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

To: Ilaine who wrote (99928)	6/2/2003 9:42:42 PM
From: Ilaine	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Peters is arguing that the ethical thing to do is to kill the thugs who perpetuate thugocracies and the kleptocrats who perpetuate kleptocracies, rather than the poor sons-of-bitches whom they conscript to do their dirty work. Let's go back and review Kissenger's argument about the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia. Isn't he really arguing that the heads of regimes all agreed not to try to roust each other? That it was ok to kill as many rank-and-file as you liked but not ok to kill a brother ruler? As a member of the rank-and-file myself, excuse me if I don't support this.

To: Ilaine who wrote (99928)	6/3/2003 10:18:20 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

I suppose the reason you bring up Dresden is because it was committed by the Allies, that is, by us. Not necessarily. I'm simply trying to make the point that has been made here, repeatedly, that those definitions of terrorism that it is deliberately targeting civilians, and thus it is not political, have to account for Dresden, just to pick an example that is the one most often used. There are, of course, numerous such examples, as Jacob has noted. As for including the link to the ethics article, that's fine but beside the point. Of course, we would hope there are lots of courses, discussions, group sessions on ethics, and we would hope that it cuts down on the deliberate targeting of civilians. But that's a separate point from the one that says it is done, all too frequently, by the good "guys" and the bad guys, to stay within the atrocious binary logic of the Bush folk.