Posted by
The Proud Liberal on Monday, October 15, 2007 11:31:31 AM
if "yourself" were the United States. A poignant story about the Navy Seal tragedy posted by The Patriot this morning put me on a train of thought. The Seals decided not to kill three goat herders who had discovered the Seals, knowing that the goat herders would probably report them to the Taliban, which they did. They Taliban attacked and killed three of the Seals and wounded the fourth. The Patriot says that this proves that America doesn't have the will to wage total war and defeat its enemies. But ultimately the story asks how many innocents we should be willing to murder as a nation, either because we're the good guys or because of self-interest in our own survival, regardless of whether or not we are the good guys.
Suppose the United States went to war with Syria and we were on the verge of losing the war and being taken over as a country by Syria. Would we be justified in nuking Damascus, which would certainly result in the death of hundreds of thousands of Syrians? Surely that would be done entirely on the basis of self preservation, since it might be questionable whether we were still the good guys after nuking a whole city just to preserve our own skin.
Yet, certainly some people will see us still as the good guys and take the long view, which is that over all and in the long term we're the good guys and we know it and the world will ultimately be a better place if the U.S. survives instead of Syria, and so the murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent Syrians is justified.
The confrontation of the Seals with the goat herders was a microcosm of this dilemma. Who were the good guys? How far should the Seals go to save their own skins and would they still be the good guys after it was all over? Was the ultimate good in their minds justification?
The Blackwater incidents raise the same question in miniature. Is murdering Iraqi civilians justified by the long term good that the good guys will do?
Is the value of human life to be judged on a sliding scale of long term good?