tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post6560198727593143325..comments2024-03-27T23:49:45.668-07:00Comments on Edward Feser: Unconditional surrenderEdward Feserhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-49329820112015663082020-06-04T01:02:05.228-07:002020-06-04T01:02:05.228-07:00The only thing that I disagree with is that the Am...The only thing that I disagree with is that the Americans needed to insist on unconditional surrender. The Japanese had already offered to negotiate peace twice before Truman decided to drop the bomb, and I think some attempt could at least have been made before the measure was put into place (if it had to have been at all.) <br />Moreover, he didn't even offer an ultimatum between the two bombings.Joshua McGillivrayhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01915709602991970213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-62490423930431196042011-01-10T09:37:52.732-08:002011-01-10T09:37:52.732-08:00Sorry, not "and if not" - I meant, "...Sorry, not "and if not" - I meant, "And if" - meaning, IF the bombs would have been dropped on an evacuated city.<br /><br />Seems the "if evacuated" argument is like "if she were my wife" argument. That is, "If that woman I slept with were really my wife, I still would have slept with her" somehow means I did not commit adultery - the hypothetical situation I dream up does not change the fact of the actual situation which occurred.c mattnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-80523858998867816672011-01-10T09:33:28.045-08:002011-01-10T09:33:28.045-08:00intentionally killing civilians for the purpose of...<i>intentionally killing civilians for the purpose of terrorizing the survivors into surrendering</i><br /><br />vs<br /><br /> <i>to destroy the power and prestige of two major Japanese cities in order to show the Japanese that all their power and prestige can be taken away from them</i><br /><br />OK, I am having a little difficulty in discerning the difference between these two. Wasn't the destruction of the prestige and power of the two Japanese cities precisely accomplished by the intentional killing of the civilians?<br /><br />Someone mentioned would the bombs have been dropped if, for example, everyone had evacuated? And if not, that means the civilians were not targeted, ergo, not immoral. But does that alternate history make a difference? The fact is, the cities were populated and the bombs were dropped anyway. The prestige and power of the cities were detroyed precisely by obliterating their populations. The hypothesis that it may have been accomplished some other way if the opportunity presented (e.g., bombing an evacuated N/H) does not change the fact of what actually did happen.c mattnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-15527472498217422282011-01-09T02:13:06.477-08:002011-01-09T02:13:06.477-08:00As I tried to post in a previous thread, after a s...As I tried to post in a previous thread, after a season of conjecture, we now finally know what "JT" stands for: Just Trolling.Codgitator (Cadgertator)https://www.blogger.com/profile/00872093788960965392noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-15190832156637069872011-01-08T21:28:05.402-08:002011-01-08T21:28:05.402-08:00Burl... Whoops! I mean JT,
It's that kind of...Burl... Whoops! I mean JT,<br /><br />It's that kind of jackassery that got you banned before (one of only two people I've ever banned) when you were posting under your older name. Since you've at least made an effort to be more reasonable while posting under this "Just Thinking/JT" moniker, I've cut you some slack. But if you're now reverting to your older ways, you are welcome to get lost again. Nor will you be allowed to stick around next time. (Here's a tip, though: It would help you to maintain the "Nobody here but us non-Burls" illusion if you didn't keep riffing on your obsessions -- Whitehead, animal rights, etc.)<br /><br />As to my "ploy," I think I've only ever made reference to being too busy to answer every comment a few times -- to most people, it's blindingly obvious, and they don't need me to explain it to them. I only ever have to do so in response to people like you who get hung up on some pet issue and demand that I drop everything and address it right away. (Notice that there are lots of other folks whose comments I have not responded to, but who have not whined about it. I guess the squeaky wheel really does get the grease.)<br /><br />As to your "point," if I understand correctly, your claim is that the Catholic view, if followed out consistently, would entail that if the Church does not explicitly condemn some specific action, then a Catholic ought not to regard it as immoral.<br /><br />If that's it, it's a pretty good example of the sort of comment that's too stupid for me to respond to even if I did have time. But here goes anyway, just for you: Do you really think the Church teaches, or that any Catholic theologian has ever held, that we need not object to (say) Watergate, or Bernie Madoff's crimes, or Charles Manson's murders, unless the Church explicitly condemns these specific crimes, by name, in some official document? <br /><br />Presumably not. So, why you think that a Catholic ought not to criticize Hiroshima unless the pope does so in a speech somewhere is beyond me. The truth is that the Church prefers as far as possible to confine herself to statements of general principle, and to let theologians, statesmen, churchmen and laymen to apply them to concrete circumstances. This is especially so where a number of empirical considerations are involved that require careful application of moral principle to contingent circumstances.<br /><br />But then you've already made it blindingly obvious, in many of your other comments, that you do not understand Catholic theology and do not care to find out what it really says. If I had to correct your errors every time you made them, I'd be doing nothing else. You may have time to spend all day in comboxes, posting comment after comment. I don't, sorry.Edward Feserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-14667583949613363502011-01-08T19:12:38.399-08:002011-01-08T19:12:38.399-08:00...
If a citizen who is contributing to the war-ef......<br />If a citizen who is contributing to the war-effort, and who is in some ways a (potential) reserve soldier, is still off-limits, or a solider who is in hospital, etc. then can you shoot at anyone who is not actively shooting back at you at that moment? Can you ever bomb a weapons factory? (Sure, a building is not a person, but there will always be someone present, some non-solider who is not firing at you; even at night there will surely be at least one security guard.) The answer to these questions is not at all obvious from the principles as stated.<br /><br />Conventional bombing kills and terrorises civilians too; is the difference the number of civilians killed? Or how directly their deaths are intended? So that Hiroshima could be defended <i>if</i> the point was not to kill civilians. (Which may or may not have been the case historically.) (And as for Al Qaeda using the rationale of "enemy citizens", well, yeah, they do have somewhat of a point. But it's not like apart from that sticking point they had a just cause! And their "somewhat of a point" is much weaker than the WWII case, so it's entirely plausible that they lie on different sides of what's justified.)<br /><br />Is it in fact possible to wage modern warfare morally? What if the enemy plants civilians all over the place, and announces the fact, etc., so as to paralyse a moral military? That is not a rhetorical question, mind you; if the conclusion is that surrender if the only moral option, then so be it. Doing the right thing is not always fun or easy, but it's always possible.–Davidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-66295028509907939782011-01-08T19:11:13.674-08:002011-01-08T19:11:13.674-08:00I know Prof. Feser has too much time to kill and n...I know Prof. Feser has too much time to kill and not enough ideas for articles, but after a shocking number of comments (here and in relation to lying) along the lines of, "OK, so it's wrong, but I'd do it anyway", I think a post discussing why it's wrong to do wrong things would not go amiss. (You'd think it would be self-evident, but apparently some people think it's all right as long as you go to confession after....)<br /><br />I also wish to point out that reasonable men — even men who all subscribe to Natural Law — can disagree about specific cases. The principles of natural law are not (usually) logically deduced <i>Principia Mathematica</i>-style from first principles alone. Just War and other theories usually start from known or self-evident premises and extrapolate from them general rules. As indeed, do all men when formulating their moral codes. Yes, people's minds are corrupted by modernism; they are corrupted by the Fall; they make mistakes and rationalisations. Still, a great number of reasonable and trustworthy people do not think that using nuclear weapons as in WWII is necessarily immoral. Obviously, that doesn't mean they can't be wrong, but it makes it highly unlikely that they are <i>trivially</i> wrong. <br /><br />Augustine never imagined bombers dropping nuclear weapons, nor bombers at all, nor bombs at all. It is reasonable to ask whether principles derived to deal with ancient or mediaeval experiences are applicable to modern warfare. The question is not whether the principles change — of course, true principles do not — but whether they got the principles quite right. (The ancients and Mediaevals thought space was Euclidean, not because they were bad at geometry but because they did not discover quite the right geometry.) The questions raised by the other David (not me) are very relevant: the modern citizen of a warring state is very different from an uninvolved, ignorant peasant. A bomb, or even a gun, is very different from a sword used in hand-to-hand combat. (Come to think of it, perhaps archery is the closest ancient equivalent to modern long-distance weaponry; did Augustine or Aquinas ever discuss the morality of such in relation to hitting innocent targets?)<br /><br />[cont...]-Davidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-48899578757798563382011-01-08T19:09:18.606-08:002011-01-08T19:09:18.606-08:00I know Prof. Feser has too much time to kill and n...I know Prof. Feser has too much time to kill and not enough ideas for articles, but after a shocking number of comments (here and in relation to lying) along the lines of, "OK, so it's wrong, but I'd do it anyway", I think a post discussing why it's wrong to do wrong things would not go amiss. (You'd think it would be self-evident, but apparently some people think it's all right as long as you go to confession after....)<br /><br />I also wish to point out that reasonable men — even men who all subscribe to Natural Law — can disagree about specific cases. The principles of natural law are not (usually) logically deduced <i>Principia Mathematica</i>-style from first principles alone. Just War and other theories usually start from known or self-evident premises and extrapolate from them general rules. As indeed, do all men when formulating their moral codes. Yes, people's minds are corrupted by modernism; they are corrupted by the Fall; they make mistakes and rationalisations. Still, a great number of reasonable and trustworthy people do not think that using nuclear weapons as in WWII is necessarily immoral. Obviously, that doesn't mean they can't be wrong, but it makes it highly unlikely that they are <i>trivially</i> wrong. <br /><br />Augustine never imagined bombers dropping nuclear weapons, nor bombers at all, nor bombs at all. It is reasonable to ask whether principles derived to deal with ancient or mediaeval experiences are applicable to modern warfare. The question is not whether the principles change — of course, true principles do not — but whether they got the principles quite right. (The ancients and Mediaevals thought space was Euclidean, not because they were bad at geometry but because they did not discover quite the right geometry.) The questions raised by the other David (not me) are very relevant: the modern citizen of a warring state is very different from an uninvolved, ignorant peasant. A bomb, or even a gun, is very different from a sword used in hand-to-hand combat. (Come to think of it, perhaps archery is the closest ancient equivalent to modern long-distance weaponry; did Augustine or Aquinas ever discuss the morality of such in relation to hitting innocent targets?)<br /><br />If a citizen who is contributing to the war-effort, and who is in some ways a (potential) reserve soldier, is still off-limits, or a solider who is in hospital, etc. then can you shoot at anyone who is not actively shooting back at you at that moment? Can you ever bomb a weapons factory? (Sure, a building is not a person, but there will always be someone present, some non-solider who is not firing at you; even at night there will surely be at least one security guard.) The answer to these questions is not at all obvious from the principles as stated.<br /><br />Conventional bombing kills and terrorises civilians too; is the difference the number of civilians killed? Or how directly their deaths are intended? So that Hiroshima could be defended <i>if</i> the point was not to kill civilians. (Which may or may not have been the case historically.) (And as for Al Qaeda using the rationale of "enemy citizens", well, yeah, they do have somewhat of a point. But it's not like apart from that sticking point they had a just cause! And their "somewhat of a point" is much weaker than the WWII case, so it's entirely plausible that they lie on different sides of what's justified.)<br /><br />Is it in fact possible to wage modern warfare morally? What if the enemy plants civilians all over the place, and announces the fact, etc., so as to paralyse a moral military? That is not a rhetorical question, mind you; if the conclusion is that surrender if the only moral option, then so be it. Doing the right thing is not always fun or easy, but it's always possible.Davidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-24829952494493881342011-01-08T17:18:53.139-08:002011-01-08T17:18:53.139-08:00JT: C'mon Ed, the "I am too busy to addre...JT: <i>C'mon Ed, the "I am too busy to address comments in my own blog is sooo often your ploy and it is very weak.</i><br /><br />How can it be weak? Are you paying the man for personal tutoring, JT? Or are you just being a jerk? That's not a rhetorical question, by the way; I want to know why you think you are owed a response whenever you snap your fingers. It is surely not a reasonable expectation. (Note that at this point, it would however be reasonable for Ed simply to bin any comment coming from you.)<br /><br /><i>I have been searching the web for a day, and cannot find where the Catholic Church issued its "firm and unequivocal condemnation: of Hirshima and Nagasaki.</i><br /><br />In the Catechism, #2314. Considering you posted that in the preceding sentence, it makes one wonder whether you are taking any of this seriously.Davidnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-50713636633117577982011-01-08T17:06:03.641-08:002011-01-08T17:06:03.641-08:00C'mon Ed, the "I am too busy to address c...C'mon Ed, the "I am too busy to address comments in my own blog is sooo often your ploy and it is very weak. Close the combox if it is so time consuming. <br /><br />What about it? <br /><br />No condemnation, no immorality?jtnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-79671869674298265492011-01-08T04:01:28.315-08:002011-01-08T04:01:28.315-08:00Paragraph 2314 of the Catechism
"every act o...Paragraph 2314 of the Catechism<br /><br />"every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man, which merits firm and unequivocal condemnation."<br /><br />I have been searching the web for a day, and cannot find where the Catholic Church issued its "firm and unequivocal condemnation: of Hirshima and Nagasaki.<br /><br />If indeed there is none, then the Catholic natural law is not as binding as this blog post implies, and the atomic bombings are not condemnable acts.<br /><br />Sorry, Ed, but no condemnation, no immoral act.jtnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-18687806765263229212011-01-06T19:34:06.171-08:002011-01-06T19:34:06.171-08:00BTW, I want to thank TheOFloinn and Brandon for th...BTW, I want to thank TheOFloinn and Brandon for their comments on the "total war" idea. I did start to write up a comment on the subject, but it was intemperate enough that I decided to scrap it. I think they've said what needs to be said.Edward Feserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-71234520652621951292011-01-06T19:31:56.527-08:002011-01-06T19:31:56.527-08:00In the spirit of dialog, how about a response?
Yo...<i>In the spirit of dialog, how about a response?</i><br /><br /><i>Your blog should never become one-way, top-down.</i><br /><br />Tell you what, JT, you add another 12 hours to my day and I'll get to working on that response.<br /><br />As it is, I barely have enough time to write regular blog posts, let alone respond to (or, I'm sorry to say, even read) every comment everyone makes. Most readers realize that when I do not respond to a comment, that's the reason.<br /><br />I might add that it would increase the odds of my responding to your comments if you didn't post 10-15 of them a day...Edward Feserhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13643921537838616224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-74740758044495259902011-01-06T17:08:04.398-08:002011-01-06T17:08:04.398-08:00Ed
You can reply. Put your dissenters in their p...Ed<br /><br />You can reply. Put your dissenters in their place and maintain you are right with further argument, or perhaps admit your position may not be so strong. In the spirit of dialog, how about a response?<br /><br />Your blog should never become one-way, top-down. Tell me that's how you want it and I will grant you the pleasure of my leave.jtnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-21523210148053095202011-01-06T09:17:07.624-08:002011-01-06T09:17:07.624-08:00David,
I answered your question with the only an...David, <br /><br />I answered your question with the only answer appropriate to it. If you want better answers, formulate better questions. This is the second time that your attempt to formulate a question to summarize the question has turned out to be vague and useless, which suggests very strongly that you have no real criticism against critics of the A-bomb here, but just a vague feeling with no substance to it. At least, that's as much as I can get from all the equivocations in them so far.<br /><br />This can be made more precise. You say:<br /><br /><i>My admiration for him only increases when, still to this day, A-bomb critics refuse to propose concrete alternatives that might meet the standard of justice with which they condemn Truman.</i><br /><br />But this is simply to miss the entire point of the criticism. The primary point of the criticism is not to "condemn Truman" or indeed to assign any sort of culpability but to assess an action morally. Because the action is cooperative, involving many people, the two detach from each other: when the action is morally assessed as culpable, it is still a question as to how culpable any particular person in the cooperative network is. By certain buck-stops-here assumptions people might well attribute primary responsibility to Truman, but the moral assessment of the action of dropping an atomic weapon on a city does not require doing so. Further, even if we do talk about specific responsibilities of particular people, Truman's role in the entire process was very specific, as I have already pointed out; whether or not Truman acted justly depends entirely on <i>whether he fulfilled that specific role justly</i>. You again keep sloshing around between what Truman's responsibility was and what the responsibility of other people cooperating in the action was, as if there were no difference; the only issues on the table that are relevant to whether <i>Truman</i> acted justly are (1) whether he took steps to avoid being negligent in his Constitutional and legal duties; (2) what he actually knew would be involved in dropping the bombs; (3) whether he acted according to conscience; (4) whether he properly listened to the advice of his generals in making his decision; and (5) whether, given the information he had, authorizing the bomb involved authorizing a military action that a reasonable person would recognize as being an act of, in Ed's words, "intentionally killing innocent civilians for the sake of terrorizing the survivors into surrendering" or something similar. The only alternatives on the table that are relevant to whether Truman acted justly on this point are: authorize dropping the bomb or don't authorize dropping the bomb. That's all. There's nothing abstract about it; it's just that the particular question you keep wanting to make this discussion about is not interesting. The action of dropping the bomb could be intrinsically immoral, Truman could have authorized it, and Truman could still turn out not to be culpable if (for instance) crucial information had been left out, or if some key point had been non-negligently overlooked, or anything like. The responsibility of Truman is not relevant to the moral assessment of the bombings (although the moral assessment of the bombings is one of the things relevant to question of the responsibility of Truman).<br /><br />It gets very different when we recognize that the action being assessed is not the action "Harry Truman's decision to authorize the bombings" but "the whole cooperative action of bombing". The latter is a cooperative action, in the same sense that three men rowing a boat together are engaged in one action. And it is this cooperative action that Ed criticized in the post. None of your arguments so far have been relevant to this; they only look so because you keep equivocating among different moral questions.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-26039036278776131112011-01-06T04:35:37.182-08:002011-01-06T04:35:37.182-08:00I, not UI, not Ujtnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-82869792932071621592011-01-06T04:34:11.087-08:002011-01-06T04:34:11.087-08:00On second thought, with John Searle in mind, perha...On second thought, with John Searle in mind, perhaps philosophy writers ought to simply stop pretending to do anything but opining.<br /><br />That said, U am interested in how this discussion has affected Ed's opinion on natural law and on bombs.jtnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-5545286350832193782011-01-06T04:13:42.633-08:002011-01-06T04:13:42.633-08:00Well VJ, you said it all and you said it right. m...Well VJ, you said it all and you said it right. metaphysics and ethics should be off-limits to philosophy writers until one has seen 60 years or so.<br /><br />Looking forward to Ed’s reply.jtnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-74225215772741232862011-01-05T18:38:46.716-08:002011-01-05T18:38:46.716-08:00This is an interesting discussion, but I'm not...This is an interesting discussion, but I'm not sure what side to take.<br /><br />Was using the atomic bombs immoral because civilian cities were targeted?<br /><br />Possibly.<br /><br />That's a different issue from whether or not the bombs should have been used.<br /><br />Japan brought America into the war, Pearl Harbour and all that. In doing so they probably lost the war for the Axis powers.<br /><br />Would the Japanese have fought to the last man, woman and child?<br /><br />They're a very proud people, and choosing death over dishonour has a long tradition there. I could see it happening.<br /><br />Did the demonstration of nuclear weapons provide an incentive for later governments to leave the damn things in their launch tubes?<br /><br />Perhaps.<br /><br />Was it the best of a variety of bad choices?<br /><br />Maybe.<br /><br />I don't know. Even if it was immoral I think that I would have launched the bombs anyway.<br /><br />A question was asked of me once. <br /><br />"If your country was attacked, how many of the enemy nation would you kill in order to save your own?"<br /><br />I didn't know the answer so they told me.<br /><br />"If the answer is anything other than 'all of them' then you aren't qualified to lead a country."<br /><br />As for the terrorists, remember there was no declared war against any Islamic state on 9/11. It was a Pearl Harbour.Duke of Earlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14891442161634560912noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-56509226180583109322011-01-05T17:56:09.999-08:002011-01-05T17:56:09.999-08:00Brandon,
Well, yes, we can always retreat into ab...Brandon,<br /><br />Well, yes, we can always retreat into abstractions and remain there. The advice to Truman is to scrutinize his generals' proposals and act in accordance with the principles of justice. This is simply advising someone not to sin. Perfectly sound, but not very helpful.<br /><br />Unfortunately, Truman was not dealing in abstractions but in a decision involving a limited set of concrete alternatives. Frankly, I admire him for his determination to step up and take responsibility for so serious a decision. I think it is only fair to him to require that his critics deal in specific alternatives rather than abstractions. My admiration for him only increases when, still to this day, A-bomb critics refuse to propose concrete alternatives that might meet the standard of justice with which they condemn Truman. Instead, they retreat with the hedge that it is someone else's job to come up with such proposals, and only their job to shoot them down. Thank goodness Truman was better than this.<br /><br />This will be my last post.... thank you for the discussion.David T.https://www.blogger.com/profile/12465166826152433002noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-76527348239019356502011-01-05T15:55:52.304-08:002011-01-05T15:55:52.304-08:00my first ever comment came thru yesterday perfecti...my first ever comment came thru yesterday perfectisimo.MMcCuehttp://www.philosophyclass.netnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-73736008624168682232011-01-05T14:26:02.853-08:002011-01-05T14:26:02.853-08:00Motivation...intentionality...
Speaking as a non ...Motivation...intentionality...<br /><br />Speaking as a non A/T, I do recall something Tom said on motivation: where any of the 4 cardinal virtues (fortitude, temperance, justice, prudence) or faith, hope, and charity are missing, you cannot have moral action.<br /><br />I already commented how his natural law theory is nothing other than his philosophical/theological opinion, not a fact. But if you do choose to beat people over the head with it as was the thrust of this post, it is worth noting that going into a war, your motives and intentions will surely lack several of the 7 virtues, meaning the effect of going to war always has immoral causes. So why focus only on Japan?jtnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-81898900304670359322011-01-05T13:59:59.982-08:002011-01-05T13:59:59.982-08:00Since you say you would follow the advice of the g...<i>Since you say you would follow the advice of the generals, I assume you agree to the details of their plans.</i><br /><br />No. Despite the fact that you keep talking about details, you keep overlooking them when convenient for your argument. You asked, very clearly, what <i>I</i> would have recommended <i>Truman</i> to do <i>to act in accordance with principles of justice</i>: and Truman had a very specific job to do in the process. As President his role was to authorize and legitimate military actions as constitutional, legal, and consistent with human good as best he could determine it. And as far as I can tell, <i>I</i> would have advised <i>Truman</i> not to drop the bomb, to listen to his generals' advice about alternatives, to scrutinize their proposals to make sure as best he could that in authorizing them he would not be authorizing something as constitutional, legal, and consistent with human good that wasn't, and go with it. That's what a President has to do to act justly in war. And Truman's role in the whole matter was simply that: to act justly as President. It was his generals' role to come up with just proposals on the basis of their military expertise and to organize the means of executing any proposal the President authorized. And it was the role of the particular airmen, etc., to find just means to carry out the particular orders they were receiving. The differences in these roles are differences that matter, and you keep ignoring these details as if they didn't matter, as if (for instance) one can just slosh from the question of how one acts justly as a President in war to whether a general in proposing this or that specific proposal is proposing something just, and back again, without recognizing that there are different moral questions here.<br /><br /><i>The intended end in both cases is the same: Blow up the city.</i><br /><br />I'm not sure I understand why you could be saying this except by treating consequences and ends as the same. Unless you've turned over the military to insane people, blowing up cities is not the intended end in an invasion scenario, although it may be a consequence of certain support actions in the invasion. It's certainly not the intended end of the decision to invade. And I cannot imagine any invasion scenario where the most rational thing even from a purely technical military perspective would be to "blow up the city". Even Shock-and-Awe tactics never have that goal; and it would usually be counter-productive. One does blow up infrastructure, of course; but one is always as selective as possible about that, and always subordinate to more important ends. Again, it is at most a loose figure of speech, precisely at a point where something more precise is needed.<br /><br />On the intention question that has come up in several of the comments:<br /><br />One should be careful of the temptation to over-psychologize the term and confuse it with motivation. If you have enough information to be able to tell whether something is accidental or not, you have enough information to say something about intentions.Brandonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06698839146562734910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-81237369184875887092011-01-05T13:57:51.025-08:002011-01-05T13:57:51.025-08:00>Now, could you try and address what else I sai...>Now, could you try and address what else I said - could impact your ideas.<br /><br />I will think about it.BenYachovhttp://www.catholic.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8954608646904080796.post-2635503844859974712011-01-05T13:34:39.971-08:002011-01-05T13:34:39.971-08:00VJ,
Your wife’s views remind me of something I rea...VJ,<br />Your wife’s views remind me of something I read from a speech by the then-mayor of Dresden on the 60th anniversary of the so-called fire-bombing: “We started the fire, which came back and consumed us.”George R.noreply@blogger.com