At last somebody makes a good point in this morality discussion. :-)
Morality is a concept, but in practice it is not an absolute. A real world requires compromise. Is it wrong to abort a baby? It depends. If the baby will come into a world where there is no food, or where the parents will beat it unmercifully, or where it will be shot down on the streets of Rio like many children were, maybe it is better the baby doesn't come. I said, Maybe. That's an individual perspective. If a woman is perpetually unfaithful to her husband and even has her lover stay at their house, maybe it is better they didn't take the sacred marriage vows. But again, that's a maybe. Maybe she supports him and he would be lost without her.
If a country engages in war, and innocent civilians die in the process, but the country finally is able to shake off decades of brutal guerilla rule, and potential acts of terror are averted, maybe it's better to go to war.
Every country has conflicting myths and needs. We do, too. The one thing I do dislike is our use of words that minimize the truth. "Collateral damage" is a really bad word, to me an immoral word. We need to say the truth: We're killing some innocent people in the attempt to create a greater good. We shouldn't look away from the tragedy in "collateral damage". They are not collateral, and they are not damage, they are human.
To me morality is the courage to look at things as they are, and then sometimes make hard choices and stand by them. I actually feel we've done that in this war. I found the article about the fact that we've missed certain targets because we wanted to be very very sure we weren't harming civilians actually encouraging. Maybe we did miss some opportunities--but probably that saved more lives. |
