Just watched Bush's speech.  I swear - sometimes I wonder if his speechwriters even read their own stuff.

Bush's signoff:  May God bless the people of Iraq, and may God continue to bless America.

Now, if you read that slowly, it would imply...

Every time Bush speaks now, I have to bite my tongue not to blurt out "God bless America - and nowhere else".

On subject - great news obviously, for a variety of reasons, and Al-Zarqawi was obviously a great catch and a serious VIP.  But I note that Al-Zarqawi got promoted again.  Just a week or two ago we were reading that Al-Zarqawi had been fired and was no longer running Al-Qaeda in Iraq, but this morning he was once again in charge.  But whatever.  Kudos to all involved and yay for us.

Definatly a good thing to wake up to.

Although he actually has remained head of Al-Queda in Iraq, he's been really bad for PR, so every effort has been made to downplay him as of late. That organization has been trying to put an Iraqi face on the insurgency.

Still glad to see him dead.

Linus wrote: If youre at a crack house during a take down.. you're guilty.

I don't think it works quite like that...

Yep, more or less - but the police will in fact take you to the DA, not just blow up the house with you in it.

If you are in the house, you are under suspicion, but not necessarily guilty.

There is a bit of a difference...

Linus wrote: You understood what I meant.

Yup.  And I disagreed.

Anywho... the military is not the police. The police is a life saving, law enforcing organazation.

So basic law and morality is suspended for the military just because their designation is different and their guns are bigger?

They dont have to deal with fanatical terrorist every day.

That may be true in most of the US, but certainly not true in many other places.  In many parts of the world, the police does in fact face terrorist threats on a daily basis, and yet they manage to abide by the rule of law.

Go figure.

We weren't going to send in a group of Iraqi police or our own troops into the house just so they could be shot at and quite possibly inured or killed.

Yeah, god forbid we risk our lives to avoid killing innocent people.

Linus wrote: It's the old "Should we have nuked Japan" debate, Clark.

Also known as the old "should we fly planes into the WTC" debate?

And if we did send soldiers in and a civilian got shot, the backlash would be a HELL of a lot worse.

Yeah - blowing up civilians is way better.  Much harder to prove they were civilians when they are blown up.

But this is mere speculation.. from what we know, not a single INNOCENT was in there.

Sure - but it is your cavalier attitude about "collateral damage" that I take issue with.  It's a moral copout.

True, in parts of the world, the police are counter terrorist forces, but in places like that, the entire police force, or a sizeable chunk of it is PARA-military.

Yes...?  Sounds like you are supporting my point.

They are trained to fight those types of scenerios, while in civilized western countrys, they are trained to be peace keeping people that enforce laws.

Wow - now THAT didn't sound arrogant and Western-centric.  I can't imagine why everybody else hates Americans so much.

Linus wrote: Clark.. they themselves say the west is the enemy of the world. To them the west included WESTERN EUROPE, not just the US and Canada. You of all people should know that. And have you seen the pictures of Zarqawi? His face is pretty recognizable. And they took out whole bodies of his 7 accomplices. I have heard no reports of Iraqi's finding legs and arms ANYWHERE. The blast was pretty well contained.

Ok?

I don't see the relevance of this post.  You will have to clarify.

Linus wrote: If the woman was totally innocent, and the childs was too young to pick sides, it is sad. But it had to be done.

Can I extrapolate from this that if your mother is visiting her cousin, who happens to be a terrorist leader with the Michigan Militia, and the FBI blows up the house, killing your mother, that it would be sad, but something that "had to be done"?

Once again too focused on the details. 

The point is that the Michigan Militia was, and probably still is, under intense investigation by the FBI.  If McVeigh were on the lamb and hid out with a bunch of homies in Michigan (including your mom's cousin), it would be an analogous situation to our current bombing.

The point is that you casually dismiss the deaths of this woman and child as something that "had to be done", but when I attempt to analogize to make it more personal for you, you nitpick at the analogy instead of answering the underlying moral question.

So now answer the question.

Linus wrote: Like I've stated before, I'd rather have 2 innocents die then 3-10 soldiers.

Ok - how about 2 innocents dead versus 3-10 police officers?

And what if those 2 innocents are your mom and your baby sister?

This kills me.  Debated is the rightousness of the death of 2 people, one of which had the choice to be in the company of a man with a 25 million dollar bounty on his head in a country in disaray with a failing economy.  The other a person who she is responsible for.  The man who was the target was a man who routinely orchestrated the death of vitims of "collateral damage". (?!)

Consider:

1.  She was guilty by association.

2.  If mom was hangin' and bangin' with terrorists, be they McVeigh or OBL himself and the FBI blew up the house she and he was in, sorry, Ma, you shoulda picked better friends.

3.  just because a soldier signs up to fight doesnt mean his 1st obligation is to do so reclessly.  "No poor bastard ever won a war by dying for his country.  He did it by making the other poor bastard die for HIS country".  George Patton. 

4. When a target presents itself, the idea is to eliminate it with as little risk as possible.  We learned from missing OBL that if we wait, the target moves and opportunity is lost.  Cant believe this one is lost on paintball players.  Do you get the attention of your target before you fire on him?  To fire when he's not ready wouldnt be fair according to this logic. 

5.  If this guy was as bold as we thought he was, there would have been a gun battle like the one that raged when trying to take Hussein's sons into custody.  And the woman and child would have died in a more horrific way.

Someone brought up moral decision making.

Utilitarianism-greatest good for the greates number.  Assuming "innocent people.   This guy's main weapon was terrorism with indiscriminate killing.  Targeted killing on the side of the coalition forces certainly eliminated fewer innocents than this freak's murders.  Utilitarian POV clearly on the side of taking him out.

Deontology- rights of the individual, specifically the right not to be injured.  But even in deontology, it comes with the caveat "unless we make a bad choice".  Refer to "hangin' and bangin under #2.  Bad choice.  Ethical to take out #1 bad guy in the territorry...even if it costs you your neck if you chose to be a Zarc-groupy.

Fairness/justice- We dont know either way on this one.  Certainly just to kill Zarqawi and his henchmen.  Have to wonder what the woman's association was.  how innocent was she hanging around with Zarqawi?Maybe as innocent as those women who hung around Manson, I dunno.

Common good.  Slam dunk.  He hadda go.  She with him, so be it. 

Virtue approach- could be argued from almost any direction on this one.  Courage to act in the way they did and save the lives of soldiers, courage to storm the place blindly and get alot of people killed and perhaps save one.  Weigh the risks logically and come to the conclusion that her life may be worth saving, or weight the odds of her coming out of this alive and realizing it was near hopeless considering the nature of our enemy and and deciding based on that.

I think any way you look at this, the ONLY moral/ethical thing that could have been done was to take this guy out exactly like it was done.  Emotions are powerful and tough to argue against, but this hadda take place the way it did. 

Parts of this discussion are silly.

A:) The pilots of those jets were instructed to take out a building where a known terrorist was. Nobody was standing there saying, "Hmm, there's a couple of innocents-meh, screw it, just blow the thing to hell." Bombs don't have targets-they have blast radius'.

B:) You can't weigh a human being's life to another, but you can weight the risk of another human being's life to that of many. This man was a brutal murderer who is responsible for the deaths of untold amounts of people, two of whom were beheaded personally by him, and would have loved nothing more than to organize attacks against thousands of innocent people. Anytime you drop a bomb you take a risk-don't kid yourselves into thinking that war is surgical. It's messy, bloody, and in the end it's the innocent people who suffer-be it casualties of war, or mothers and fathers back home.

C:) Which leads me to me other point-capturing this man would have been darn near impossible. It's easy to say "Let's raid the building like in teh movies!", but in reality that whole place was probably surrounded by paid lookouts. This was a very slippery man. Our troops let him go twice, at one point the Iraqi's even had him in custody.

D:) You are not guilty by just being there. While you can't really expect to wage a war without casualties, you can't gloss over the facts. Remember that you're dealing with a country where kids were running around on the wreckage of a collapsed building mere hours after it collapsed unsupervised. So there's a good chance there were some kids around when it collapsed.

I think it's terrible that innocents died, but that's the price of war. It's not fair, but that's life.

Let's not get too arrogant about it either-tradgedy is tradgedy.

I agree with your post, even with the following, but a clarification is in order.  Guilt by association doesnt imply that either of the innocents "deserved" to die.  Someone tried to provide an example of guilt by association in a crack house analogy, and it was completely lost on most.  If I go into a crack house, I am by law (I think) "in possession" by virtue of being there.  I can be as straight laced as I can be, never having touched the stuff, but by virtue of being there, if its raided, I'm busted, innocent or not.  I was hanging around with a crowd I should not have been hanging around with.  How do the cops know I'm innocent?  I can SAy I wasnt with the lowlife, but a) yea, I was, and b) if that story worked, we'd never get any arrests. 

"Didn't do it"

Everybody in Shawshank prison, Shawshank Redemption.

Another oversimplified analogy.  If I play in traffic knowing the risks and get hit by a car, a) am I guilty of anything, b) do I deserve to die, and, c) did I bring my death upon myself?  

a)  Maybe jaywalking and other misdemeanors.  Certainly of stupidity

b)  Of course not

c)  Absolutely.  Nobody else is responsible for my poor choices. 

This woman was dancing on the interstate at night time rush hour wearing dark clothes.  Bad, bad, bad move, and she paid dearly for it.

Now, whats wrong with this war and why we cant seem to end it may be touched on in another part of your post.  Not putting words in your mouth, but I dont think its been said aloud (except in passing with the nukes etc). 

Why is it that WW1 ended decisively, as did WW2, yet every war after that didnt?  The answer is a little cold, but we lost the ability to wage total war.  Wars tend to not end until the spirit of the defeated has been broken.  Without the fire bombings of Germany and Japan, most likely WW2 would have dragged on for years if not decades.

So, back to moral reasoning...how moral is it to wage a "moral" war and limit casualties if it drags on to affect (possibly) more people than a devestating , ruthless war? (This is a question that may draw some fire.)

stratoaxe wrote: D:) You are not guilty by just being there. While you can't really expect to wage a war without casualties, you can't gloss over the facts. Remember that you're dealing with a country where kids were running around on the wreckage of a collapsed building mere hours after it collapsed unsupervised. So there's a good chance there were some kids around when it collapsed. I think it's terrible that innocents died, but that's the price of war. It's not fair, but that's life. Let's not get too arrogant about it either-tradgedy is tradgedy.

nrthsll1 wrote: So, back to moral reasoning...how moral is it to wage a "moral" war and limit casualties if it drags on to affect (possibly) more people than a devestating , ruthless war? (This is a question that may draw some fire.)

Good question - but cannot that same reasoning be applied to justify virtually any act?

It certainly applies to the WTC bombings, for instance. 

In fact, isn't the very function of war to end war?  And therefore isn't every single act undertaken in the furtherance of war justified by this reasoning, since every atrocity is an attempt to stop future atrocities?

I'm suprised no one has posted this yet.

But then again, that could also mean that the rest of the forum actually has taste in morning radio shows.

http://www.mjmorningshow.com/cc-common/feeds/view.php?feed_id=263&feed=/mainfeed.html&instance=1&article_id=64509 - http://www.mjmorningshow.com/cc-common/feeds/view.php?feed_i d=263&feed=/mainfeed.html&instance=1&article_id= 64509

Watch the video.

It's worth the load wait, trust me.

Clark Kent wrote: In fact, isn't the very function of war to end war?  And therefore isn't every single act undertaken in the furtherance of war justified by this reasoning, since every atrocity is an attempt to stop future atrocities?

Yup.

Shame it's not that simple, but I understand what you're saying completely.

Clark Kent wrote: Good question - but cannot that same reasoning be applied to justify virtually any act? It certainly applies to the WTC bombings, for instance.  In fact, isn't the very function of war to end war?  And therefore isn't every single act undertaken in the furtherance of war justified by this reasoning, since every atrocity is an attempt to stop future atrocities?

No.  Only those acts that aid your cause are justifiable by this reasoning.  In WW2, for instance, had we fire bombed NYC it would have done nothing to help our cause.  Its an unfortunate convenience in Iraq, it does aid the insurgents cause to bomb their own people.  Its also an unfortunate convenience for us that our enemy knows the US public will lose their stomach for the war, a new administration will take over and they will win a war of patience, and be seen as beating the US to the entire Muslim population.  They will have beaten the great satan just as they did the Soviets. 

Its not that we cant win this war...its that we refuse to win this  war.  We are fighting a "moral war" against an immoral enemy who knows this is a game of keeping the enemy engaged, show some horrific bombings, our population turns sour and (clearing throat) yellow, and its just a matter of time that we give up.

Otherwise, yes, the purp[ose for war is to end war, and WE should be fighting a war we intend to win, if we are to win it.

nrthsll1 wrote: Clark Kent wrote: Good question - but cannot that same reasoning be applied to justify virtually any act? It certainly applies to the WTC bombings, for instance.  No.  Only those acts that aid your cause are justifiable by this reasoning.

But clearly, by definition, OBL thought that bombing WTC would help his cause - otherwise he wouldn't have done it.  Whether he was right or wrong is irrelevant.  If OBL thought that 9/11 was a necessary sacrifice of innocents towards accomplishing an important military goal, then it fits within your analysis. 

Clark Kent wrote: But clearly, by definition, OBL thought that bombing WTC would help his cause - otherwise he wouldn't have done it.  Whether he was right or wrong is irrelevant.  If OBL thought that 9/11 was a necessary sacrifice of innocents towards accomplishing an important military goal, then it fits within your analysis.

I was rushed, the post was scattered and I was unclear.  Lemme 'splain.

Your right.  According to the ethics of war as we are discussing, yes, in his mind what he did was what he had to do to win the war.  Your absolutely right.

Now, to take it a step further, had the US been using the same mearure of ethics before 9-11, total war would have been declared on A Quiada and the Taliban and Hezbala and the PLO (et. al) many years ago.  And 9-11 may have not happened.  I forget the dates, but it seems OBL signed a fatwa in the mid 80's declaring war on the US.  Since we were at war, the gloves should have come off then.  It may have meant total war against the entire Middle East.  Many more would have died unjustly...or would it have been unjustly if moral war is to do whatever is needed to win?

ETA: still feel like I'm not completely clear.  Had another thought but it slipped before I posted it.  D%^& 40 year old mind.

ETAx2: I think I remember what I was gonna say in the ETA above.  When I mentioned NYC it really wasnt a reference to OBL's reasoning in attacking the WTC, but rather it was a comparrison of the insurgency using the people of Iraq and the bombings of innocents as a means to their end: turning the US public against the war.

Mo' clear?