This came up in a conversation on Nate’s blog, but since he doesn’t want to discuss it there anymore, I’ll branch off and discuss it here.
It’s my opinion that the actions of a person (or group of people, or government, etc.) can still be evil regardless of their “motives”.
In the context of what we were discussing (the Israel/Palestinian conflict), I would say that the killings and other bad actions taken by both sides are wrong, regardless of their stated (or even honest) motives. Both sides would not consider themselves to have sinister motives, like just trying to kill as many people as they could. Rather, they would both say that they are acting in response to an attack from the other side (in self-defense); both sides target and kill people who were not directly involved in the specific case that they’re retaliating against, but they both say that this is necessary on their part because it is impossible to only target those who were actually involved in the previous acts.
My take is that it’s always wrong to set off a bomb on a bus full of innocent people, just like it’s always wrong to fire machine guns into and/or bomb unarmed crowds and bulldoze inhabited homes, and so-called “motives” don’t mitigate that in any case.
What do you think?
4 Comments
I think you’re right. It’s interesting how we have different rules for “war” than we do for individuals of the human race. It’s not right to kill, except…..
Even I would say that there are some cases when war is necessary, although in this day and age it can and should be fought very differently than it was in the past.
However, the dangers when it comes to war are when the war was not justified in the first place, or when (even in a justified war) a combatant engages in unethical conduct (such as torture) that is not justified even in the context of a war.
The thing is when you phrase your questions like that the answer is obvious, but in reality that’s not the question.
Here’s one that is just a little closer to reality and harder to answere, not saying it’s complete, or accurate all the time. - Is it OK to buldoze many houses where the ouccupants have been begged to leave in order to find and destroy a few smuggiling tunnels that are vital for the enemy to carry out RPG attacks on unarmed citizens?
The answer is still obviously no. It might be more difficult to wait until you can remove all the people (or you may want to call them “unarmed citizens”) first, if it’s really necessary to do it at all (which is debatable), but you are certainly not justified in saying “well, we asked them to leave, so now we’re going to kill anyone who didn’t”.
In a way, that’s a misleading question as well, because you’re assuming several things; primarily that finding and destroying the tunnels will prevent RPG attacks on unarmed citizens, which I would argue hasn’t been proven to be true by any means. This is like the argument that backers of the patriot act here in our country put forward: that it’s necessary to prevent terrorism. #1 - there’s no proof that it does actually prevent terrorism, and #2 even if it did, that doesn’t mean that it’s the only way to do it, or that it’s justified.
If the Israeli government decided to eradicate every last Palestinian (or move them all into concentration camps, etc.) following the lead of a certain other government that they’ve had experience with, that would certainly be effective in achieving the goal of ending Palestinian terrorism, so does that justify it? Of course not. The ends do not justify the means.
That’s the thing that bothers me the most about all these justifications of governmental actions that are wrong; they think that saying that they’re “preventing terrorism” should automatically justify pretty much any measures they’re willing to take, and we should accept them without question.