>No, minimizing noncombant casualties (just means), and avoiding them
>altogether by not initiating a war that's unjust (necessity, just ends)
>are part of just war theory. Civilivian casualties don't simply become OK
>when it's war, even if it's a just war. The war against the Nazis was
>just, but not the firebombings of German cities. jks
it's also the case that just war theory has been advanced as a set of rules for engaging in warfare between symmetrical opponents. it hasn't been proposed for assymetrical warfare.
the problem with the innocents argument is that it ignores that the US was attacked and nearly 5000 people died--non combatants. to turn around and argue that our attack on afghanistan is wrong b/c we are killing noncombatants is where the problem lies.
i think one can do this, but one absolutely has to do it by not dismissing the US deaths--or aquiring a case of selective amnesia, as MP did.
when i talk to my mother, for instance, i say, "but mom, we have to be better than them. we have certain ideals that we say we should live up to. we expect others to. it's our job to live up to them first and as best we can. retaliating by killing _their_ civilians makes us just as uncivilized as you think they are, mom."
but, you see, this is something that seems to be anathema to the hate america first left because i have to say something good about american ideals (even if i go on and on with my mother [and plenty of others] about what shits we are most of the time). and, i implicitly draw on an 'us' vs. 'them' discourse. well, i'm afraid that, in this case, i will do so. i happen to think that, depite all the things we have done to shape the situation in afghanistan, despite the blowback issue, i can condemn S11 because it was fucking wrong. all the wrong things in the world the US has done, doesn't excuse it. just as you said to CC over on Pen-L. there is nothing justifying their approach to dealing with their anger, outrage, etc. but, instead, you have CC and others trying to find ways to dismiss what they did as somehow justified because they are angr people, angry at US policies. really? are they really angry at the US, are they anti imperialist? hardly. these folks simply want to be a ruling elite themselves. they want to remake class society to their ends; they don't want to undo class society. why support them? why support their reinstantiaion of class society as somehow a blow against Us imperialism. it is not.
but you have lefties trying to tell us that they are, implicitly anyhow, when they try to defend what has happened OR when they try to argue that it is important to build a left movement out of the chaos created against imperialists.
kelley