--- Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, 6 Apr 2005 21:04:09 -0700 (PDT), Gautam > Mukunda wrote > > --- Nick Arnett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > Are you saying that Warren been trying to > prevent > > > democracy in Iraq? > > > > Functionally, yes. > > What does that mean? > It means that there wasn't a third option between going to war to remove Hussein and leaving him in power. It didn't exist. No one proposed one that was even vaguely plausible. You could choose one or the other.
> > What you mean is that it > > never allows a _preventive_ war. > > No, I mean what I wrote. War is only justifiable > after a direct attack or > imminent threat -- that is just war theory in short. Well, first, that's not actually what just war theory says. Thomas Aquinas added two reasons to Augustine's just reasons for going to war: "either the furthering of some good or an avoidance of some evil." That from Brother John Raymond's _The Just War Theory_. Second, you don't actually mean what you wrote, because you're not using the words correctly. Pre-emptive war is what you do in the face of an "imminent threat". Preventive war is what you fight when the threat is not imminent. We didn't fight a pre-emptive war in Iraq - if we did, while a lot of people would be opposed to it because they're opposed to the US ever defending itself, they would not be serious people. A good way to think about it is The Six Day War was a _pre-emptive_ war. The Israelis fired the first shots, but only because they knew they were going to be attacked and decided (correctly) to strike first. > > > Every military on > > earth has a doctrine for pre-emptive war. > > Are you saying that military doctrine trumps > religion? If we're going to put > the military in charge of ethics, shall we put the > churches in charge of > defense? Interesting idea. No, I'm saying that you should know what words mean when you use them. > What do you mean by "just playing games?" They're > like children, not serious > thinkers? Who are the serious thinkers about war > and peace? Living ones? Well, if you're just talking about international ethics, you could list: Michael Walzer, Stanley Hoffmann, Brian Hehir, Pierre Hassner, Michael Ignatieff, that guy at West Point whose name escapes me at the moment, and that just for starters...But serious thinkers on war and peace, well, then you'd include Sam Huntington, Stephen Rosen, Steve Van Evera, Robert Kagan, Robert Kaplan, Donald Kagan, Barry Posen, Robert Jervis, Jack Snyder, Marc Trachtenberg - and that's just the people who come to mind right away. In that list the people came down on all different sides of this issue - I don't even know where some of them did, actually. But I don't think any of them thought a World Court indictment would be all that useful in removing Hussein. > Perhaps you'd like to know what I really was saying? > It was not about my > morality, it was about my desire to develop better > ways to deal with > international conflict, which is based in my hope > and faith that the world can > have fewer wars in the future. I'm curious if you > have any such hope. My > morality was so flawed that I yielded to the fear of > nuclear attack from Iraq > and spoke in favor of this war. Well, I think I have a few ideas on how to get to a world with fewer wars. They mainly involve spreading democracy to places like Iraq. Hmmm. They involve, also, the willingness to use force when necessary, first, but, even more importantly than that, the willingness to make choices, not pretend that they don't have to be made. The _first task_ of the statesman is to make choices. The worst leaders in history (and they're not really worthy of the term) are the ones who pretended that there were no decisions to be made or costs to be paid. > > the people being dropped feet-first into shredding > machines. > > Perhaps you forget that this sort of thing has > touched me rather directly. Well, I don't know. It doesn't seem to stop you from attacking the people who stopped it. If you were saying, Nick, I understand these are the humanitarian costs of having failed to go to war, I would respect that. That's what Dan does. I would respect a genuine pacifist, someone who really believed that violence was never justified. I would respect someone who really believed that international law was the most important thing. I have no respect at all for constant condemnations of the morality of your political opponents, then hiding behind vague calls for "more intelligent dialogue" whenever anyone challenges you to say something that has _meaning_, instead of just being lots of jargon that doesn't seem to go anywhere. > > Nick Gautam Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Yahoo! Messenger Show us what our next emoticon should look like. Join the fun. http://www.advision.webevents.yahoo.com/emoticontest _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
