[hrothgar]

luke warm, on Apr 7 2007, 06:17 PM, said:

the end is to stop the war in the pacific... the means was to use atomic weapons... justifiable?

the end is to prevent the south from seceeding, were the means justifiable?

the end is to hasten germany's surrender.. the means was to utterly destroy certain cities and their populations.. justifiable?

Comment 1:

I don't believe that comparison's between the Second World War and the global war on terror are remotely comporable. During the Second World War, the western democracies were facing an extistential threat from other nation states. Germany, Japan, and Italy built up large armies which were actively used to attack other countries. More over, very large portions of the populace of these countries were unifed behind this military expansion.

As I mentioned earlier, I believe that the primary challenge that we're faced with at the moment is to promote our way of life. We aren't faced with any credible military threat. We do face some profound security issues, but I don't believe that these can be dealt with by force.

BTW Jimmy. I'm sure that you've heard the old saying "The beating will continue until morale improves".

This is intendeded as a joke. Its mocking something that doesn't work. Its not a viable philosophy towards governing.

Comment 2:

Moving on to your specific questions

A. I believe that the use of atomic weapons versus Japan was justified. While these attacks were horrific, I believe that (ultimately) they saved many more lives than they attacks cost. Moreover, the atomic attacks brought the war to a much quick conclusion and saved hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of people from a slow death by starvation. Finally, I believe that the Japanese response to the atomic attacks could be predicted with a responsible degree of accuracy. Truman was able to guess correctly that the attacks would break the back of the Japanese will to resist.

B. It may surprise some people, but I'm far from certain that the US was justified in preventing the South from seceeding. Modern day propaganda aside, I don't believe that Lincoln was concerned about slavery. His goal was the preservation of the United States of America and he was willing to permit the South to keep their "peculiar institution" if it meant preserving the Union.

From my own perspective, I think that one of the most valuable lessons of the Civil War is financial. At the start of the Civil War, the plantation economy used in the old South had become unprofitable. However, the South had enormous amounts of capital tied up in breeding stock. (I recently saw estimates that the amount of capital locked up in Slaves exceeded the value of the vaunted Northern rail system) Emanicipating the slaves without any comprensation would have bankrupted this society. I think that a financial compensation scheme would have gone an awful long way towards eliminating the root cause of the conflict. It might have seemed painful at the time, however, it would have been a hell of a lot cheaper than what eventually happened.

C. There is still enormous debate about whether Allied strategic bombing campaigns against Germany were justified. In general, the Allies claimed that the bombing campaigns were strategic in nature. Bombing attacks were launched against military targets, however, targetting was very imprecise and there was enormous amounts of collateral damage. There are some exceptions (Dresden is the obvious example). My impression is that most people differentiated between the bombing raids directed against rail centers the Koln and Hamburg and the Dresden firebombings.

[Winstonm]

I probably over-generlized by utilizing the phrase "the ends justifies the means", as your examples point out that a case-by-case examination can alter the perception of justifiable.

Some points of contention among your examples and current thread debate:

The U.S. did not support an outlaw third party to drop the bombs on Japan.
The North did not support an outlaw third party to war with the South.
The U.S. did not support an outlaw third party to bomb German cities.

Maybe a better perspective is to ask: at what point do the ends no longer support the means?

[luke warm]

Winstonm, on Apr 7 2007, 10:44 AM, said:

My reasoning is based upon two known facts: 1) The group is on the U.S. terror list.  2) The U.S. military is aiding this group.

ok, i'll try to do this one more time... here is the original quote from your post

Quote

My reasoning tells me one of two things: one, we are not in a global war on terror else these terrorists would be captured instead of escorted or two, this group has been misclassified by the U.S and they are not terrorists

i read that as you saying that you have reached conclusions based on your reasoning, to wit:
we are not in a global war on terror; or
this group has been misclassified by the U.S and they are not terrorists

those are the conclusions to which your reasoning led, correct? and now you say you based those conclusions on two premises:
1) The group is on the U.S. terror list
2) The U.S. military is aiding this group

all i have tried to show is that, logically, you have offered a false dilemma... i showed that by offering a third option which can be true, "we are in a war on global terrorism and the pursuit of that war involves strategies and tactics that i am incompetent to understand, much less pursue"

in addition, your argument begs the question and also seems to confuse cause and effect

Quote

Your argument seems to be that there is a 3) that cannot be known. To me, this is like reasoning that if there were two crates, 1) filled with apples and 2) filled with oranges that the conclusion that if blindfolded you reached into A) and withdrew a fruit it would be an apple is a faulty conclusion based purely on speculation that there may be a crate 3) with a mixture of both apples and oranges.

sorry winston, your analogy compares (forgive me) apples and oranges... in your analogy, the crate of apples and the crate of oranges both exist, no other crates exsist, as a prerequisite... in the question we're discussing, you have not and probably can not prove that only those two "crates" (1. we are not in a global war on terror or 2. this group has been misclassified by the U.S and they are not terrorists) are the only two (the false dilemma)

hrothgar said:

I don't believe that comparison's between the Second World War and the global war on terror are remotely comporable.

i never even attempted to compare them... the discussion concerned ends and means... aside from that, the rest of your post seems to affirm what i said - that "the ends justify the means for different people in different ways"

winston said:

The U.S. did not support an outlaw third party to drop the bombs on Japan.
The North did not support an outlaw third party to war with the South.
The U.S. did not support an outlaw third party to bomb German cities

and if they had that would prove what, exactly? again winston, you are begging the very question

Quote

Maybe a better perspective is to ask: at what point do the ends no longer support the means?

i will give my personal view, not the view i'd hold as an elected official - the ends never justify the means

helene said:

But I think one has to be rather naive to take this whole "war on terrorism" cliche that serious. At best, Bush and some other politicians actually believe that their mission in Iraq is to reduce terrorism against U.S. and close allies, which does not preclude using terrorism as a weapon against non-allies. Even that, I find very hard to believe. Bush may be delusioned, but hardly that delusioned.

yes, even if hard to believe it is still an option, and that's all i was saying

[Winstonm]

Quote

sorry winston, your analogy compares (forgive me) apples and oranges... in your analogy, the crate of apples and the crate of oranges both exist, no other crates exsist, as a prerequisite... in the question we're discussing, you have not and probably can not prove that only those two "crates" (1. we are not in a global war on terror or 2. this group has been misclassified by the U.S and they are not terrorists) are the only two (the false dilemma

Of course, Jimmy, but we only know of two facts: A) Terrorist group B) Supported.
"Based on the two known facts" is my assertion - that there might be another unknown fact is possible, but isn't it also possible that there are no other facts to be known? Also, does not reasoning change based on available information?

My current reasoning based on current information is as shown - but this reasoning can be adjusted when and if further facts come to light. Is that unreasonable?

Quote

and if they had that would prove what, exactly? again winston, you are begging the very question

It proves nothing other than the situations when the U.S. acted directly cannot be compared to times the U.S. acts through surrogates - apples and oranges IMO.

[luke warm]

Winstonm, on Apr 7 2007, 01:32 PM, said:

My current reasoning based on current information is as shown - but this reasoning can be adjusted when and if further facts come to light. Is that unreasonable?

no it's not unreasonable, it just can't be used to support your conclusions... that doesn't mean you're wrong, you understand

[mycroft]

We are as much in a "war on terror" as we were in a "war on drugs" or "war on poverty" or "war on Communism" (as opposed to a dynastic "cold war" against the Soviet Union). They were and are cute phrases on which to hang whatever new power the government wanted to grant.

I do believe the United States is and has been for at least 60 years in an assault on liberty (yeah, I've made that point before). As long as you can feed the religion of a Threat to the State, Stalin's quote applies while you quietly remove everything the State stood for in the first place. And look, it's working.

Even the current "scandals" and "investigations" are only discussing whether it was legal, not whether it was right or the American Way. And that's because playing that part of the Liberty card means that the Opposition is going to get held to it when they get in, and they have just as vested an interest in continuing the power-grab and assault on liberty as the current Powers That Be.

I really hated the arguments for continuing the PATRIOT Act provisions - "It's useful, don't get rid of them. We use them and they have helped in the War on Terror (oh, and I bet a lot more in the other Wars on Liberty)" Not "It's critical; we would have had X attacks set up and ready to go without them, no matter what other legal procedures we could have followed. Our security demands the continuation of this massive attack on our citizen's liberty - so much of an attack that even in the heyday of Q4 2001, Congress thought this might be too invasive - because it can't be done without it." Rubber-hose cryptanalysis (similarly, RH investigations), Stasi techniques and procedures, violating Miranda, are all *useful*; they aren't legal, and for good reason.

I heard an intelligent voice from the Right on the Iranian freeing the British story on Friday. Please note that although he used the talking points of the Right, I'm not referring to him as a talking head; he thought, reasoned, and gave reasoned arguments rather than talking points and jargobabble (please note, while I'm a loony liberal, I can reason with conservatives; and I have the same disdain for the talking heads and debate-by-staying-on-message grunts of the Left as I do of the Right. I hope people understand the difference I'm making between left and the Left and right and the Right).

He said "everyone got upset with the U.S. just showing pictures of Saddam Hussein's arrest, because it was against the Geneva Conventions. And here's the Iranians, videoing forced confessions of the British hostages. Talk about an uneven playing field. Why aren't they talking about that?"

Well, Sir, the answer is that we hold you to a higher standard than despotic scum because you claim to be of a higher standard - in fact, you're fighting to save the world from scum and bringing Enlightenment and that higher standard to the world. You have two choices - play the uneven playing field you have yourself wrought, or change the game. Oh, you can't change the game any more than you have because you'd show yourself to actually be Imperialistic, even to your own people? Oops. Time to either show your true colours or start walking your talk.

Frankly, I'd like to go back to the time of Lincoln; where honesty was appreciated and could actually win elections. These aren't the quotes you usually hear from the rail-splitter turned lawyer, but they show integrity:

Quote

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution....If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that....

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

This is what I believe as a man; this is what I believe I am required to do as President; This is my goal. Simple. Straightforward. And honest. Try finding that now. Oh, and reasonable (here I mean "arguing from reason") and therefore rebuttable.

Similarly:

Quote

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery.

I think the primary issue I have with the current Administration is that They do not so believe, and further believe that whatever they can get away with, by any means necessary, is the Right Thing to do. The contempt they hold their subjects in is odoriferous, from almost as far away as one can possibly be and still be on the same continent.

Michael.

[Al_U_Card]

When the number of deaths of US soldiers exceeds the number of people killed by 9-11 etc. (The Iraqis went by that number a long time ago.) will they consider that Bush et al are a bigger threat to the survival of US citizens than the terrorists?

[mike777]

"We are as much in a "war on terror" as we were in a "war on drugs" or "war on poverty" or "war on Communism" (as opposed to a dynastic "cold war" against the Soviet Union). They were and are cute phrases on which to hang whatever new power the government wanted to grant."


The logic is these kinds of posts seem to be, the voters are idiots/stupid easily lead by the elites. Just buy them off with PR slogans or something else.

If true then the voters get the government they deserve, if false then shame on you.

[helene_t]

mike777, on Apr 9 2007, 09:17 PM, said:

The logic is these kinds of posts seem to be, the voters are idiots/stupid easily lead by the elites. Just buy them off with PR slogans or something else.

If true then the voters get the government they deserve, if false then shame on you.

Strange logic.

Appr. half of those who voted last time, did not vote for Bush. So even if there was a 1-to-1 relation between being stupid and voting for Bush, you cannot say that more than roughly 50% were stupid.

Some may have voted Bush without agreeing 100% with his anti-terror policy.

Some may have agreed with his policy without agreeing with his misleading choice of wording. It's perfectly possibly to say "It's bad language use IMO to call this a 'war', but whatever you call it I'm for it".

It's also perfectly possible to have a weird notion about the proper use of the word "War" without being entirely stupid. I know a lot of (otherwise) smart people who call their own idiosyncratic version of modified Goren "Sayc" or even "Acol". I think they use that particular term in a sloppy way, but this doesn't necessarily make them "stupid".

[mike777]

1) Elections have consquences.
2) If you accept premise one and do not bother to vote or vote for a lousy government then yes you get what you deserve.
3) If we got a lousy government then you elites seem to think the voters are idiots are easily bought off. Yes that is the logic....sigh..........

First of Helene roughly 40% of the voting public did not vote. If 75% did not vote or voted against Bush then yes, the voting age public got the government they deserve.

The bottom line is that the comments Mycroft made and others assume the voting age public are idiots, or easily bought off like pawns or worse.

If true ok then we get the government we deserve, if not shame.

[helene_t]

OK, we'll probably never agree on the (non)improtance of the use of the words "war" and "terror" (for my part, instead you might as well call it the "huppelepup on guffelipyp" just to make clear that there are two words the meaning of which in this specific context must be clarrified before any discussion makes sense).

But then try this: Chaves, Hitler, Berlusconi, Chirac, Putin, Sharon etc. etc. all had, at a certain point in time, stronger electoral support than G.W. Bush ever had. Fidel Castro would probably have had as well if there has been free elections during his first say ten years of power.

So yes, on a certain scale, large fractions of U.S. voters could be called "stupid". But everything is relative. U.S. voters are not more stupid than voters in so many other countries. And even if most of them vote stupidly, they may be smart in other respects (some are smart bridge players, other are good at selling used cars or whatever), making many of them quite smart over-all.

[pbleighton]

"Well, Sir, the answer is that we hold you to a higher standard than despotic scum because you claim to be of a higher standard - in fact, you're fighting to save the world from scum and bringing Enlightenment and that higher standard to the world. You have two choices - play the uneven playing field you have yourself wrought, or change the game. Oh, you can't change the game any more than you have because you'd show yourself to actually be Imperialistic, even to your own people? Oops. Time to either show your true colours or start walking your talk."

Well said.

The fact that Bush got reelected doesn't change this truth.

His use of terror to fight his so-called "war on terror" is just another example of his administration's moral and intellectual bankruptcy. The fact that he got reelected doesn't change this either.

Peter

[hrothgar]

mike777, on Apr 9 2007, 10:42 PM, said:

1) Elections have consquences.
2) If you accept premise one and do not bother to vote or vote for a lousy government then yes you get what you deserve.
3) If we got a lousy government then you elites seem to think the voters are idiots are easily bought off. Yes that is the logic....sigh..........

I have wildly mixed emotions on this topic.

On the one hand, I'm a very strong believer that distributed decision making will (typically) produce very accurate results. (Three years back, a New Yorker writer named James Surowiecki wrote an outstanding book called “The Wisdom of Crowds” dealing with precisely this topic. I heartily recommend it) Voting systems like the American democracy are an obvious example of distributed decision making. I find this topic particularly interesting because the underlying math is quite similar to what you find in massively parallel systems which is one of the subjects that I tend to play around with. One point that Surowiecki doesn't really develop, however, is that any massively parallel system can exhibit was called a cascading failure. Simply put, if the failure mode for one mode is positively correlated with failure modes in other nodes you lose the benefits of the system.

Returning to Mike's example, the problem is not that the voters are “idiots”. These types of systems don't break because individual nodes lack processing capacity. What does tend to break these types of systems are issue like the following

1.If large number of nodes base their “independent” decision making on inaccurate information, they will reach erroneous conclusions. Garbage In, Garbage Out.
2.If individual nodes don't make independent decisions but instead, tend to follow whatever their leader tells them, the entire system can break

Regularly members of this forums may recall earlier threads involving Fox News and the hierarchical decision making models that get used in many organized religions.

[mike777]

Yes that was a wonderful book.


I finally agree with some of these comments but the logic still holds:
1) If you make your voting decision on garbage and not nongarbage you get the government you deserve.
2) If you blindly follow the leader as a lamb, you get the blind government you deserve.

The voters need to take ultimate responsiblity. If they make a mistake, no problem, we get another chance in two years with our system of checks and balances. It is not that hard to bring the government to a grinding halt if a lunatic is president in two years. In the meantime learn to live with the lunatic you elected.

Not that I am advocating anything drastic but even if you elect the devil there is always the option of last resort to a tyrant.

[pbleighton]

"The voters need to take ultimate responsiblity. If they make a mistake, no problem, we get another chance in two years with our system of checks and balances. It is not that hard to bring the government to a grinding halt if a lunatic is president in two years. In the meantime learn to live with the lunatic you elected."

Why should I do this, Mike?

The man's a war criminal.

Peter

[mike777]

The public had the chance in 2 years to vote in a House and Senate that could bring the government to a grinding halt in 2006 or 2002. They choose not too but did vote in the Dems in 2006.

It just seems if he is a war criminal, then the voters got what they deserve. They did not vote for impeachment with the 2006 election. They either disagree with you or are too stupid to know he is one.

[hrothgar]

mike777, on Apr 9 2007, 11:38 PM, said:

The voters need to take ultimate responsiblity. If they make a mistake, no problem, we get another chance in two years with our system of checks and balances. It is not that hard to bring the government to a grinding halt if a lunatic is president in two years. In the meantime learn to live with the lunatic you elected.

How many terms of office do you think it will take to undo the damage that Bush has done? Bush has destroyed our international credibility and wasted hundreds of billions of dollars. He's stuffed the civil service full of partisan hacks.

Regardless, I sure as hell didn't vote for the fuckhead, so excuse me for being pissed off that I'm going to have to clean up after him.

BTW, who did you vote for in the last two election? (I'm curious who this "you" is in "You elected")

[mike777]

Ya feel free to blame me and my ilk who voted for Bush over the worse alternatives.

It is this anger that I think give the Dems a huge chance in 2008. They are really out there and voting with their pocketbooks now. I actually think this is great, and how the system should work, if not perfect, pretty darn good.

One more reason I really hate McCain/Feingold. Full disclosure yes, limits no.

[pbleighton]

"It just seems if he is a war criminal, then the voters got what they deserve. They did not vote for impeachment with the 2006 election. They either disagree with you or are too stupid to know he is one."

How does the result of an election change guilt or innocence under the Geneva Conventions?

Presumably you can supply the historical parallels yourself.

Peter

[Winstonm]

Does anyone actually believe that in the U.S. a grassroots organization could eventually win the WH with a third-party candidate?

The truth as I see it is that we are given two alternatives for president, Scumbag A or Scumbag B, and intelligence has nothing to do with which scumbag wins.

Only 6 corporations own nearly 100% of the media in the U.S. - is there any wonder why all we get from MSM is spin based on owenership viewpoint? Which scumbag candidate looks best depends on the spin of the channel you happen to be watching at the time.

I think many of the intelligent simply vote no by not showing up on election days. And many think "the government we deserve" is impossible to achieve.