civilian casualties

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Tue Oct 16 10:51:59 PDT 2001


There are differences of degree and perhaps kind
>between the examples that make trying to draw any sort of equivalence
>between them very difficult if not impossible. I do think that it's
>definitely possible in theory and probably occasionally in practice as well
>that the law forbidding the killing of civilians should not be obeyed.

Sure. When the US Eighth Army and Red Army converged on Berlin, they killed some civilians, that was probably inevitable, but, horribly, justifiable, because the war was really necesasry, or the Nazis would have put out the lights all over the world. But I know you don't think this is a comparable situation.

One major reason we should not be war is that we are
> > killing innocent civilians, and to no conceivably defensible purpose.
>
>I doubt that the hacks in the military are doing it for yucks, although
>their "defensible purposes" may be exposed by argument as frauds.

I have no doubt that some of them get their jollies from it, but I said nothing about that, and it would not make much difference to the moral quality of the act if they did.
>
> > Oh, I mean retail terrorism. And surely they will.
>
>Your assurance seems misplaced. I'd presume that the vast majority of
>Afghani peasants lack the means of a bin Laden and I know that they lack
>the
>proximity of the "retail terrorists" in Israel and the occupied territories
>(to Israel; not the US).

Most Afghani peasants will suffer in silence, like most Palestinians. A tiny minority of them--a growing minority--will be recruits to the successors of bin Laden. As you well know.


>Obviously the so-called war war are dropping on their heads is
> > wholesale terrorism of infinitely greater magnitude.
>
>Obvious to most on this list, but not myself.

???


>
>The louder they squawk, the more likely they are to get what they want.

Same as anybody.


>However, your allusion to my inability to make proper inferences about the
>causal structure of the world is off-base. Nothing you and I say on this
>list is likely to have much impact on the world, which is something Carrol,
>Dennis, and Steve have already pointed out and I'm quite cognizant of.

Nothingh we do matters much in itself, but is very important that we do it. (Dorothy Day, I believe).

The starvation that will set in shortly due to
> > the war is particularly unforgivable.
>
>How about the starvation that occurred long before any intervention and was
>ameliorated in small part (we should've given much more foreign aid to
>Afghan.) by the US?

Sure. But there is a difference between shortking our general obligations to help when injury is caused largely by large scale market forces outside US govt control, and directly causing mass misery and death by bombing and the like.

jks

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