Re: The start of the third world war ?

[Jeffrey Goldberg <{$news}$@goldmark.org>]

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On Sep 12, 2001 Christina Foster Peterson <cfosterdixREMOVE@hotmail.com> wrote
   in <tpvd5r922p78bf@corp.supernews.com>:

> "Jeffrey Goldberg" <{$news}$@goldmark.org> wrote in message
> Pine.LNX.4.33.0109120612370.1241-100000@lehel.goldmark.private">news:Pine.LNX.4.33.0109120612370.1241-100000@lehel.goldmark.private...

> > I am growing frightened by the nature of the comments in this newsgroup.
> > If it is at all close to representative, than I am more frightened by it
> > than [by the terrorists]

> > [...] I've seen [...] comments from people who seem unwilling to
> > distinguish between what happened toward the end of a very hot war
> > (Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden) and an attack targeting civilians for no
> > military goal whatsoever [...]

> > One the otherhand, I've seen the worst sort of anti-Islamic bigotry with
> > comments like "nuke 'em all".

> Only people who are really moved by something write.

Thank you.  I should recognize that this isn't a representative sample.

> In this group there are many individuals offering condolences.

That is true.  And I appreciate them.  Thank you for reminding me of them.

> I'm an informed pacifist.  I abhor violence, but I have a handgun.  I
> would kill to protect my family.  But I would kill perpetrators only,
> not families, clans, villages, etc.

We need to remember that most of the perpertrators are suicidal.  They
want to die fighting the US and the West.  So killing them will stop those
individuals from repeating their actions, but nothing more.  It won't act
as a deterrent because, as I said, they are suicidal.

But would you, as an informed pacifist, support an attempt to remove a
regime which has knowingly harbored those perpertrators?  And would you
support such an effort even if it meant making war on a country with no
guarentee that civilians wouldn't be killed?

What if the regime used "human shields"?  So it would be impossible to
remove them from power without killing lots of innocents?

If your answer to the last question is "no", then do you want to live in a
world in which those states which use "human shields" can do what ever
they want without fear of being attacked?

I know my answers to those questions, but they are not rhetorical (well,
the are, but indirectly).  I am trying to understand what "informed
pacifism" is.

Cheers,

-j


-- 
Jeffrey Goldberg
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 Relativism is the triumph of authority over truth, convention over justice
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