posted
I would say that the United States is morally obligated to defend nation-states and that any action to help a nation under duress from withing would be supererogatory.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Black Fox: I would say that the United States is morally obligated to defend nation-states and that any action to help a nation under duress from within would be supererogatory.
Really? So you would have sent troops to suppress, for example, the Hungarian Risings of 1848 and 1956? The students rioting in France in 1969, or the unemployed Moslems doing so now? The Iranian students who protested earlier this spring, the color revolutions in former Soviet states, the Burmese riots?
Or perhaps you're actually saying that you would send troops to aid allied regimes, provided it didn't look like too much trouble. A perfectly reasonable stance, but I suggest that it shouldn't be dressed up in fancy language about moral obligations.
Edit: Also, I'm not convinced 'supererogatory' is a word, and if it is, it ought not to be.
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Blayne Bradley
unregistered
posted
Woah woah hold the phone I actually like the way that word looks, it jsut needs to be defined right.
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quote:Also, I'm not convinced 'supererogatory' is a word, and if it is, it ought not to be.
It's a word. Means "morally or ethically above and beyond the call of duty." Widely used in normative ethics.
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posted
I'm not at all sure how 'moral obligation' equates to 'sending more troops and resources than we actually have'.
Black Fox did not say that was the only moral obligation, after all, nor even the only supererogatory one. In fact, isn't one of the definitions of that word 'greater than is needed' or superfluous?
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posted
Rakessh: I don't think that sending more troops and reosources than we actually have would be obligated.
That and as far as sending troops to suppress the Hungarian uprisings I wouldn't say that it fits within what I was trying to say. To defend a nation from internal duress is not to defend the regime in the country, but to defend the people that make up the nation. So, it would be more fitting that instead of sending soldiers to suppress the Hungarian uprisings it would be more fitting that the troops could be sent to help the actual uprisings themselves or the defend the people who are protesting from being killed etc. Of course a country isn't obligated to do any of that, simply that it would be permissable to do so.
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quote:Rakessh: I don't think that sending more troops and reosources than we actually have would be obligated.
Heh, of course. What I mean is, I would be surprised if you didn't also think along with these ideas that the United States has other, competing moral obligations. Some of those obligations might even outweigh the kind we're talking about here, and those obligations might be infringed on and made more difficult or even impossible to meet, if we met this one particular moral obligation.
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posted
You are pretty much spot on Rakeesh, certainly so far as to what I think in regards to this. My mind can become a real moral battleground to say the least.
Sometimes I feel that the word moral obligation can be a bit too strong, read some of Peter Singer's thought and I believe that you will come to a conclusion similar to my own. Simply that there has to be some kind of moral level between the truly obligatory and the superogatory. Otherwise everything ends up being supererogatory, which would seem to make it too easy to say no to certain moral choices to which we should be saying yes.
I just really smack my head a lot when I see the ethics that most people live their life by. It is a kind of reverse extrapolation that really makes me grind my teeth. Such as: a law states that x is illegal therefore doing x is immoral as an act of itself, not the fact that doing things illegal is immoral. When they should be saying, what is the moral basis for the law that states x is illegal and that if the basis is weak then really you should be repealing the law. Not to mention not all immoral acts should be illegal. So simply being legal does not make an action acceptable.
I also have a hard time with utilitarian thought, as it tends to focus on the ends justifying the means. Morality is not simply a math equation where at the end of a moral action the net result has to be positive. That is as every moral action is really part of a greater moral chain where in a way we never have a net result as everything is in progess. However I live in a world that tends to be very utilitarian.
That is why I have been playing around with the idea of moral competition on a trinagular basis similar to Clausewitz's, except of course his has to do with war. That is that morality is a competition both between society and between particular contexts, for me those contexts are the individual, the close social group, and a higher order ( nation, god, etc. ). However, there is no true balance between these three, that is simply sitting at the middle. Instead the demands of reality, that is simply surviving, causes a continous shift of the moral focal point that would be represented by a z axis. This focal point for me would be as close to an objective morality as there can be. However, as the point is a particular moment in time it creates a kind of moral stack through time. Whenever our choices fall away from this focal point the demands of survival pull us back. When we don't go back we suffer more or simply cease to survive.
Basically, moral today is not moral tomorrow and neither does it mean moral yesterday.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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quote:Principally, the action of the Israel Defense Force in intercepting the Mavi Marmara on the high seas in the circumstances and for the reasons given was clearly unlawful. Specifically, the action cannot be justified in the circumstances even under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations.
quote:The conduct of the Israeli military and other personnel towards the flotilla passengers was not only disproportionate to the occasion but demonstrated levels of totally unnecessary and incredible violence. It betrayed an unacceptable level of brutality. Such conduct cannot be justified or condoned on security or any other grounds. It constituted a grave violation of human rights law and international humanitarian law.
This is the surprising part:
quote:However, there is clear evidence to support prosecutions of the following crimes within the terms of article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention: Wilful killing; Torture or inhuman treatment; Wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health.
In particular, it sounds as if the Turkish-born US citizen who died was (a) shot while video taping the altercation from a distance and (b) then later shot dead from close range, possibly while lying incapacitated.
quote:Furkan Doğan, a 19-year-old with dual Turkish and United States citizenship, was on the central area of the top deck filming with a small video camera when he was first hit with live fire. It appears that he was lying on the deck in a conscious, or semi-conscious, state for some time. In total Furkan received five bullet wounds, to the face, head, back thorax, left leg and foot. All of the entry wounds were on the back of his body, except for the face wound which entered to the right of his nose. According to forensic analysis, tattooing around the wound in his face indicates that the shot was delivered at point blank range. Furthermore, the trajectory of the wound, from bottom to top, together with a vital abrasion to the left shoulder that could be consistent with the bullet exit point, is compatible with the shot being received while he was lying on the ground on his back. The other wounds were not the result of firing in contact, near contact or close range, but it is not otherwise possible to determine the exact firing range. The wounds to the leg and foot were most likely received in a standing position.
posted
Also, they conclude that the Israelis fired first:
quote:The Mission does not find it plausible that soldiers were holding their weapons and firing as they descended on the rope. However, it has concluded that live ammunition was used from the helicopter onto the top deck prior to the descent of the soldiers.
quote:The circumstances of the killing of at least six of the passengers were in a manner consistent with an extra-legal, arbitrary and summary execution. Furkan Doğan and İbrahim Bilgen were shot at near range while the victims were lying injured on the top deck. Cevdet Kiliçlar, Cengiz Akyüz, Cengiz Songür and Çetin Topçuoğlu were shot on the bridge deck while not participating in activities that represented a threat to any Israeli soldier. In these instances and possibly other killings on the Mavi Marmara, Israeli forces carried out extralegal, arbitrary and summary executions prohibited by international human rights law, specifically article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
(awaiting the shooting of the UN messenger )
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quote:Originally posted by Destineer: Also, they conclude that the Israelis fired first:
quote:The Mission does not find it plausible that soldiers were holding their weapons and firing as they descended on the rope. However, it has concluded that live ammunition was used from the helicopter onto the top deck prior to the descent of the soldiers.
posted
It isn't a matter of shooting the UN messenger. Anyone who isn't aware of the virulently anti-Israel sentiment of that body hasn't been paying attention. This report has about the same validity as a similar one being issued by the Saudis would have.
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quote:It isn't a matter of shooting the UN messenger. Anyone who isn't aware of the virulently anti-Israel sentiment of that body hasn't been paying attention.
Of course I'm aware of the double standard whereby the UN often condemns Israeli transgressions while letting worse offenses on the part of Islamic nations go without comment. In that sense the UN is certainly "anti-Israel."
But if the UN has a record of falsifying evidence against Israel, I'm not aware of it.
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posted
I mean, these investigators would have to be not just misinterpreting evidence but lying through their teeth if the Israeli account of the boarding is at all accurate.
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quote:Of course I'm aware of the double standard whereby the UN often condemns Israeli transgressions while letting worse offenses on the part of Islamic nations go without comment. In that sense the UN is certainly "anti-Israel."
I don't understand the quote-marks there, Destineer.
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posted
Just signifying that the term is hers, not mine. Omitting the quotes wouldn't have made much difference to my meaning.
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posted
For instance, if the UN were to hold a representative democracy like the US to a higher standard of behavior than third-world dictatorships, I wouldn't consider that "anti-American," per se.
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quote:For instance, if the UN were to hold a representative democracy like the US to a higher standard of behavior than third-world dictatorships, I wouldn't consider that "anti-American," per se.
I can dig that. Though frankly the UN's standard-holding seems to be...well, problematic at best, shall we say, and very inconsistent and indecisive even at the best of times.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:I would say that the United States is morally obligated to defend nation-states and that any action to help a nation under duress from withing would be supererogatory.
I would say that actions to help nations under "duress from within" are wrong, as the outsider nation doesn't have the authority to determine which of the two opposed elements are the "proper" national government. Logic justifying such acts are like the logic the Soviet Union used in its invasions of Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
I suggest that only defending nations and peoples from outside threats justifies intervention. In some cases, mind you, there exists such peoples without their own borders: e.g. a nation of enslaved blacks in pre-Civil War America, and a Jewish people in pre-WWII Germany. Protecting *them* would have justified external intervention too.
But when the "duress" is just a matter of political differences, not really separates peoples abusing each other, then the proper thing is to let each nation find its own way.
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