At this point, our best bet at getting OBL is by toppling the Taliban, which involves using conventional military force. If this turns into a guerrilla war in the hills of Afghanistan, then we will have to change strategies.
So far, the US has not inflicted heavy civilian casualties, but the Taliban is sure enough working on it.
Xenophon41, I still fail to see the relevance of the quote to assasination, but I will admit that “What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred” does make some sense in our relations to Afghanistan after the war. We have to make sure that we feed and shelter the Afghan people. If we just walk out after we kill OBL, we will be sowing the seeds for an even darker harvest of terrorism.
I don’t see why pacificism has to be an absolute position. Are you not an environmentalist if you’re willing to let a panda die to save your life? Are you not a humanitarian if you decide to spend one weekend of your life not helping other people? I consider myself a pacifist insofar as I am against war, and think that generally speaking it is a bad idea. I am against this war insofar as I wish it were not happening; I suppose that how I differ from the liberals is that I consider this war to have been started by the Taliban, and I believe that it is their responsibility to end it. As long as they choose to wage war on us, we have the right to defend ourselves.
No, the reason we have war is that some people aren’t pacifist. If everyone in the world except one person were a pacificist, that wouldn’t prevent war. It would just make war very one-sided.
So?
Do you lock your car? Do you keep your PIN secret?
Well, if everyone lived that way, there wouldn’t be any war, would there?
Well, because The Ryan, that wouldn’t be pacifism. That would be the idea that peace is preferable to non-peace…a posistion that I assume most humans hold.
That said, according to my ethical system, it is never justified to kill. We come in to this world with one thing- our lives, and therfoer that is the only thing that we cannot take away under any circumstances. To take a life is the ultimate (and only) sin.
I will never kill.
This does not mean that I believe we should sit and twiddle our thumbs in the face of terrorist action. There are plenty of ways to act that don’t involve killing people. I find it hard to imagine that with all the technology developed we havn’t created effective non-lethal weapons. We still rely on the age old science of blowing things up. I betcha if we thought about it we could come up with something else.
I don’t think pacifistic sentiments are misguided in this situation, only mistimed. Right now, we have to eliminate the political and economic infrastructures that the terrorists are using to wage war. That involves, unfortunately, bombing and killing people. After you’ve eliminated the immediate threat, you can start making sure that the socio-political situation that the terrorists flourished in never arises again (re-building Afghanistan, making it a stable place politically and economically, etc.). My feeling is that if you’re a pacifist, your time will come after the war but for right now, please don’t hinder the people that have to create (with force) the security needed to begin resolving this problem.
Ah Wabbit! You have come upon the answer to it all!
We will practice pacifism in times of peace. Brilliant! Well I’ll just stand on the sidelines until either terrorism is eliminated forever and the world is rid of evil or else the human race wipes itself out of existance. If only I had thought of only practicing pacifism in times of peace before! It would certainly make this whole holding an ethos thing a lot easier if we simply held whatever ethos is the easiest to hold at a given time!
So a man who kills in defense of his life is on the same moral plane as the man who murders someone in the course of a robbery. That seems irrationally consistant.
**
Well let’s narrow down the scope to effective ways. I’d love to hear it.
I’m sure we could. But since the other guy is using lethal weapons it seems silly for us to switch to paintball guns.
Not to turn this into a Pit thread sven, but how exactly would you propose to negate Osama bin Ladin’s ability to kill American (and Kenyan, and Tanzanian, and and and) civilians? Sanctions? Didn’t work, and in fact seem to harm the common citizenry more than the people who are actually responsible for the problem.
Do nothing? Also didn’t work (in fact it seems to be encouraging him). So now what? I honestly want to know what you propose to do to resolve this problem.
Again, I’m not saying your moral code is faulty or useless but in order for you to do any ‘good’, you’re going to have allow us to do ‘evil’ (using your moral terms).
Just wanted to add something. This insistence to not do violence seems to preclude situations of self-defense. If that’s your stance, so be it. It’s your life after all, you can do with it what you want.
However, I suspect that this unwillingness to do violence, also extends to others. In other words, if a situation came up which required a pacificist to do violence in order to stop a dangerous person from hurting/killing someone else they would not act. When you put my wellbeing at risk because of your inaction I am angered. For this reason I reject this philosophy out of hand without reserve, remorse, or second thoughts of any kind.
M_Gibson Yes. There is no situation in which killing is ethical. Not even self defense. Then again it’s not like I believe in hell or anything so it doesn’t really matter if you act unethically or not. I guess my beliefs are more of a guide for action that something to worry about after the fact.
{b]Wabbit**, Pacifist solutions have been discussed in any number of other threads.
Grim I honestly never thought about a situation that involved the certain death of an innocent or of a certain attacker. You’ve given me something to think about. However, in this situation the lines arn’t as clear, and I am certainly not willing to kill on a chance…nor to cause certain death to Afghani innocents under a potential threat to Americans (yes, I understand that America was attacked, but any action stemming from that fact is retaliation, not prevention of a certain act).
Pacifism, nor any other moral code, should not have any place in a government. Because then you just can’t morally justify all the things the government will do.
I am busy reading The Lord of the Rings (again) and was struck by the words of Gandalf to Frodo on the topic of whether or not Bilbo should have killed Gollum at their first meeting:
My 2 cents:
I greatly respect the ethics of true pacifists – those who are morally opposed to war and will not kill even to defend themselves. That said, there are 2 reasons I cannot become one.
First, pacifist tactics work only against those who will respec them. I think Gandi himself pointed out that his tactics would only have worked against the British; he wouldn’t have tried them against the Germans.
Second, and more personal, I’m one of those people who got beat up on a lot by bullies as a kid as did my best friend. There is a chance that some of the others who stood by and did nothing were genuine pacifists, but I suspect a lot were kids who didn’t want to get involved lest they become a target. I will never forget how helpless I felt when I realized no one would defend me.
I believe killing is morally wrong, and I would prefer war be avoided if at all possible. In World War II (which, BTW, began 52 years ago if you were in Europe), and I’m afraid in this present war, it can’t be. We are opposed to people who would destroy us, and against whom pacifism will not work. If we say “Kill us”, they’re more than happy to oblige. I will kill to defend another person if I have to, and then make a formal confession to God as soon as is practical. If that circumstance ever arises, I will also wish, as I do now about this war, that the necessity had never arisen.
Dropping tons of bombs in a country with virtually no infrastructure, thereby instigating mass migrations of desperately poor, starving people does not strike me as a rational response to terrorism. We have been presented with an opportunity to collaborate with a wide array of “strange bedfellows” in order to craft a worldwide strategy against terrorism. It appears, however, that the immediate gratification of showing military might has proven irresistable to our somewhat naive leaders. Not long ago, Viet Nam demonstrated that advanced technology ruthlessly unleashed is no match for social/political ideology.
Intelligently targeting a widely distributed network of sophisticated terrorists requires a highly-developed, international intelligence network, as well as the cooperation of foreign governments in detecting and apprehending terrorists. Also, such an approach does not run the risk of inadvertently killing civilians, creating terror in a desperately poor society, or blowing up Red Cross humanitarian aid facilities. Thus, there are some very practical reasons for opposing the use of military force to fight terrorism.
Even sven, I find your ethical system to be incredibly immoral. Your system actually strives to preserve evil, which ultimately leads to the destruction of the innocent.
Let’s throw out a somewhat extreme example. An intruder is holding a gun to the head of one of your family members. He is standing behind this person in such a way that the only part of the intruder’s body that is exposed is his head. You are witnessing this. He tells you he will kill this person in 3 seconds. You have a gun. What do you do?
By allowing this person to die, simply to uphold your ehtical beliefs, is not only immoral, but makes you just as dangerous as the perpetrator. Your ehtical system is a liability to society.
Vandal,
Attacking another poster is crossing the line in terms of proper conduct outside the Pit. You are free to strongly disagree with another person, but you are expected to argue in GD without throwing insults, such as telling another poster that their ehtical[sic] system is a liability to society.
I’m afraid I dont find HairyPotter’s argument here very convincing. Knowing what’s going on is a very good thing, but it’s not the same thing as taken action. Even the best intelligence in the world will not put bin Laden in our hands, or, more importantly, cause the Taliban to fall. Stopping some additional terrorist attacks is all well and good, but there will be no permanent solution until every goverment in the world understands that sponsoring terrorism against the US leads only to their own destruction.
All he said was that his ethical stance on killing was immoral. He didn’t call even sven any nasty names. And actually absolute pacifism is immoral. Vandal was correct in that it would only encourage and reward those who would do evil things.
I am not in charge of preserving or preventing good and evil in this world. I am in charge of not committing evil. What the rest of the world does is up to itself.
I’m going to back up even sven here. Allowing evil to spread won’t kill good. It sets up a battlefield that challenges people as individuals to be good… and if they hold out despite the hardships I think they are the true moral people. Not the suckers who be give in to the temptation to kill so that others wouldn’t have to make any sacrifices themselves to be moral.