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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (99065)	5/24/2003 9:06:11 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

>>All Life Is Sacred. From embryos to convicted murderers to foreigners who hate us, to U.S. soldiers. All means all. Even Arafat. Unless your morals are relative.<< I willingly concede that all life starts out sacred. But human beings have the ability - it's called free will - to do wrong -- and when they do certain wrongs they forfeit the right to remain at large. I think we can agree on that. Murderers shouldn't walk the street committing more murder, they should be locked up where they can't commit more murder. I think they should be executed, you probably don't, but we can agree that they should be locked up. So, I really don't care whether Arafat is killed or locked up forever. I think killing is better, but locking him up and keeping him incommunicado for eternity is harsher but just as effective. As for murder and relativism - absolutely. That's why there are degrees of homicide, from soldiers in war and self defense, which isn't culpable, to negligence, which isn't criminal, then negligent homicide, reckless homicide, murder two, murder one, capital murder. Yes, we've assigned relativity to homicide since there has been recorded law.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (99065)	5/24/2003 9:16:36 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

As a doctor, you see moral relativity vis-a-vis death all the time. Giving a raped woman a Morning After pill. Aborting a three week preganancy. Aborting an 18 week pregnancy. Performing a partial birth abortion at 26 weeks on a gravely deformed fetus. Giving a terminal cancer victim all the morphine she wants, and enough to end her pain if that's what she decides. I have a relative who works in a hospice, I have a relative who works in a woman's hospital, I know what they talk about, I know what they do. Life is sacred, but doctors don't prolong all life at all costs, do they? Did you quit being a doctor because you can't handle moral ambiguity? Ambiguity is hard, that's why we need ethicists. Lawyers have ethicists, I think doctors do, too.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (99065)	5/25/2003 8:26:53 AM
From: Dennis O'Bell	Respond to of 281500

Would it be appropriate for me to post that the War On Terror can't be won, as long as Bush is alive ? Not only inappropriate but in complete contradiction with the way democracy works in our country. Don't we have regular elections and term limits ? Republicans haven't even been "in power" in the US for the majority of the time over the course of the 20'th century. They can and will be voted out democratically at some point in the not too distant future. On the other hand, Arafat is still there after decades. Arafat and that stupid territorial dispute has probably done more to legitimize murder of innocent civilians in the eyes of the world than anyone or anything else. Because when a school bus full of Israeli school children is blown up by a suicide bomber, it is not terrorism. It's "struggle". It's possible for the authors and planners of these crimes to go and be interviewed in Western news media like the New York Times and talk with satisfaction of how their "spirits are high", and their "mood is good" because 50 Israeli civilians had been murdered that week. And now that that particular genie is out of the bottle, there is no putting it back in and for a long time to come. It's already very bad when we in the US are permitted to euphemistically talk about "collateral damage" when civilians are killed in Afghanistan or Iraq but as Cobalt Blue and other lawyers around here can tell you, there is a clear difference between negligent manslaughter and premeditated murder. Well, it's the Palestinians who need a Regime Change because Arafat is not willingly going anywhere despite his dismal performance. I don't care how he leaves the picture, but it's perfectly clear that all this latest talk of Roadmaps is words in the air as long as Arafat and his power structure remains in place. Talking about Regime Change in a country like the US is arrant nonsense. This is not a totalitarian regime, it's a functioning democracy, as is Israel or France.