Wait a second...anyone is responsible for the actions of an agent for acts for which they were authorized. An elected offical who runs on a platform and is elected to perform those duties is as much an agent of the electorate as the president of a company is the agent of the board of directors or of the shareholders - who may be held liable for that agents' actions.
People are held liable for agent actions with far more contingent authorization than election platforms.
On points from the other post:
>So your view, Nathan, is that only rational acts are foreseeable?
>If you limit your goals to preventing only
>foreseeable in the sense of rational responses, your goals are too limited.
One is responsible for some acts that are not even foreseable, because the connection to one's own acts is so direct. If I punch someone in a way that would normally do little damage, but they have a disease that makes bruises fatal, I can be held liable for murder - even though that result from my punch was not foreseeable.
On the other hand, irrational acts are always a foreseeable consequence of any action. Mere foreseeability is not enough to constitute causation in anything other than a "but for" string of related events sense. If I laugh, someone may decide irrationally that my laughter is at them and they'll will kill me. In no sense did I "cause" that person to kill me, other than in the remotest sense of the word.
Yes, some irrational acts can be expected. We actually relieve people of some of their responsibility when they act under emotional distress - death of a loved one, etc. - although we rarely attribute direct causality to the person who might have created the irrational condition.
There are degrees of irrationality. When a person responds to a direct provocation in a violent manner, we sometimes treat that response as caused by the original provocation and therefore create no liability. Certain self-defense responses, even if mistaken and a little irrational, may come under this category. But when a response is completely disproportionate to the provocation, is aimed at people other than those giving the direct provocation, or otherwise deemed to be outside the reasonable range of human response (rational and irrational), then "causality" somewhat drops out of the discussion.
>I find the middle paragraph below morally horrific [killing off foreign
policy tools after
> we are done with them], not only in its causual
>acceptance of killing without any semblance of due process, but in the easy
>identification of you-and me--with the policies that make bin Laden "our"
>tools to be used and, apparently, murdered afterwards. Is that how you see
us?
Is it the policy I'd like? No. Although given our track record with a range of folks, from Noriega to Hussein, trying to kill off former tools when they became troublesome is hardly foreign to US policy.
My point was that merely pointing out that Bin Laden was previously supported by the US does not automatically imply the policy prescription of not doing something similar in the future. The hawks essentially give the answer above, dressed in nicer langugage, but the basic idea.
My point is that the Left needs a positive foreign policy alternative. Not that it doesnt exist, but it doesn't seem to make it into our antiwar rally principles. "NO X" is pretty much the standard slogan. For the September 29th rally, the word "justice" does not appear anywhere in the rally call; it's a completely negative critique of US policy with no alternative demanded that would address the fears of attack and insecurity people feel.
As I've said, just because I think causality is a poor way to approach these
issues, there is plenty that we can do to decrease the likelihood of similar attacks in the future- address global poverty, settle outstanding national grievances (read Palestine), and create more collective security.
But merely critiquing past policy is insufficient. For every critique, there are often multiple alternative solutions - and not only the Left choice. That was my point.
Nathan Newman