ESR's Anti-Idiotarian Manifesto

[MaggieL]

Originally posted by Xugumad

I wrote very carefully about "civilians" and "innocents" and uninvolved parties.

The victims of the terroist attacks on WTC were 100% "civilians" and "innocents"...in fact they were the *intentional targets* of the attacks. The military *responses* to those attacks have made every effort to *avoid* civilian casualties. It's not a double standard.I just don't accord folks who hijack airplanes and deliberately fly them into buildings full of civilians or wrap themselves in high-explosives and shrapnel and dentonate in a shopping mall the same standing I do to the military who *respond* to those attacks under orders to deny the attackers further sanctuary so they can strike again.

If there's "equivalance" there, I don't see it. I'm not going to be able to reach agreement with someone whose values make those two kinds of acts equivalant; they're colorblind in a range where I see colors. Just because an act is violent doesn't make it automatically wrong. *That's* a moral compass more evolved than "war is evil".

Kutz, what policy are you proposing, exactly? Our "provocation" consists of not simply giving these people what they demand. We don't run our foreign policy based on the wishes of whoever tried to kill us most recently...or even on whose voice is the most strident or empassioned in our own internal discourse.

"Respect for soveriegnty" is all well and good, but it is not absolute. Soveriegn states who cynically and knowingly shelter and support terrorists are engaging in warfare by proxy. Sooner or later sanctions escalate beyond the level of sharply worded diplomatic notes and unenforced Security Council resolutions. Soverign states who invade neighboring soverign states and are defeated in combat live by the terms of a cease-fire or suffer the consequences; just because hostilities are suspended doesn't mean the bazzar is open again.

I agree when you say "it's not wrong to <i>want</I> to defend yourself"...but you seem to insert "want" because you think it's wrong to actually *do* it, and that's where we part company.

(By the way, for people who are upset about ad hominems, in my view "that's a idiotic idea" is an opinion, "you're an idiot" is an epithet or a personality, "you're an idiot therefore your ideas are idiotic" is an ad hominem.)