When Theo van Gogh was slaughtered because he made a film about the Islmamic treatment of women, muslims and some PC people said ‘it was his own fault’.
No.
Only one person was at fault; the murderer; Mohammed Bouyeri
Civilized people talk.
Barbaric people kill.
I don’t - for one moment - hold America responsable for the bombings in London.
The terrorists are the gulty ones.
No. Selling a gun to a known thief is a “bad act”. You bear responsibility for that bad act. What the person does afterwards is his responsibility.
Think of it this way. I’m in the store at the time of that you sell the gun. I’m not part of the transaction, but I know the guy is a thief and I see the transaction taking place. I can try to convince you not to sell the gun, but I don’t. Am I partly to blame for acts committed after the sale?
Here is a link to a nice little summary of the facts that say otherwise. Although I’m sure they will immediately be dismissed because they do not come from a source deemed ideologically pure by those who do not want to face them.
If those of you who disagree with them find them troubling, just tell yourself someone made them up. They’re all lies. Every one of them. It’ll feel better.
Does this analogy mean that you think it’s OK to partially blame the US administration, but not the American people? If so, I’m in complete agreement.
Keep repeating this canard enough times and maybe you can get some people to actually believe it.
Why is selling a gun to a known thief a “bad act”?
And in your counterexample, I’d like to change one detail: you know the guy is a violent thug, not simply a thief. I make this change because if the guy has a habit of pickpocketry, I may genuinely not foresee that he’s going to use the gun to murder someone.
If he’s a violent thug, and I see the purchase happen and I shrug my shoulders and do nothing, then I do share responsibility for the crime he later commits. My share doesn’t diminish his share at all, but it does reflect the fact that, in the face of evil, I chose to do nothing.
I am well aware that my system means there’s no perfect path. Yeah, that sucks, but that’s the way it is: being perfect is not only practically impossible, it’s theoretically impossible. We live in a world with plenty of misery, and our job is to contribute to that misery as little as we can.
Because people don’t make their choices in a vaccuum: they make their choices in response to the world around them. And that world is shaped by the choices we make.
If we have the power to make choices that change the world in such a way that other people are on balance less likely to choose to do evil, then we have a responsibility to do so.
Daniel
For exactly the reason it was chosen as an example. I’m not refuting that the store owner could have chosen a different course of actions, or even that he should have chosen a different course. But that doesn’t absolve the thief of any responsibility for his freely chosen actions.
But this leads to absurd conclusions. Instead of typing this right now, I could be spending time with a troubled child, perhaps someone without a father figure, helping him or her grow up to be a better person. I have the power to make that choice. If that child grows up to commit a crime, I bear some of the blame accroding to your theory.
Where do we draw the line?
It’s interesting, because this topic goes to the very nature of what informs our political philosophies.
Personally I do hold US some slight amount to blame for the IRA bomings that have occured in London, due to the money raised in USA that helped fung Sin-Fein (sp?) activities. But US has zero blame for any Al-Quada bombing.
Maybe it isn’t a line, but a continuum. You would bear a tiny amount of responsibility, but not much. The absent father would bear much more responsibility, but not as much as the grown up kid who actually does the crime. The Uncles who didn’t bother to listen when the kid needed to talk would more responsibility than you, but less than the absent Dad.
Yup. Responsibility isn’t a set amount that decreases in each portion the more people it’s shared among.
Although I would dispute that growing up without a father figure would necessarily lead a child to a life of crime.
Interesting. Do you blame the U.S. as a whole for this, or do you blame the individual bar patrons in Boston who dropped money in when the can came around?
It is undeniably true that the IRA raised a good bit of money in the U.S. But let’s assign responsibility for that where it properly resides.
There was nothing in the UN Resolutions which authorized the US to attack the sovereignty of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was conducted in defiance of the UN and was a direct violation of the UN Charter.
What was specifically illegal was the regime change. No country has the right to overthrow a government except in the case of self-defense, and that condition never existed with regard to Iraq. Nothing in the UN Resolutions said that the US had any right or authority to occupy the country and depose the government. There was no defensive justification for it, nor was there any other moral or legal justification. We committed a war crime. Americans need to own up to that and accept some moral responsibility for retaliatory actions.
Where do people keep getting the idea that I think the bombings were justified. I’ve said repeatedly in both threads that it wasn’t justified. Once again, I am SPREADING the blame, not SHIFTING it.
I don’t think we have enough information. First you need to figure out exactly who did it and what their motivations were. If they would have done the same thing 10 years ago, then recent world events are not a causative factor. If they all have relatives being tortured in Guantanamo, then the US certainly does share in the blame. If we never find out exactly who did it, then we won’t know their motive or the extent of American responsibility.
I’m glad you posted the link although I don’t think it is reputable. I find such sites fun to read even when they are filled with ignorant vitriol. So I do dismiss the source because of its obvious bias. Undoubtedly some of the content is true, but much appears to me to be untrue. Given enough time, I’m confident much of it could be debunked.
Put the blame squarely where it belongs, on the terriorists, and no one else.
No one forced them to do it. Everyone of us is responsible for our actions only and no one else’s. That should be apparent to all.
Could one see this happening if the Iraqi invasion didn’t happen? Absolutely. Iraq had nothing to do with this, it is the terrorists and the terrorists ony that are responsible.
Do you think I was suggesting otherwise? If so, I really am not communicating very clearly.
You’re correct about the implications of my theory; I don’t think it’s absurd, and I don’t think we need to draw a line.
I don’t think you need to tear yourself up over the death of the millions of children whom you didn’t save from starvation; suffering is inevitable, and it’s inevitable that we won’t all be saints, and sometimes the only way to deal with all the death around the farm is to put clothespins on our noses. But at the same time, we need to recognize our part in shaping the world such that evil occurs, and try to minimize our choices that facilitate evil.
A Kahlil Gibran quote:
Daniel
Yes. Thank you.
For heaven’s sake, there were many terror attacks prior to the Iraq war. While no one can say if this particular attack would have occured if we were not in Iraq, it is certain that AQ would have tried some attack, somewhere, regardless of our Iraq policy.
I really wish that threads about Al Qaeda and threads about the Iraq war were kept as seperate as possible. Needless conflation causes confusion.
I didn’t mean to imply that you are saying the bombings were justified. I can see how you would have interpreted my post that way, and I apoligize for poor wording. Perhaps those glasses of wine last night were a bit too much. Can I put some blame on the bartender? 
How much does the illegality of the Iraq war play into your spreading of the blame in this? Suppose the bombings had been in response to our invasion of Afghanistan. Would we still have some blame? Suppose that Iraq had indeed attacked us, and we had invaded with the full approval of the UNSC. Would we still have some blame in the bombings?
How about this scenario: A police chief decides to clean up the city he’s resonsible for by going after organized crime in a big way. His predecessor was lax, and let the mob run pretty much free. As a result of his crackdown, the mob retlaliates and kills the police chief’s wife. Is the chief partly to blame for his wife’s death?
I hope you’ll take the time to answer those secenarios. I’m sincerely trying to understand your philosophy on this, as it is quite different from mine.
That’d be nice, if the reason for invading Iraq weren’t supposedly because of the ‘war on terror’ and al-Qieda.
Apart from 9/11, what attacks were there prior to this one?