Targeting civilian areas

[India]

Anyone else bothered by the fact that we bombed the living daylights out of a restaurant just to kill Saddam? What's so great about having him dead that it's worth bombing a civilian area and causing so many innocent bystanders to die? I question the morality of assassination, especially when it means a lot of others get killed.

[Woman]

uhhhhhhhhh

it's not like it was a PUBLIC restaurant!!! This was a VERY private meeting.

[India]

Sure, but a lot of people who weren't necessarily part of the regime died.

When I read the first reports, it said it was a restaurant, though apparently now they're saying it wasn't really. However, "Three houses were destroyed. It was unclear who was within, and whether there were any survivors. Tuesday, Iraqi rescue workers recovered bodies from the debris with a bulldozer. The body of a child and part of a young woman were pulled from the site." (from the AP).

[Socrates]

Woman is correct, and in line with what the soldiers have discovered about the extreme luxury of Saddam's palace compared with the ordinary people starving due to appeasenik-inspired sanctions.

And I don't question the morality of assassinating a butcher like Saddam if it would save thousands of lives. Would India have objected if Hitler had been assassinated during WW2 and resulted in a far quicker surrender and end of the extermination camps?

I've said it before and I evidently need to say it again: there is a world of difference between targeting a military objective and killing civilians accidentally, and deliberately targeting civilians as Saddam does, and pays the families of Palestinian suicide bombers who do.

[Rubia Warren]

You go, Socrates!:thumb:

[Woman]

Ditto, Soc! :cheers:

[India]

Socrates:

And I don't question the morality of assassinating a butcher like Saddam if it would save thousands of lives. Would India have objected if Hitler had been assassinated during WW2 and resulted in a far quicker surrender and end of the extermination camps?

Well, that's what I'm wondering. Would the assassination of either really have that effect? If it did, perhaps it would be a better option than war. But if not, is it right to do so, especially if taking the person alive is a viable option?

[spl_cadet]

If taking them alive is feasible and costs less lives, then do so. Otherwise, don't.

[Ryokan]

The window of opportunity was to small to take him alive, I think.

[kiwimac]

SO the end justifies the means?

kiwimac

[mickiel]

Today @ 04:59 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=122653#post122653)
kiwimac:

SO the end justifies the means?

kiwimac

We take people who kill others, and kill them, in order to teach them that killing is wrong. If we do not kill them, then they live to either bleak hotel accommications for the rest of their natural lives, and we must pay for that or they are eventually set free and may kill again, or may not. We kill others in war to get at the cause of dissagreement and free the injustice that killed the reason of the cause of peace, but we try peaceful nagotiations and usually get nowhere. So we kill, so that the killing can be stopped, no realizing that we are in a spiral that cannot be stopped, we are going deeper into the human world of self. Like getting to the center of an onion, we will see no end to the crying as long as man rules earth.

[Vorkosigan]

Woman is correct, and in line with what the soldiers have discovered about the extreme luxury of Saddam's palace compared with the ordinary people starving due to appeasenik-inspired sanctions.

Appeaseniks like Dick "I'll do business with any enemy of my country" Cheney and Dick "Saddam is our strong arm in the middle east" Rumsfeld? My, Socrates, your memory is even shorter than your temper.

Vorkosigan

[juliod]

And I don't question the morality of assassinating a butcher like Saddam if it would save thousands of lives.

Which thousand lives did it "save"? When the bombs struck, did one thousand people, previously killed, suddenly reappear alive?

No. Bombs kill. They cannot "save" lives.

When you make statements about a war being better than not fighting it, you talk about a future that won't happen. You better have some detailed explanations ready. Since the Iraqi death-toll is still increasing, it is hard to see that we have "saved" anyone.

And the ends can't justidy the means, since it is reported that we didn't get Hussein. The "ends" failed. All we did was bomb a civilian site, and kill a certain number of people. Pretty bad.

DanZ

[Captain Ochre]

Today @ 04:59 AM post located here (http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&postid=122653#post122653)
kiwimac:

SO the end justifies the means?

kiwimac

If the end justified the means, then we could kill everybody in Iraq just to assassinate Saddam.

Do you see the distinction?

[$cirisme]

Which thousand lives did it "save"? When the bombs struck, did one thousand people, previously killed, suddenly reappear alive?

No. Bombs kill. They cannot "save" lives.

Please tell me you didn't just say that

:doh: