If this is mass murder, so were the firebombings of Dresden and Japan. In war, you have to calculate whether an action will save more lives than it takes, within the rules of war, and even then if the calculation isn’t undeniably positive, IMO you would be committing negligent homocide rather than murder.
Casual homocide of thousands and millions is of a different nature than the mass murder of dozens. For instance, if I were on a jury trying an executive that ordered the release of a medicine which there were still lingering doubts as to its safety, but which the FDA approved anyway, resulting in the deaths of thousands, I wouldn’t convict them of mass murder by my understanding of the definition.
However, in a way it is more evil than murder, as you are killing people out of total indifference to their lives, rather than out of an uncontrollable desire. But it’s still not murder.
On the other hand, there is the potential of a smoking gun in both cases.
Surely, when you break down the “war on terrorism” it is nothing but a semantically veiled crusade against Islam which is comparable in a classical sense, if not synonymous, to genocide.
As for Diogenes, perhaps his terminology is the pull to the push of some other extreme viewpoints tantamount to advocating a cleansing of the Middle East. Here in the USA, with disturbing frequency and rather commonly, I have seen and heard, both in real life and on message boards, many advocating a nuke 'em all policy in regards to the Middle East and Iraq, usually referring to “them” as “sandniggers”, “muck-mucks”, or “ragheads” mixed with other racial and religous invectives. Most Americans don’t make too many fine distinctions in my experience, let there be no mistake, 53% of this country is at war with the “Muzzlims” and " Arabs".
Who knows where our vengence ends…? Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran? 100,000 dead? A million? Tens of millions?
If 100,000 of my countrymen have been killed under occupation by a foreign force I’d start to think that maybe they were trying to eliminate me and my kind…I’d feel pretty damn genocidal.
Bombs never have been, and never will be “pin-point.” Bombs are bombs. They blow shit up.
I’m no WW2 buff (unless watching Band of Brothers counts), but I’m pretty sure a common tactic was to completely level cities just to scare the enemy. But that’s okay since WW2 was a good war and the Iraq war is a bad one. What’s the difference? 60 years perspective and some cool action movies.
What Bush displayed was depraved indifference to the likely consequences of his actions. Which is second degree murder.
Also, what could normally be manslaughter can be upped to second degree murder if you commit it in the course of committing another crime. If I burglarize a house and club the occupant over the head with a bat and he dies, that’s second degree murder even if my intent was soley to shut him up and not to kill him.
If I set a house on fire, and I know people are probably inside, it doesn’t matter that my intent was soley to rejoice in setting a fire and dance around the flames. My depraved indifference to the probable loss of lives is murder.
So Bush went from author of genocide to mass-murderer and now to second-degree mass-murderer? Pretty soon you’ll pin him down on violating the good samaritan laws.
I looked up the laws on murder in my State. Looks like you’re right. As least that’s the way it is in Oregon. If you kill someone in furtherance of the commision of a crime, it’s murder. Just plain murder. The defense that the killing was merely “incidental” to the criminal act you were trying to commit simply wouldn’t fly if a normal civilian was doing it, and I don’t see how it should fly when Bush defenders say it.