*As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government … too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur. *
Sentaor Robert Taft “Mr. Republican”
Speech at the Executive Club of Chicago, December 19, 1941
Pretty well sums it up. Bob Taft was a hell of a man.
A hug?
(Nice post.)
That’s a pretty crappy deal you’re offering, since the war is far from the only bad thing Bush has done -or likely would do in that extra four years you’re giving him- And yet you want to absolve him of all accountability for all his misdeeds, and beyond that, even heap praise upon him. However, your friend can’t point out how shitty an offer you’re holding out to him, because then he’d be saying he wants to kill all the poor soldiers, the bastard.
I’ll be the first to say NO to your scam of an offer. Pulling the troops back alone might be worth the moral cost of lavishing false and mightily undeserved praise on Bush, but with another four years to work with and the backing of public approval Bush’d immidiately send all those soldiers I just saved back in to invade iran, and then he’d probably repeal habeus corpus, freedom of speech, and the house of representatives for good measure. Screw that!
vibrotronica, may I trouble you to look at post #36 of this thread. Here, follow this link.
A salient point: Just because it was featured in the Washington Times doesn’t mean that the study was funded or commissioned by the Washington Tiimes.
It also appears to be the case that, while the WT seems to be inviting its readership to draw the conclusions that the OP wishes us to accept as hypotheticals, the authors of the study very pointedly decline to do so themselves.
Also, what Hentor the Barbarian said: the study has been submitted for publication to a peer-reviewed journal, but it has not yet been subjected to peer review. And just because Susan Chenowith has been quoted as saying that she thinks it will survive peer review and be published, does not mean that this will happen.
Ah, my mistake, I thought you were intent on using these results toward some particular argument. Apologies.
Unfortunately, I can’t find an equivalent sunglasses store here in Seoul. The brands that I have found I don’t recognize 
magellan01, are you at any point going to address what **Hentor **has said?
Well, there you go. Conversation over.
You’d think so, but I have every expectation that the first line of the next post will be, “Okay, let’s grant for a moment that there’s some link between protests and deaths in Iraq.”
Sweet jumping Jesus.
Mmm, I guess he won’t be back. Not surprised.
I should start a thread titled “Does voting Republican cause rectal cancer in orphaned kittens?”. When the premise is denied, I’ll just say “assume the hypothetical”.
I beg your pardon. The debate is also whether the latter might be a good thing. And if a protest-stimulated higher death toll gets our government to pull out the troops sooner than it otherwise might have, that is a good thing for all concerned, including the U.S. and Iraq and their peoples.
This thread hasn’t yet debated the assumption that a known causation always implies responsibility. I reject this assertion, and believe it to be morally reprehensible under certain circumstances (this being one of them).
Lets assume for a second it is true. What is meant by responsibility? Responsibility isn’t just a word that can be thrown around in the abstract. What does it mean in practical terms in this situation? Could the families of fallen soldiers sue protesters for damages? What are the other practical implications? Responsibility without consequences is no responsibility at all, and I would be interested to hear the opening posters views on this. Perhaps the government would sentence the most vocal to some sort of community service (creating care packages to soldiers for instance) to undo the damage they did? Perhaps a system similar to carbon credits could be introduced, where you would purchase the right to protest with the money raised to be used for better armor for troops, etc? What does this responsibility mean, and how does it fit into a free society?
Here is an absurd hypothetical: Imagine there was a local environmentalist terrorist group that demands that people who drive SUVs should be forced to generate clean electricity by running on treadmills an hour a day. A timid and ineffectual administration sets up a referendum asking the people to decide if the constitution and law should be changed to implement this. The terrorist group says that it will attack civilians if the referendum does not have a high participant rate with an overwhelmingly positive response to the plan. There is a clear causality link here: boycotting the ridiculous referendum or voting against the plan will cause the death of civilians.
I am strongly opposed to this plan, as is my friend and many others, and the referendum has a low turnout with the majority of actual votes cast being against the plan. My friend voted against the plan, I was so disgusted by the pandering to terrorists that I boycott the referendum. The terrorist group attacks, many are killed. Now how much responsibility should my friend or I have to take on for these deaths? I would argue that we should take on zero responsibility, 100% of the responsibility belongs to the members of the terrorist group.
The point being if you are behaving in a principled manner no local terrorist group, foreign insurgency, or anyone else for that matter has the right to hold you responsible for consequences of these actions directly caused by other people’s reaction to your actions. This would be a very dangerous road to go down. If your principles lead you to be strongly against this war, or strongly for this war, you should be free to express this as loudly as you like without being held responsible for the actions of others. Anything else makes it easier for decisions to be based not on honest and free debate but fear and intimidation by rogue groups. For this reason I am surprised anyone would want to suggest that the protesters are responsible for the deaths.
Excellent post, Driver.
I don’t see what your problem is. There was a discussion a while back about whether or not, and to what degree, protests might embolden the enemy. A study come out that indicates that they may—MAY—in fact, do so. It has not been peer-reviewed, but it appears that it will be. But I’ve asked no one to take the study as proof of anything.
I posed a question based, asking posters to assume that protests do embolden the enemy, as to what degree that assumption might place a moral burden on protesters. Now, if you don’t find that interesting, let’s see, don’t answer it. If you do, and I would be interested in the calculation you’d make, I ask you again to simply assume the hypothetical and answer it.
I do find this whole thing interesting for the same reason I find interesting the question I had asked my friend about stopping the war. I find it interesting that begbert2 and kaylasdad99, who I think are pretty much on the same page concerning the war, arrive at different assessments. I think the hypothetical I’ve posed concerning the moral responsibility protesters might have will cause like-minded people to do their own personal calculations and arrive at different conclusion. I find that interesting. If you don.t, my guess is that there’s some good basketball on today.
I don’t know why you feel the need to beg my pardon, I’ve acknowledged that protesting might bring a quicker conclusion to the war. And that if that is true in reality, that that should enter into one’s calculation as to what they believe is the moral choice for them. But it seems to be just an opinion. I don’t know how a protest at home might change the military dynamics and thus, speed up the war. Now, it MIGHT cause a withdrawal from the field of battle, leaving aside if that is a good thing or not. Are you aware of any study indicating the relationship between protests and a country’s withdrawal from a war zone?
I find this question very interesting!!
My answer would be 52 degrees, off the top of my head, I will do an actual calculus later on when I’m home and got all the tables at hand.
Would you show us your calculation now, please?
How many degrees of moral burden do you make?
You raise an excellent question. I think I’ve been clear, though I may not have been, that I was interested in the moral responsibility an individual protester might have assuming the hypothetical. There are instances that we acknowledge that each of us might have a moral responsibility without that translating into a legal one, which I think the rest of your post is getting at.
I think this gets to the crux of the issue. Does not your assessment of whether or not you’re acting in a principled manner require you to weigh the benefits of your actions against the unfortunate consequences. If say, you happen upon a car accident. A man is lying on the asphalt. He’s alert but can’t move. You feel sorry for him and see a soft patch of thick grass ten feet away. Part of you wants to pick him up and move him there. But part of you is also vaguely aware that in moving him incorrectly you might be causing him some irreversible spine damage. Now, if you did not have any notion that moving him might harm him, helping him by moving him oput of the road would be the moral thing to do, would it not? But if you add new information, i.e., moving him might cause him harm, the moral equation changes. And it can change again with yet more information. Let’s say the guy is lying not far from the car, in which you can see small flames, and gasoline is running from the ruptured gas line to where he is lying. This would probably cause you to do another calculation that says the moral thing to do is move him out of what appears certain danger and risk the unknown of the spinal damage.
The point is that a protest might be thought of as a good thing—and it might very well BE a good thing. But what if new information is added to the equation, that the protest you hold because you are opposed to putting our soldiers in harms way results in them actually being killed? Surely the protester is required to at least reassess his actions. I will say that I think there will be many different answers, as the root cause(s) for the protest changes from person to person.
In the end we all
… Bosnian sniper?
Nice. 
I rewrote the preceding paragraph to be the close and failed to omit the very though-provoking words. And now I’ve missed the edit window. Oh well…
I deduce from the tables:
A 1.6 difference in the number of attacks x 24 high mention weeks = 28 extra attacks
29.868 US casualties over this period in 3606 attacks = avg of 8.28 casualties per attack.
28 X 8.28 = 232 casualties caused by speeches that claim protesters embolden the enemy.
So my calculated guess of 52 degrees wasn’t too far off.