Comments Posted By CaseyL
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The posters here who make excuses and offer rationalizations are engaging in precisely the kind of moral relativism they say they dislike. They are also overlooking one of the most fundamental and universal truths in moral philosophy: the ends do not justify the means; the ends are shaped by the means, the means and ends cannot be separated.
We cannot create anything like a benevolent democracy by allowing, excusing, and closing our eyes to, sadism committed in our name.
America is supposed to stand for something more transcendant than wealth and power. We're supposed to stand for something better than that; we're supposed to *be* better than that. We're supposed to have learned from history, our own and others, that you cannot "free" people by brutalizing them. You cannot win a war of ideas by making excuses and justifications for brutality.
As for the war itself: it was doomed to fail from the very start. The war planners kept changing rationales for the war, and each one involved different and mutually exclusive tactics. Was the war about liberating Iraq, or about using Iraq, and Iraqis, as terrorist flypaper? How can a nation be freed and democratized if it's also intended to be a magnet for terrorists? Answer: it can't be done.
Comment Posted By CaseyL On 5.08.2005 @ 00:49
