--- Deborah Harrell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Gautam Mukunda <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I think that's a ridiculous position, but it is, > in > > fact, a position. But if you're saying "oil or > > economic interests" as if it was an accusation. > > It's not. > > Ah, I was not being clear: if one states that those > *are* the reasons for going to war, at least one is > being honest; my problem with this admin is that > they > cloak such concrete reasons in 'do-gooder' morality.
But, look, why is it so hard to believe that people can do things for more than one reason? I don't get this. Do you have only _one_ reason for everything you have ever done? I'm sure you don't. Why not believe that the Administration had more than one for invading Iraq. Some people in the Administration thought we should do it because we had a moral obligation and it was in our national interest. Others thought it was in our national interest and we had a moral obligation. Some thought that one, without the other, would have been sufficient. Some thought that we would have needed both. What's the problem here? > > Agreed, but if one is going to claim _moral_ > justification in pursuing war, one had better ensure > that citizens and foreign states will agree with > one's > assertions. Otherwise, they will eventually > discover > that such claims were, at best, misreprentation of > the > actual situation. And that destroys the credibility > of that government. > > Debbi Why? Morality is not the product of an opinion poll. Something is either the right thing to do or it is not. In this case, you're talking about whether other states that have an interest in the issue think it's moral or not. Of _course_ the French said invading Iraq was immoral. They had billions of dollars in oil contracts at stake - what did you think they were going to say? We all know that interests shape your perception of morality. People tend to believe that things that are in their interest are also the "right" thing to do. Convincing other states of the moral rightness of a thing is a good idea in terms of realpolitik. It doesn't affect the rightness of a cause even a tiny little bit. In fact, there's a huge logical flaw in what you said. "[I]f one is going to claim _moral_ justification in pursuing war, one had better ensure that citizens and foreign states will agree with one's assertions." I just talked about that. The next sentence was "Otherwise, they will eventually discover that such claims were, at best, misreprentation of the actual situation." Actually, there are _two_ logical flaws in taking that conclusion from the previous statement. One is the assumption that they will "discover" the falsity of such claims. No. The claims might be (were, in this case) true. They might _believe_ them to be false, but that has nothing to do with their veracity. The second is that their belief that such claims are true or false has anything with convincing the world as to the justness of your position. Most of the time, people believe what's convenient to them. When people don't, they're usually pretty extraordinary people. People will believe or not believe in the truth of the moral claims. You hope that they will. You try to persuade them - and the Bush Administration on the whole did poorly in that regard. But what they believe has no impact on whether the case we made was a misrepresentation of the actual situation or not. The moral case (at least) was not. Saddam really was as bad as we made him out to be. Whether Our European Allies (TM) fail to believe this doesn't make it a misrepresentation. Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail - You care about security. So do we. http://promotions.yahoo.com/new_mail _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
