It depends on the scale of threat and the potential efficacy of military action. When the threat is large (i.e. there's good reason to think many thousands will die in the future as a consequence) and when it also appears that military force will diminish that threat to a large degree, then it's justified. The question of whether or not the threat is posed by a government or a terrorist collective is not relevant.
> Germany hadn't done much to us when we declared war in
> WWII. Whether war would be a good idea depends on a lot of things. In the case
> of al Qaida, it doesn't do any good. It's like shooting bees.
You also wrote this: "I told Ulas that I think that if al Qaida and others are involved in guerilla war in Kashmir that the Indian govt is justified in using military means to combat them."
Now, why wouldn't that be "like shooting bees"? (Actually, killing the leaders of a terrorist organization is more like offing the queen bee than it is like killing a few individual bees.)
> The horrors are excused if the benefits in welfare outweigh the costs, according to
> you.
The horrors are excused if and only if they are necessary and sufficient means to benefits that outweight the costs. The siege on Normandy was a member of such a set of means. The bombing of Dresden wasn't.
> So you must think they do in this war. So you justify them. Me, I don't. WWII
> was different. The Nazis were tilerably close to shitting out the
> lights all over the world. Dredsen and Rotterdam were wrong, but it was worth even > that to stop them.
Dresden was wrong because it didn't bring us any closer to winning the war.
> Al Quaida is scum, but they're not thats ort of menace.
No. But they don't have to be that large of a menace to warrant military action. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20021208/790d16b6/attachment.htm>