(Actually, all calculations of consequences are going to be constrained to speculations about expected utility. We cannot know all the counsequences of an act until the chain of cause and effect has ended. In other words, the end of the universe.)
-- Luke
On Fri, 14 Sep 2001, RE wrote:
> Leo, your argument pivots on a dogmatic assertion of an ethics of intent.
> Putting it in those terms, and charitably, Clinton was trying to bomb a gas
> factory, and killed one person. But an ethics of responsibility has him
> blowing up a pharmaceuticals plant, and likely killing thousands in the
> process due to med shortages. We can extend this to Clinton maintaining an
> embargo against Iraq, intending to bring down Sadaam. Does that mean he's
> not responsible for the dead kids? Can't you at least concede that, as the
> US prepares to "smart bomb" a subjugated Afghani people into even smaller
> rubble piles with the intention of killing terrorists, we need to assert an
> ethics of responsibility? And, isn't that what Chomsky did? Echoing an
> earlier post of mine, aren't you pissed off about matters of tact, rather
> than substance, and, for that matter, given what's on the way, can't you
> appreciate the limits on tact for the dead, when we need to be concerned
> about the living?
> Randy Earnest
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: <LeoCasey at aol.com>
> To: <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
> Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 11:15 AM
> Subject: The Sudanese Factory Bombing
>
>
> > My reading of the evidence concerning the Sudanese factory bombing is that
> > there probably was a failure in American intelligence, and that the
> factory
> > was not producing poison gas. I have no problem criticizing the poor
> > selection of a target, but I think that the principles which guided that
> > selection [1] that it strike directly at the capacity of terrorist
> > organizations and states sponsoring terrorism to carry out those tasks,
> and
> > [2] that it minimize, as much as humanly possible, the loss of human life,
> > were absolutely the ones we need to be using now. If you read the New
> > Republic piece on the bombing, you will see that they were criticizing
> > those principles as unnecessarily restrictive, and not simply the apparent
> > failures in intelligence. If the New Republic is arguing that, you can
> only
> > imagine what position the hard right is taking.
> >
> > I would not for a moment criticize anyone making a case that the Sudanese
> > factory bombing was an ineffective, poorly chosen response to the criminal
> > bombing of the embassies, that it was based on poor and wrong
> intelligence,
> > and that, as a consequence, it caused unnecessary suffering.
> >
> > But it is an outrageously offensive insult to the memories of those
> > hundreds of African and American dead from those embassy bombings, as well
> > as the thousands upon thousands entombed in lower Manhattan as we discuss
> > this, all dead because of actions specifically designed to kill the
> maximum
> > number of innocent people, that an action which killed one person in an
> > ill-conceived attempt to save many more lives was a greater crime. Chomsky
> > and Estabrook know no shame that they would say such a thing at such a
> > time.
> >
> > >That's not fair, Leo. The accusation is that it was not making poison
> > >gas--that somebody lied in the process of accumulating the evidence that
> > >suggested it was. The accusation is that the U.S. casually knocked out
> 2/3
> > >the pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity of Sudan, with bad consequences
> > >thereafter for Sudan's public health.
> > >
> > >And as best as I have been able to figure out, the accusation is probably
> > >true.
> >
> > Leo Casey
> > United Federation of Teachers
> > 260 Park Avenue South
> > New York, New York 10010-7272
> > 212-98-6869
> >
> > Power concedes nothing without a demand.
> > It never has, and it never will.
> > If there is no struggle, there is no progress.
> > Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men
> who
> > want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and
> > lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters.
> > -- Frederick Douglass --
> >
> > .
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>