Posted on 11/02/2001 11:59:31 AM PST by Starmaker
This question will be construed by many to be unpatriotic, un-American, and simply uncalled for. Many will scoff at the idea that such a question should even be addressed, but I believe it is one that we should ponder. Why? Because we are currently attacking another nation for carrying out acts of mass destruction that pale in comparison to what we ourselves have done.
Before I'm tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town on a rail, let me just say that I support the idea of a legitimate, just, and, yes, even moral war. I believe such a war can and should be declared when the security of the citizens of the United States is directly at risk. After all, the primary job of the federal government, contrary to the modern teachings of liberal and neo-conservative collectivists, is to provide for the common defense of the nation. If the security, liberty, and lives of its citizens are threatened, the government has a sworn duty to eliminate that threat.
Unfortunately, most of the conflicts we have seen in the last century were the result of the federal government ignoring its obligation to the immediate defense of our own nation in order to pursue more global concerns. Can anyone make the case that the conflicts we saw in places like Korea, Vietnam, Panama, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, and Bosnia had anything to do with protecting the freedom of American citizens?
Now, the same people who were so quick to send soldiers off to kill and die for democracy overseas while ignoring the government's assaults on our liberty here at home are calling for unity in battling yet another foreign enemy. Perhaps our current predicament calls for some serious self-examination.
In our nationalistic frenzy we have been so intent on rooting out evil overseas that we have failed to notice the sins of our own nation. Again, I ask, what separates the U.S. from the terrorist nations of the world?
Many would say that we have a much greater respect for life and would never consider unleashing the kinds of atrocities we saw on September 11. Attacking innocent civilians with such cold-blooded calculation is beyond our comprehension. This kind of thinking lends credence to the old adage "ignorance is bliss."
During the last "just" war, World War II, the U.S. made it standard military procedure to specifically target civilians. German cities like Hamburg and Dresden were subjected to some of the most intense bombing raids in history. Even Japanese non-combatants in Tokyo could not escape the relentless firebombing. This policy of attacking civilian targets culminated in President Truman's order to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The result of these kinds of attacks throughout the war was a civilian death toll that climbed into the hundreds of thousands. Our government deliberately utilized this kind of warfare in order to strike terror in the hearts of foreign civilians. Sound familiar?
Needless to say, we do not have to look outside our borders for examples of the very evil we claim to loathe. Case in point, abortion. Since the unconstitutional Roe v. Wade decision was handed down by the Supreme Court in 1973, we have witnessed the government-sanctioned murder of over 40 million innocent children. This is an accomplishment that even the worst terrorist nations cannot claim. Why have we failed to unite against this particular evil?
It is understandable that Americans continue to feel outraged by the attacks of September 11. The media guaranteed that all of us had a front row seat to the grim scenes of death and destruction. We could not escape the gruesome images of commercial airliners slamming into skyscrapers, people hurling themselves out of windows to avoid being burned alive, or a million tons of steel and concrete raining down upon victims and rescuers.
Think of the collective outrage that would ensue if we were granted the same kind access to the carnage inside an abortion clinic. Imagine if we were to catch a glimpse of the bloody, twisted heaps of mangled limbs, see babies survive an abortion long enough to be tossed out alive with the rest of the medical waste, or hear the screams of mothers realizing, too late, the devastating consequences of their actions.
Are all these innocent lives worth it? Should we applaud the deliberate killing of over 200,000 Japanese civilians by our atomic bombs because it ended World War II a few weeks ahead of schedule? Are we to just accept the murder of 1.5 million children every year because of our distorted view of individual liberty and personal choice? Do we continue to tolerate the actions of a government that believes it has more important things to do than protect the rights of the innocent?
Foreign civilians, unborn children, national integrity— evidently, these are the sacrifices with which we are willing to live. Such a thing is to be expected when a society adopts an "end justifies the means" philosophy. In doing so, we have only succeeded in demonstrating that we are just as capable as any terrorist nation of committing acts of senseless violence with little or no regard for the sanctity of human life.
So, just what exactly is it that separates the United States from the terrorist nations of the world? Maybe the answer is more elusive than we care to admit.
Sadly, this is your best argument so far.
you go through this big "logic" charade.
The fact that you have never learned anything about critical thinking does not mean that logic and argumentation are just a charade. For a start on your self-improvement course I offer the following link: Logical and Rhetorical Fallacies When you have spent some time studying and thinking get back to us and we can talk about it like grown-ups.
My Webster's Dictionary defines 'swindle' as 'depriving of something by deception or fraud'. You should be able to explain this--or offer your proof. Oh, what was that? Huh? Oh, just rhetoric?
You confuse rhetoric and rhetorical (i.e. logical) fallacy. The standard interpretation of an intellectual swindle is trying to convince someone of something through a fallacious argument.
I agree with the author, you disagree with the author...
You are entitled to your opinion as the author is entitled to his. What I have attempted to do is strip it of the appearance of legitimacy conveyed through fallacious argumentation sprinkled with (a few) irrelevant facts. There are deeper truths and deeper ways of arriving at the truth than just opinion. Dispite the disagreements over the validity of "Jewish science," Hiroshima demonstrated that Einstein's "opinion" was more than just his opinion.
. You label the question a fallacy; correctly state the author did not answer the question; and then declare 'the author finds us guilty anyway'.
This question IS a fallacy. First it is irrelevant to his thesis in this article. Having asked it, however, he fails to answer it as you admit, but finds us all guilty of his murkey charge - a classic example of question begging.
Replace dear old Harry with the SOB bin Laden and what happened 9/11. Can you not see that he, his followers and admirers have a point of view that would be just as valid as Harry…it just depends on which audience they are playing to!
I don't buy the moral equivalency argument, at least not until someone makes it. And they better make it with better arguments than this author has tried.
Yeah we are back to critical thinking again, and again .... and again, until you stop falling for tripe like this.
I noticed in one of the replies to you he offered some silly verbage about the very last paragraph of the article (".....may be answer is more elusive than we care to admit"...) poo-pooing this as fallacy, or illogical, or whatever.
The question preceding this part of the sentence was the same question the author wrote as the title of the article, and roughly mid-way through the article the question was posed again, after which the author wrote a number of comments. After running through some possible answers, and at the final paragraph the question is repeated and the author's response is that it may be more elusive than we care to admit.
A run down through the thread shows just how few attempts there were to provide answers to the question. But after all these, Mr. Andy Jackson has the 'gumption' to say this is a fallacy.....even he has virtually nothing to offer other than to 'declare' that the author doesn't ask the right question!! Sheet, why don't he start his own thread and postulate his own question!!
What was that old crack....something about "You can't soar with eagles when you're dealing with turkeys"!
I get so tired of reading this sh*t. I read enough of it while attempting to post reasonable comments on Planetarabia.com in answer to many unreasonable people who use the same premises as this author does.
We truely are losing the propaganda war. The press has ever so much more practice.
Get a grip and get over your 'self-importance'......the best thing you could do is start using words like "In my opinion"; otherwise, begin offering 'proof, evidence, or facts' to back up your statement that 'this question is a fallacy".
You are flat dead wrong as regards what I've bolded in your statement above.....go back and read the article....between the title and the final paragraph, the question is asked 3 times....after the second he profers answers...tough shit, if you don't like them--why don't you offer what you feel are better ones--instead of playing your little game of rhetorical BS!
BTW....his/her conclusion HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH FINDING US GUILTY OF ANYTHING, MURKY OR OTHERWISE! Talk about trying to read something that isn't there!!! Read the darn article again.....put down the book on rhetoric and debate and find something to improve your reading and comprehensive skills. You're starting to sound like sinkspur who upon finding out what masturbation was keeps trying to find new ways to stick the word into all his conversations!!
This, from a woman who rubs herself up against every straw man she can find!
I guess that's the best you can do, huh?
The first fallacy of this question - and all of the questions in this paragraph is that they are irrelevant to demonstrating his thesis that we, in our actions in Afghanistan, are the moral equivalents of the Taliban. The second is that it is question begging - he assumes a point - several points in posing the question, which you and ten-gallon TEX fall for hook, line and sinkspur without a moments reflection, like the part about we applaud or the part about a few weeks ahead of schedule. Third is he leaps from asking the question to concluding his thesis with no argument in between. The path is rather tortured and I for one lack the mental horsepower to get from one to the other. Apperently, so do you.
tough shit - this is almost as good an argument as I am a joke, but you continue , if you don't like them--why don't you offer what you feel are better ones
It is not my responsibility to craft, on the author's behalf, or yours or your sniveling sidekick, Mr. "all hat no intellect" TEX, arguments to defend his thesis and yours, particularly when I happen to feel that his thesis is wrong. I keep hoping that you or Tex will supply the defects in my ability to reason through the point, but so far you have failed to do so.
"And he's makin'faces at me too... There! I told on you!"
Sheesh... the level of 'debate'...
People who can't see 9/11 for what it was are either without a brain or without a heart.
Which is it? Do you two lack a brain or a heart, or, my theory, both?
I guess that's the best you can do, huh?"....
Congratulations, sinkhole.....you have reached the gutter!
Since this has GOT to be a purely rhetorical question, the easiest answer is THE SECOND AMENDMENT to the CONSTITUTION of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. At least that is what seperates them from ME.
If that isn't the most damn fool question I have seen on this forum for the last couple of years, I don't hardly know what is. When did we ever attack anyone to gain anything for ourselves? More land? I don't think so. More oil? No, still don't think so, but the argument's been made....rather stupidly in my opinion, since it is the entire world that needs oil. Gah!!!
To murder foreigners. Nope? Most of our families were those once and some still are.
Money? Nope. We just never got that greedy as a whole nation.
Here's the thing. We have freedom. No one else in the world has always had it or ever truly found out what we know about it. Their governments have always walled them in and they have never even managed to keep what little freedoms they did have had it not been for us, US. Bottom line is they want the most elusive thing about us and can't ever get it. So they want to bring us around to THEIR way of walls and central governments so that our freedom becomes as fleeting and elusive as theirs. Won't happen. There are still too many of us who hearken back to that old but glorious Constitution. It is the light of our lives, brightened during days like this by the Lord we derived it from.
And I'm not surprised to find you there!
Bzzzzt. Wrong answer, thanks for playing.
Sorry, in order to "clear it up", you'd have to have some actual light to shed on the subject. Instead, your specious contribution ("all that matters is the delivery vehicle") only muddies the waters.
Come back when you have a better grasp of the issue.
-- 'In moral philosophy, at some level, the ends are used to justify the means. The end - the good of society - does justify the means - our moral code."
Hmmmm - an arguable 'moral code' can be jusified by claiming that it's use will be for the good of society.
- Yep, as you commented, OBL justifies his terrorist attacks as being for the good of islamic society.
Our boy likes sick 'jokes' if he classes this as a valid philosophy. ,
You're one extremely sick, and confused, puppy.
Seek help. I mean that.
Given the provocation, I'd say that his "personal attack" was remarkably restrained, and 100% accurate.
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