--- Luke Weiger <lweiger at umich.edu> wrote:
> Justin wrote:
>
>
> > Not with respect to the fundamentals. Btw, this is
> not
> > particularly leftist boilerplate.
>
> Yes. It's lefty _and_ neo-con boilerplate.
>
> > It's consistent with what political scientists
> call Realism in
> > International Relations theory,
>
> Which is just an extension of rational choice theory
> from individual agents
> or small collectives of agents to nations. Rational
> choice theory (which I
> think is just an extension of psychological egoism)
> lends itself to a lot of
> "just so" explanations
However, I presume that you will bring forward non-just-so arguments to shwo that the Us is mnotivated by high ideals rather tahn pursuit of perceived self interest, perhaps in the form of statement by our leadersto that effect. When is it that you think the Us was motivated by high ideals--under Clinton and Halfbright, when she was justifying the daeths of tens or hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children as worth it?
>
> > > You should've said that "I love your variant of
> > > utilitarianism," because
> > > there are consequentialists who believe in
> desserts.
> >
> > Who was talkinga bout desert? I thought you
> weredenying moral
> responsibility.
>
> Typos are funny stuff. (As you know, the question
> of whether or not there
> are deserts is just a reformulation of the question
> of whether or not moral
> responsibility exists.)
>
I know no such thing. I expressly deny that
proposition. I regard it as absurd on its face.
Whether we are moraly responsible for our actions does
not imply anything about what others may do to us for
the a tions for which are morally responsible. The
latter is the question of desert.
>
> > Now I'm lost. I thought you were defending
> military
> > action in the war on terror because police work
> > wouldn't work.
>
> Police work alone wouldn't have worked. Accompanied
> by the destruction of
> the Taliban and much of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, it
> may.
>
We don't know whether policew ork would have worked,a nd you seem to think that the war in Afghanistan,w hich you are pleased to treat as piece of the war against terror, worked in part to diminish terror and make al q lessdangerous. A number of govt sources, as you know, disagree.
> > Now you say what is obviosult false, that the
> military part is over,
>
> As we both agree, the impending war on Iraq is in no
> way an extension of the
> war on terror, so why pretend that it is?
>
I don't concede that the war on Afghanistan was part of a war against terrorism, in that sense; I think it is essentially similar to the coming war on Irq and the other endless wars we have planned.
jks
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