Intellectual Conservatism and Class Bias against Soldiers

[Mark Rickling]

Nathan Newman wrote:
>Terrorism AS A MEANS has been condemned against both the PLO and the US.
>Sometimes the ends have been used to justify such means on behalf of either
>side (or any number of other terrorist actors), but this was a debate about
>whether and where terrorist means are appropriate.

Could you please explain on what grounds there exists a moral equivalence
between PLO terrorism and NATO/US terrorism?


>The argument I made, to repeat, was that terrorism is justified when FEWER
>people are killed because of the user of terror than would have been killed
>through normal military means.

How exactly do you compute this on the fly, as it were? Are you using some
sort of stats package I haven't heard about?


>A secondary point was that killing soldiers is not more morally justified
>than killing civilians in certain cases.
>
>A third point was that the bias towards killing soldiers is a piece of
>international law that serves not justice but the interests of elites that
>can engage in warfare while largely avoiding endangering themselves or their
>family.

This seems like a very strained argument. Civilian casualties in war, as
combatant casualties, are almost all working-class, no?

mark

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