Posts by webweaver
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Busytown: What was lost, in reply to Lilith __,
Gosh that's an awesome quote from MLK. It's what I was trying (rather unsuccessfully) to express in the other thread.
I should have known that someone like MLK would have been able to phrase those thoughts just perfectly.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Lucy Stewart,
Looks like the details of what exactly happened at the compound are getting murkier by the day. From The Guardian:
Bin Laden, according to a briefing on Monday, used his wife as a human shield and she was killed. By Tuesday, the White House reversed that: she had not been used as a human shield and she was not dead. The other point of discrepancy was the initial briefings that stated Bin Laden resisted and was killed in a "firefight", which suggests he had been armed. The White House insisted he had resisted, without saying how, but said he had no gun.
The "having no gun" bit but still (according to the WH) "resisting" is interesting... especially when the question of whether it was an assassination or an unavoidable death is being debated.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Sacha,
Yay! And phew! I find it weird to be in a discussion where we disagree, Sacha, cos I pretty much always agree with everything you post here :)
But anyway… I’m finding this discussion very interesting because it’s forcing me to examine my beliefs and follow them to wherever they logically take me.
I think I’m trying to look at a much bigger picture than simply the death of Bin Laden, because I believe it’s important to do so. So if someone says “well it’s OK that he’s been killed because he killed lots of people” I think about cycles of vengeance and how that POV fits (or doesn’t fit) into a society that looks for justice rather than vengeance (or at least says it does).
And when Isaac says “ah but you have to look at what he might do in the future and assess that risk as well” I worry that that’s the start of a potentially very slippery slope indeed, where (taken to its logical conclusion) it might be deemed OK to imprison/punish/put to death someone because of what they might do in the future, regardless of what they have already done in the past.
I just don’t think it’s right to cherry-pick your villains and your punishments because, as I already asked, where do you draw the lines, and who gets to decide on those lines? Over thousands of years societies have attempted to make rules and laws that determine what they consider to be acceptable and unacceptable behaviour and how unacceptable behaviour should be dealt with – precisely because if you don’t, you end up with vigilantism and chaos. And those rules are supposed to apply to everyone equally, regardless of who they are or where they sit within the hierarchy of society.
Do I wish that they’d managed to assassinate Hitler before he could implement his Final Solution? Do I wish they’d gotten rid of Pol Pot, Stalin, Idi Amin and all the rest? Yes of course in some ways I do, because what they did was appalling and awful and unforgivable.
But because I’m fundamentally a pacifist, and someone who believes that the death penalty is morally wrong, I can’t condone the killing of anyone – however bad they are. So I’m left with wishing that these people could have been brought to justice, and tried in a fair trial, and found guilty if the evidence pointed that way, and then punished by being locked away in a cell for however long it was deemed necessary and fair to do so.
To me, it’s the same thought process that goes with “I may not agree with what you say, but I will fight for your right to say it”. If I believe in a fair and equitable justice system, and if I believe that killing people for whatever reason is morally wrong, then I have to stick with that position for everyone, however much their actions may appall and horrify me.
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A year and a bit later, we put the fat little toddler in his stroller and marched down Broadway with hundreds of thousands of people against the impending invasion of Iraq, chanting “Not In Our Name.” Together we testified that no matter how great the hole in the heart of this city, you couldn’t fix it by hurting more people.
Thank you so much for your beautiful post, Jolisa. It brought tears to my eyes as well.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Craig Ranapia,
With all due respect to President Obama, vengeance is not justice. It wasn’t in 1946, and it isn’t now. Justice is hard and elusive; perhaps we will never find it in this world, or any other. But I just thought we were supposed to be better.
This.
I understand on a practical level that Osama was in a highly fortified compound, he was playing home advantage, it was a crazy unpredictable firefight etc etc – I know all that – but that doesn’t stop me feeling uncomfortable about the end result.
To me, elements of the discussion that relate to the fact that he was a bad bad man who killed heaps of people shouldn’t have a place in a civilised society where justice is supposed to be the ultimate aim, rather than vengeance.
If you say it’s OK to take into account someone’s past history when you decide whether or not you’re going to take them out, doesn’t that take us all into a very grey and murky area? At what point do I say “well he killed X number of people so I’m allowed to kill him”? A thousand, a hundred, ten, one? Where do we draw that line? And who gets to decide where the line is drawn? Can I also make the same calculation about other leaders whose decisions (IMO) led to the deaths of many people? Blair? Bush? Rumsfeld?
Haven’t we instigated the rule of law and developed legislation relating to crime and punishment in order to move away from a world where it’s OK to do away with someone because they looked at you funny, or did something you didn’t like, or even committed murder?
There are a bunch of old cliches about the way a society behaves towards the least of its citizens, and others about the measure of a society being how it treats its enemies – and I think they’re important things to think about.
How am I any better than my enemy if I treat him in the same brutal fashion that he treats me? Shouldn’t we, as Craig says, be trying to be better than that?
It’s all so bloody Medieval otherwise….
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Sacha,
You’re trying to turn an AND into an OR.
I assume (and he can correct me if I’m mistaken) that John was saying someone with a history of illegal killing AND who is currently shooting at you is a justified target for lethal force.
No, I'm not quite saying that. I'm saying that whether or not Bin Laden is a mass murderer should have no bearing on whether or not it's OK to kill him. If John had said:
Killing isn’t murder when they are shooting back at you.
I would have agreed with him (and I already noted that), because that's self-defence and if you want to live you probably have no choice but to return fire (or run away). But he didn't. He said:
Killing isn’t murder when they are wanted for mass murder and are shooting back at you.
...and what I'm saying is that the "when they are wanted for mass murder" bit of that sentence is completely irrelevant to the argument. I think it's morally wrong to justify killing someone because they themselves are a killer, just as I believe the death penalty is morally wrong.
To me it's completely illogical to say "we're punishing this person because they killed someone, and we believe killing another person is wrong. And so we're going to punish them by... killing them. Very Old Testament.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to John Holley,
Killing isn’t murder when they are wanted for mass murder and are shooting back at you.
I would agree with half of that. I accept that when you're in the middle of a firefight you don't have much choice about shooting back. Doesn't stop me wishing it had turned out differently though.
However, I completely disagree with your statement that "Killing isn’t murder when they are wanted for mass murder". It is. What they are wanted for matters not at all.
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Hard News: You know what ..., in reply to Adzze,
Yeah, I bet they’re feeling really betrayed right now.
Oh sure I get that - they're not exactly enamoured with the USA anyway - but it's not going to improve things, is it?
Fine if the US wants to continue fighting random Middle-Eastern countries and/or the War on Terra like some intra-village feud where you kill one of their guys so they come back and kill one of yours - endlessly for generation after generation - but if anyone actually wants, you know, peace or something, then this isn't the way to go about getting it.
And you might be interested to hear the thoughts of some of the people being inteviewed on Radio NZ today - including some dude a few minutes ago (didn't catch who he was but I suppose he's some authority on something-or-other) who was completely convinced that the death of OBL will send a strong message to anyone thinking of joining Al Qaeda that it would be a bad idea, as the US will personally hunt them down and wipe them out.
He was completely sure that this would magically and immediately decrease the numbers of Al Qaeda members and ensure that people would no longer consider joining in the future.
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Personally I'm feeling extremely uncomfortable about the fact that he was killed (together with a bunch of people with him) rather than being captured. It's hardly a shining example of the democratic process in action. Killing someone is murder, regardless of who it is.
As a result, I'm also deeply unimpressed with the celebrations outside the White House and elsewhere in the US. Chanting "USA! USA!" is also hardly likely to endear the USA to those who support Bin Laden and/or his principles and beliefs.
It's interesting to note that one woman interviewed on Radio NZ this afternoon, whose brother was killed on 9/11, feels somewhat the same way.
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I shan’t be watching any of it because I just.don’t.care.
When I became a Kiwi citizen we all had to swear allegiance to the Queen as part of the oath you take – which amused me hugely, as I’d not had to do that before – being born in England they kind of take that bit as read I suppose :)
I mumbletymumbled my way through through the swearing allegiance bit so I didn’t actually have to say it.