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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Alighieri who wrote (154904)	11/14/2002 1:32:52 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 1580429

Doing something because it's a moral prerogative seems to be a concept foreign to a certain mindset which seems to prescribe to the notion that one does not take action on the side of good unless there is gain in it.... The moral situation of a country is a bit different then that of an individual. A national leader's job is to look out for the national interest not the interest of other nations or people. Any action he takes involves a compelling others to support it. They have to pay taxes for the activity and solider get ordered in to combat if you are talking about war. All of this is only justified if it is in the interest of the country that is considering going to war. It can be reasonably argued that it is in our "enlightened self interest" to help others who are having problems. I think there is some truth to that idea. If we can help others easily at low cost and risk to ourselves and the situation is clear cut so that we can really know what the right thing to do is, then sure, go ahead and do it. But a lot of the situations where people push us to do something for humanitarian reasons are complex messed not simple ones. Pushing ourselves in to the situation in a violent way may just make things worse. Tim