Assassination Squads??
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another dialogue posted by Bob Clasen
On Oct 24, 2004, at 3:31 AM, Peter wrote:
The discussion, to my mind, turns on a key moral dilemma: When is it permissible to do something bad to accomplish something good? When does the end justify the means?
In 1939 would one have found it acceptable, morally, to murder Hitler? Okay, so we’re all in agreement there. But hold on, how do we go about implementing this as national policy today? Do we have a CIA assassination squad lining up names to be bumped off? There are lots of nasty leaders in the world today, on many continents, scattered around the world. Do we just get on with it? Send out the assassination squads? Do we worry about the obvious collateral damage of innocent deaths? And if we are morally empowered to start murdering people in the name of our freedom loving democracy (no inconsistency there), what about destabilising other governments? Or conquering other nations? In such cases, when do we start to bother about the inevitable innocent casualties? As the world’s sole superpower, are we not now obliged to use this power for good? And if it would have been okay in 1939 to murder Hitler, then surely today it is permissible to do similar things which a superficial analysis might think of as heinous, but which clearly are for the long-term advancement of civilisation. No? Where does one draw the line then? Is it even a moral question at all, just a practical question? i.e. America ought, if she were able, to conquer the non-democratic world so as to impose democracy. However, this is patently absurd from a practical standpoint, so we pick our targets carefully, one-by-one. Once Iraq is free, move onto the rest of the Middle East, etc. But this is just tactics and practicalities of implementation; the principle is clear: America has a moral right, perhaps an obligation, nay, even a mission, to use its military power to impose freedom around the world. Particularly around the non-Christian world?
One death to save millions of lives in the hypothetical case of murdering Hitler? Right. 30,000 deaths, and counting, to save what in the real case of the Iraq war?
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Bob replies: The original proposition was that four Cubans had tried to assassinate Castro. Is it "doing something bad" for suffering citizens to assassinate their dictator? I don't think so. Why would it be? Violence is bad if initiated to seize property or simply to murder others. Violence in self defense is justifiable. A dictator who holds power by the wrongful use of force is like a criminal in my mind: a burglar telling me: your obedience or your life. If I can kill the hold up man, I am doing a good thing, not a bad thing.
Of course, if we would have assassinated Hitler, he never would have gone on to do all those terrible things, so you could ask, why did we kill this man? We can’t know what Hussein would have done if he was still in power.
I don’t think that we have a moral obligation to go out and right every wrong in the world. The first justification for invading Iraq was not to spread democracy, but to end a threat. One might argue about the nature of that threat and many people have.
But once we have taken the initiative, gone to war, and overthrown a dictator, I do feel some moral responsibility for trying to clean up the mess left behind. And from a purely pragmatic point of view, we do not want the new government to be even worse than theh old.
But I certainly don’t advocate a Department of Assassination.
If a dictator becomes a threat to the United States, I think he has no moral protection just because he is the titular head of state. The moral argument for war is self defense.
It is entirely different to condemn citizens of a dictatorship who try to assassinate the dictator they suffer under. I do not condemn such citizens and I do not label them "terrorists."
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another dialogue posted by Bob Clasen
On Oct 24, 2004, at 3:31 AM, Peter wrote:
The discussion, to my mind, turns on a key moral dilemma: When is it permissible to do something bad to accomplish something good? When does the end justify the means?
In 1939 would one have found it acceptable, morally, to murder Hitler? Okay, so we’re all in agreement there. But hold on, how do we go about implementing this as national policy today? Do we have a CIA assassination squad lining up names to be bumped off? There are lots of nasty leaders in the world today, on many continents, scattered around the world. Do we just get on with it? Send out the assassination squads? Do we worry about the obvious collateral damage of innocent deaths? And if we are morally empowered to start murdering people in the name of our freedom loving democracy (no inconsistency there), what about destabilising other governments? Or conquering other nations? In such cases, when do we start to bother about the inevitable innocent casualties? As the world’s sole superpower, are we not now obliged to use this power for good? And if it would have been okay in 1939 to murder Hitler, then surely today it is permissible to do similar things which a superficial analysis might think of as heinous, but which clearly are for the long-term advancement of civilisation. No? Where does one draw the line then? Is it even a moral question at all, just a practical question? i.e. America ought, if she were able, to conquer the non-democratic world so as to impose democracy. However, this is patently absurd from a practical standpoint, so we pick our targets carefully, one-by-one. Once Iraq is free, move onto the rest of the Middle East, etc. But this is just tactics and practicalities of implementation; the principle is clear: America has a moral right, perhaps an obligation, nay, even a mission, to use its military power to impose freedom around the world. Particularly around the non-Christian world?
One death to save millions of lives in the hypothetical case of murdering Hitler? Right. 30,000 deaths, and counting, to save what in the real case of the Iraq war?
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Bob replies: The original proposition was that four Cubans had tried to assassinate Castro. Is it "doing something bad" for suffering citizens to assassinate their dictator? I don't think so. Why would it be? Violence is bad if initiated to seize property or simply to murder others. Violence in self defense is justifiable. A dictator who holds power by the wrongful use of force is like a criminal in my mind: a burglar telling me: your obedience or your life. If I can kill the hold up man, I am doing a good thing, not a bad thing.
Of course, if we would have assassinated Hitler, he never would have gone on to do all those terrible things, so you could ask, why did we kill this man? We can’t know what Hussein would have done if he was still in power.
I don’t think that we have a moral obligation to go out and right every wrong in the world. The first justification for invading Iraq was not to spread democracy, but to end a threat. One might argue about the nature of that threat and many people have.
But once we have taken the initiative, gone to war, and overthrown a dictator, I do feel some moral responsibility for trying to clean up the mess left behind. And from a purely pragmatic point of view, we do not want the new government to be even worse than theh old.
But I certainly don’t advocate a Department of Assassination.
If a dictator becomes a threat to the United States, I think he has no moral protection just because he is the titular head of state. The moral argument for war is self defense.
It is entirely different to condemn citizens of a dictatorship who try to assassinate the dictator they suffer under. I do not condemn such citizens and I do not label them "terrorists."
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