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Saturday, August 20, 2005
The Protection Of Innocents
Curt of North Western Winds, a fellow Catholic with whom your Curmudgeon shares many convictions, is appalled at the conclusions he's found here:
Killing every muslim on the planet? You can’t be serious. As a Catholic you should know that there are limits to what you can do to defend yourself. This is the kind of cosmic justice that you decried in this space not too long ago as being beyond human ability. It would damn your soul forver. I have a genuine love for America and Americans but such a course of action would be more abominable than the holocaust. Thankfully, I doubt it would fly. Any response will have to be proportionate, not unlimited.
And later, after your Curmudgeon had differed with Curt's notion of proportionality:
“The armed forces of the United States eliminate the entire population of every Islamic state.”is not the same as
“We declare war on said nation, topple its government, expunge all the members of the group we can find, and set about rebuilding its economy”
The first statement is diabolical, the second is not. The first makes no effort to protect people who may ALSO be victims of the religious ideology you oppose. Kill’em all just won’t fly with being a Catholic. You must remember that the Arabs are made in God’s image as well as you or I. That is not to say that we have to take it. We have innocents to defend here as well.
This misses the point while mentioning it en passant, a curious sort of error for one skilled at moral reasoning.
The entire point of the anti-terror campaign is the protection of innocents. Indeed, the only possible justification for killing another man is the protection of innocents. But what if that cannot be done without completely eliminating some group of people?
That group of people could be an army, a terror cabal, or the holders of a vile ideology that dictates the death or enslavement of all non-holders as a direct, unquestionable command from God. In any of these cases, their continued existence is incompatible with the reasonable safety of innocent lives.
One who aligns himself with a creed that exhorts him to murder and enslave, and defends and supports those who act on those exhortations, is an accomplice to first-degree murder before, during, and after the fact, and deserves the same penalty as the proximate perpetrator. Whether he's "made in God's image" or not!
In your Curmudgeon's view, anyone who even speaks in defense of the Black Tuesday terrorists, who killed 3000 innocent men, has aligned himself with them. From a criminal justice perspective, he's an accessory to their deeds; from a political perspective, he's adhered to the enemies of the United States, "giving them aid and comfort." From a martial perspective, he's part of the logistical system of our adversary; that is, he's a component in their system of provision and shelter.
If one goes by the Qur'an, then for a Muslim not to defend the Black Tuesday terrorists would disqualify him as a Muslim. (For the moment, let's omit the important cases of taqiyya and kitman.) That would be sufficient grounds, if one is thinking judicially, to let him off, assuming he's innocent of any other conscious acts of support for terrorism. But your Curmudgeon's is a military mind; he doesn't harbor the illusion that a worldwide force with thousands of active agents and millions of supporters, that intends our deaths or our subjugation, that immerses itself in a much larger population that provides it passive concealment at the least, can be expunged by police procedure and judicial methods.
The question isn't what's licit in the protection of innocents; it's rather simpler than that. It's determining who the guilty are and putting a stop to their slaughters. A terrorist nuclear attack on these shores would be sufficient evidence to conclude that non-Muslims cannot share this world with Muslims under conditions of reasonable safety. At that point, a pogrom to eliminate Islam from the world would be justified. It would be the only way to protect innocent lives from those who would harm them, including the co-religionists who make their infamies possible by concealing and succoring them.
God the Father sanctioned mass slaughters by the Hebrews of classical times for far smaller reasons. Given the conditions postulated here, He would have no problem with it.
Your Curmudgeon would willingly kill any number of persons who rationalize the taking of innocent lives to protect even one such innocent. If necessary, he would spend his own life to do it. Should Islamists succeed in nuking an American city, he would consider his government delinquent in his duty if it prattled about "restraint" or "people who may ALSO be victims of the religious ideology you oppose." All-out war, with the declared intention of doing to Islam precisely what we did to Nazism sixty years ago, would be the only moral course -- for the protection of innocents.
Comments
I think it’s important that you point out that you are not interested in eliminating a people, but only an ideology. As Christians we cannot revel in the idea of taking lives, and must only do so when necesary. I am unwilling that any muslim die, I merely seek the death of a cancerous ideology.
Unfortunately, probably quite a few muslims may have to die before that is possible.
Posted by og on 08/20/2005 at 11:45 AMYes, but you did not seek to kill every person in Geremany in that war. It’s a good thing too, or I might not be chatting with you now. I think perhaps that by proportionate I intend actions that are so handcuffed as to be an ineffective - a mere law enforcement action, a simple ‘gesture’. No, I certainly do not think a severe military action is beyond acceptability, not even a nuclear one if a suitable target can be identified. When a more measured response is overlooked, however, then are we not talking about commiting evil so that good may result? Are we not instrumentalizing the innocents on the other side? There are non Muslims in those countries, for example. Perhaps a middle ground might be going after the most violent sorts, seizing the all of the oil wealth, and tight monitoring of the schools and mosques. That might impair their ability to evangelize and organize. Was Arabia not a hick backwoods before the oil money came pouring in?
At any rate, by this:
“Your Curmudgeon would willingly kill any number of persons who rationalize the taking of innocent lives to protect even one such innocent”
it seems you’ve chosen option #2 and that my concerns are put to rest.
Posted by on 08/20/2005 at 11:58 AMThat should read: “I think perhaps that by proportionate **you think that** I intend actions that are so handcuffed as to be an ineffective - a mere law enforcement action, a simple ‘gesture’. Sorry for the confusion.
Posted by on 08/20/2005 at 12:01 PMdeclared intention of doing to Islam precisely what we did to Nazism sixty years ago
But that isn’t what we did nor would it be moral to do so.
What we did was put down the power of Nazism among those who PRACTICED IT. It is still perfectly legal (although appalling) to THINK it.
There are, to this day, Nazis all over the world.
We don’t kill or punish people for transgressions of conscience. G_d does that. As moral beings we can only kill/punish someone for their deeds/actions.
Posted by Connie on 08/20/2005 at 02:32 PMConnie, have you checked into the laws of Germany lately? It’s illegal to espouse Nazism there, and has been since the occupation authorities turned power over to Konrad Adenauer! If there are still Nazis, they have to meet in secret, they can safely speak their beliefs only to one another, and they have no public places in which to gather.
Except for their mosques, of course.
Whoops, I just compared Islam to Nazism, which was unjust of me. Islam is a far fouler creed than Nazism, because it sanctifies its ideology of world enslavement with a religious veneer. Muslims subscribe to the belief that Allah has commanded them to conquer the world, and to convert, subjugate or kill every human being in it. Among all the creeds men have followed, there is nothing nearly as vile. Indeed, there is nothing that could be viler than that.
If there should come an attack on these shores by Islamic terrorists using any kind of weapon of mass destruction, it will become our moral duty to make it absolutely unacceptable to say “I am a Muslim” anywhere on Earth. I pray that day shall never come—but if it should, look for me in the front lines. I may be in a wheelchair, straining to hear the bugles through an ear trumpet, but as God is my witness, I will be there, and armed for bear.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 08/20/2005 at 02:46 PMRecall too our battles against our own Left. Are you not with them constantly embattled, with you protecting innocence?
From this pun I suggest we may catch a glimpse of yet another convergence of the death cults.
Posted by Pascal Fervor on 08/20/2005 at 07:05 PMOn another occasion when a religion was taken over by loons, the detoxification program required extensive use of the bad-cop/good-cop tactic. The bad cop made sure that most of the top loons were killed. An associate of the good cop was one of the few exceptions. He didn’t authorize a repeat of the insanity for some reason.
Posted by Joseph Hertzlinger on 08/20/2005 at 11:19 PMOK, Joseph Hertzlinger, I’ll bite. Who are you talking about?
Posted by on 08/21/2005 at 01:33 PM
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