world, I find it hard to believe that we would attack Israel.
And since we sell them our planes and guns, is it so hard to believe that we would sell them our nukes?
Posted by signine (Member # 7671) on :
Jimmy M<, I'm afraid you've missed the point. The point was that if we were to choose a country that is likely to have illegal weapons of mass destruction and would be likely to use them, Iraq would have been at the bottom of the list, and even Israel would have made a better target.
Additionally, there's a huge difference between selling a country an export-grade F-16 and selling them a 9megaton thermonuclear warhead. For one, it would violate at least five non-proliferation treaties that the US has signed, and second, intelligence dated back to the 60s indicate Israel had a very successful nuclear program of its own. Why wouldn't it? Most of the scientists on the Manhattan project were refugees from Germany, and many were Jewish.
Plus, if we keep making decisions based on the lesser of two evils, all we're going to end up netting is evil. We need to start making decisions based upon good outcomes, and not which outcome is less terrible.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
We weren't choosing a country based on suspected posession of WMDs, we were choosing a country based on proven willingness to invade others, defy UN sanctions, and as an afterthought a possibility of WMDs. But our press turned it into being all about the WMDs.
Posted by DarkKnight (Member # 7536) on :
yes, you are correct Mothertree. Just like most people have forgotten that we declared war on Terror, not bin laden. Iraq defied 16 UN resolutions, constantly shot at planes enforcing the no-fly zone, and successfully kept out UN weapons inspectors. The UN should have allowed use of force years ago.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
Come on. I know you've got to twist things around to remain republicanly correct, but seriously. Leaving aside the fact that I do actually have memories of the last 4 years and I know you're lying, consider what you're saying.
In the midst of acting out against terrorism and al-Queda, the President brought invading Iraq to the number one spot. Do you seriously think that people would have accepted this on the basis of them invading Quwait and not listening to the UN? "Oh yeah, he's right. Let's stop concentrating so much on the terrorists and focus on Iraq because, although they don't endanger us, they're not being good sports." The idea's absurd.
The case for the war was based on the fact that Iraq was the greatest threat facing us as opposed to not a threat at all the way you are characterizing the situation. The central claims of this case were that they had active WMD programs that they were hiding from the inspectors and that they were deeply involved with terrorism (and linked to 9/11), both of which were lies.
Posted by tern (Member # 7429) on :
I hear too much of this "Iraq was our ally at one time, so this is our fault." Great! They were our ally! So now that they're not, we're just going to have to grit our teeth and take it!
Or not. Hey, things change. What worked twenty years ago doesn't now. Gotta adapt, ya know.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
errr...Where do you hear people saying that tern? I've never heard anyone say that because we supported Saddam Hussein and are partially responsible for his actions, that we should have let him do whatever he wanted to. Most of the time, it's been an indictment of often short-sighted and dishonorable interactions in the Middle East and a reminder that using simplistic "The enemy of my enemy is my friend." logic is a really bad idea.
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
Actually, the Bush administration NEVER said that Saddam was directly linked to Al Qaeda or 9-11. He WAS giving money to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers and aiding other terrorists when he could.
The reason that we went in to Iraq is that they had 1) Repeatedly flaunted UN regulations (16!)and refused to let inspectors in. (Which begs the question, why? Either Saddam was extremely moronic, he had a suicide wish, or he actually had WMDs and was stalling to give him time to hide them) 2)Saddam was the symbol of Anti-American power in the Middle East and had a powerful image of someone who could taunt the West with impunity. (Now we know why France, Russia and Germany were against going in to Iraq dont we! They were on Saddams pay roll!! The oil-for-food scandal is the most under-reported story of the new millenium by far, it is the biggest case of financial corruption in the history of the world.)
3) President Bush and many others believed that the best way to rid the world of the terrorists and their culture was to attack one of those peoples heroes: Saddam. The best way to get the world to stop hating us is to show them what we are all about: freedom, democracy, hope, safety and education. What better way to do that then to free an oppressed people and show them and all their muslim neighbors what their dictators or theocracies were/are doing to them and what they are missing.
This is a war on Terror and the culture of Terror, the biggest benefits of the Iraq war is the increased cooperation of every surrounding nation in helping us round up international terrorists and in increasing attention to the radical leanings of their citizens.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
"The reason that we went in to Iraq..."
Odd that none of the reasons you put forward were major planks of, say, Bush's State of the Union address in which he made the case for war to the American public. Do you think we the public would not have accepted them had he used them?
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
Yes, partially, I think that is the reason that he emphasized the possibility of WMDs. The public, he believed and I believe, would only support the war in Iraq if they believed that they had WMDs. To his knowledge and the worlds intelligence community Iraq did, or very likely did. That is why he emphasized that aspect of it.
What I stated before I believe is what the Administration is really pushing for, and what they have emphasized since. But do you think that the public would have supported the war had the stated justification been "a domino affect that increases cooperation in the surrounding muslim countries and will help free an oppressed people"? No, the public would have responded with the fact that Iraq is not the only country with oppressed people or WMDs and the advancement of freedom and peace in the Middle East could have been stalled forever.
That is why the controversy over the missing WMDs and its negative impact on the Administration is a little ironic, if Bush and his administration had just been more clear about what they felt would be the real lasting reasons for invading, they would not have been as damaged as they were.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote: But do you think that the public would have supported the war had the stated justification been "a domino affect that increases cooperation in the surrounding muslim countries and will help free an oppressed people"?
So, to clarify, you believe it is justifiable for the government to lie to its people when it sees the need for war?
Do you believe there are other issues about which a government should lie to its people? Is war uniquely exceptional in this regard, or might a president be justified in lying to the people about, say, his economic plan if he really believes it's for the best?
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
President Bush never said that Iraq and 9/11 were linked. Instead, he gave speeches that alternated the two topics like: "We were attacked on 9/11 and it's now a new world. Because we're in this new world, we need to invade iraq. The terrorists struck right at the heart of our country. And we're going to defend ourselves by striking at Iraq." and so on for 10 minutes. 9/11 then Iraq then 9/11 then Iraq.
Vice-President Cheney, and other members of the administration, on the other hand, did in fact explictly say that Iraq had a hand in 9/11.
Again, if you're going to tell me things that aren't true, try to make them not so obviously not true.
Posted by TheDisgruntledPostman (Member # 7200) on :
Im gonna go back to the beggining post i made, about the memorial garden for those who lost their lives on 9/11. Well it seems our school is cleanin up some little things here and there, but like i thought, the memorial garden hasnt been touched. The school is worrying about the entrance more than any thing else. It just gets me furious, like i said, i think some people just forget. Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Why don't you get some friends together and clean it up?
Posted by TheDisgruntledPostman (Member # 7200) on :
I would love to clean it up, not joking, but the "student concil" has it "under control". Today as one of the teachers that help run Student Concil walked by, i tried to tell them the condition, i did even volunteer to clean it up. But she said they'd get around to it, i doubt it, but if they do ill be sure to post it.
Posted by MrSquicky (Member # 1802) on :
I'm not clear on how that prevents you from cleaning it up. Would you actually get in trouble for voluntarily cleaning up the grounds? That would be a bizarre parent-teacher conference.
Posted by RoyHobbs (Member # 7594) on :
No, I do not think that the President should lie to the American people and I did not say that he did so. It is very normal for people to hold different reasons in their mind for doing something and yet only emphasize one as the main reason.
As I said above, the Bush admin. did this with WMDs, they were not the only reason, but they were a good one and so he used it.
The ironic part is that WMDs were probably not the top justification in the Administrations mind, and so after compromising their judgement to make the public happy and emphasizing the role of WMDs (which definitely had a real role, Im not saying they didnt, Im just saying they were one of many), when that reason was held up to be a failure, it hurt them more.
More broadly, the President's first and only job is to defend the constitution. That means providing for the common defense, and so on. It is not the Presidents job to tell the public every piece of information that he knows and ask their opinion on it, its his job to make the decisions. So when Bush told the public the aspect of the war that they wanted to hear, he stopped doing his job of decision-maker and took on the job of crowd-pleaser. That was a mistake.
In the long run, being open and honest is the best policy. But that doesnt mean telling us everything.
Posted by TheDisgruntledPostman (Member # 7200) on :
Our school is just weired.
Posted by mothertree (Member # 4999) on :
When did the News Hour stop doing their honor roll of pictures of servicemen killed in Iraq?
Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
The News Hour lists the names of sevicemen killed in action as the Pentagon releases the names to the press for publication and broadcast, after family notification, and possibly investigations. This causes a delay between the date of death and public notification.
If there are no names released on a given day, for whatever reasons, there is no honor roll that day, AFAIK.
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The valuable part of that memory isn't the video of the planes hitting the towers, or of the towers falling -- and plenty of us still have forms of that footage around.![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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