Klarinet Archive - Posting 000325.txt from 2004/11

From: Joseph Wakeling <joseph.wakeling@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] RE: elections
Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 12:45:49 -0500

Bill Hausmann wrote:

> You'd be surprised how flexible we "right-wing nut jobs" can be. We
> have a problem with people who find it morally DESIRABLE to suicide
> bomb the innocent women and children of people with whom they
> disagree, and use their OWN women and children as human shields, or
> who put in concentration camps and gas people whose religious and
> ethnic background differ from theirs

Gosh, well, that sounds like something any Liberal Wiener could happily
agree with.

However, we do have a problem with things like world leaders who find it
morally desirable to use massive numbers of aeroplanes to rain down
massive numbers of explosives, and in the process kill 100,000+ innocent
people. One can't help but feel that, in such circumstances, what is
missing is the suicide, not the bomb.

Of course, one might argue that they didn't *mean* to kill those people,
which I'm sure would cheer those people up no end if they were still
around to appreciate such finer matters, but the fact is that if you use
air power in certain ways you *inevitably* kill large numbers of
innocents, and the people who are in charge of the air force know that.
So maybe the civilians killed weren't the target, but they certainly
weren't considered of importance enough to not be blown up along with
whatever the target was. I think that comes down to being a deliberate
decision to kill those people, really.

And lest anyone query the 100,000 figure, I've read the research article
in the Lancet which makes these claims, and---aside from the fact that
it got through the Lancet's own extremely rigorous peer-review---I found
it to be an extremely compelling, well-documented and well-conceived
study, whose results, I'm afraid to say, should be taken very, very
seriously.

> If people would only seriously follow the so-called Golden Rule -- "Do
> unto others as you would have them do unto you" -- even that would be
> enough!

Indeed.

-- Joe

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