> No, you're not. Preventing him/her from killing you does not necessarily
> entail killing him/her.
>
> ^^^^^^^
> CB: You mean I might not be, might be. No excluded middle.
>
> So, take the case where but for my use of deadly defensive force , I
will be
> killed. It is the only probable means to achieve the end of
self-defense. In
> that
> > case , I am justified in killing.
==========================
You can't know that apriori, so your counterfactual is vacuous.
In the case of the Iraqis today, you
> > might say they could grab the guns out of the hands of the attacking
> > Americans, rather than kill them, but that means isn't likely to
achieve
> > the ends. Ergo, the conclusion of my first post is still valid. The
Iraqis
> > are justified in killing the attacking Americans. We are correct in
> > considering that their means are justified.
===========================
You completely missed my point regarding when talk of justification becomes totally beside the point...................
> > >Are
> > > Iraqis justified in killing Americans who are killing and about to
kill
> > them
> > > ? Yes, on the principle of self-defense.
> >
> > =====================
> >
> > War is the apotheosis-negation of justification. The inaugaration of
> > aggression is never justified or else you're on that road to all the
> > problems [paranoia etc.] surrounding pre-emption and cribs.
> >
> > ^^^^^^^^
> > CB: Well, Mahatma, lets negate the negation. Since the U.S.ians
> > inaugarated war and aggression against the Iraqis, the Iraqis'
defensive
> > violence negates the negation of justification, and supercedes
injustice.
> > Or more simply self-defensive war is the apothesis of pre-emptive war.
Even
> > international law recognizes that.
==========================
Great babble, Charles.
> >
> >
> > .>
> > > Are we correct to say that what the Iraqis do in that regard is just
?
> > yes.
> > > Their means are justified.
> >
> > ======================
> >
> > No; they're defense may be necessary [and from their perspective,
> > desirable] but once organized violence has started, claims of
> > justification are moot, not wrong, moot
>
> ^^^^^^^^^^^
> Organized violence is more effectively thwarted by organized violence.
>
> Does mootness justify celebration ?
>
> ^^^^^^^^^
========================
Again you miss the point, which is that violence negates the vocabulary of justification. When, in history, have the inaugurators of organized violence ever cared, in a platonic, protagorean, humean, kantian pick a philosopher-lawyer of your goddam choice, whether what they were doing was justified. War is organized murder in an analogous manner that, "no matter how you dress them up, profits are uncompensated labor."
Ian