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29424. anomie - 1/28/2009 3:50:24 AM That just sounds like an artificial set of circumstances. Maybe even a game theory scenario, and as a result it is of little interest in analyzing real world threats. Having said that, and after conjuring up a UN peacekeeping solution, I say let the Africans have their leader and let us keep Americans alive.
I am not an isolationist, and I'm all for helping countries with less fortunate circumstances and geography, but at some point, people, (and us too), will bear the consequences of their leadership and the kind of society they create. 29425. vonKreedon - 1/28/2009 5:16:01 AM Yeah, agree about the artificiality of the ethical problem. Given that I thought the discussion best placed in this thread rather than in American Politics or International.
You're agreeing with my wife and son that the PotUS's duty to protect and defend US life trumps any ethical duty to prevent genocide, correct? And further that the inhabitants of a country have the primary duty to stop genocide? Please do not read sarcasm into my questions, I want to be clear about what you're saying. And it's not like those positions are outside the norm, if they are what you are saying. 29426. arkymalarky - 1/28/2009 5:57:51 AM Helping the AU and countries like Liberia that have vulnerable new governments and new hope would do more over a longer term than military action. The president's oath is to the constitution, but as commander in chief of the world's most powerful democracy troops may have to be committed for humanitarian reasons, but it should be in cooperation with an alliance and have a clear set of goals. 29427. vonKreedon - 1/28/2009 6:14:30 AM So until there is a cooperative alliance the US should not intervene to prevent of put a stop to genocide? Let's for the sake of discussion say that the US has a multi-national alliance in place, but then terroists in alliance with the foreign Genocidal Maniac (GM) credibly threaten to kill thousands of US citizens if we don't back out of the alliance's military action? If we back out then everyone backs out and the genocide goes forward. Do we save the US citizens or stop the genocide? 29428. vonKreedon - 1/28/2009 6:15:28 AM Errata:
First line: of put=or put 29429. alistairconnor - 1/28/2009 10:20:48 AM Ha. It seems to me (not having seen the show) that the makers are making an implicit isolationist argument by creating a false dichotomy.
In the case as presented, the US should back the hell off. There is no absolute duty to intervene to save anyone; there are necessarily trade-offs. See St Augustine's doctrine of just war, it works pretty well for me.
The makers of the program, I imagine, are making the argument that the US shouldn't have intervened in Iraq because the cost to the US is too high (true, but that's not the only reason), and asking viewers to extrapolate to reach the conclusion that any foreign intervention is necessarily a bad thing.
This is a logical reaction, as a national mindset. I have been predicting for five years that the US would enter an isolationist phase as a result of Bush-era overreach. I believe Obama has the vision to overcome this error, but I'm not confident Americans will follow this vision. 29430. arkymalarky - 1/28/2009 4:00:54 PM I agree with Alistair that t's a false dichotomy. I also don't think Americans should ever react to threats or even American loss of lives (as in Mogadishu). They should act based on the totality of the circumstances.
And I disagree with Alistair about America. We're tired of being hated in the world. More amazing than having elected a black man is having elected a man whose middle name is Hussein who has direct experience through family and residence in the Muslim world. 29431. anomie - 1/28/2009 4:55:58 PM VK, if there is an alliance (of resources too) that includes most of Europe, other African countries, and a substantial part of Asia, I would opt for intervention if such intervention included a plan to rebuild the country in country or at least to prevent political despots returning to power.
As to American casualties, perhaps they would happen anyway if such a lunatic had the means, so the guy must be eventually disposed of one way or another. 29432. anomie - 1/28/2009 5:01:00 PM I would say the POTUS duty trumps the moral obligation to prevent "any" genocide or tragedy. But in the case you cite, yes. But then I don't see it as a question of duty so much as a question of pragmatism. 29433. anomie - 1/28/2009 5:02:49 PM Change above to say "I would not..." 29434. judithathome - 1/28/2009 6:40:51 PM Well, I think what we have here are the producers of the show setting up a scenario to showcase a female POTUS...this show was filmed before the primaries and it may have been an attempt to either support OR contest the idea of a woman re: more emotional POTUS and the problems she faces.
Not to say this isn't an interesting discussion and one that surprises me as growing out of a show that features a kick-ass, take no prisoners leading man....who is not only the star but the executive producer of said show. 29435. anomie - 3/4/2009 11:22:02 PM I watched a show about 'time' on the science channel and felt a bit vindicated for a question I posed to creationists in this thread several years (a decade?) ago. That is, has the future been created yet? In terms of physics it seems we just don't know the answer. According to space-time Einsteinian theory, nothing prevents time from running backward. A new theory that attempts to reconcile the large with quantum smallness by suggesting that time may be granular (as in "plank" size), and is created as a result of moving through the three dimensions of the large universe.
Very interesting... 29436. anomie - 3/4/2009 11:25:46 PM The idea above implies that each plank unit of time is a brand new creation or duplication of everything in the universe. 29437. magoseph - 3/20/2009 3:41:48 PM The Washington Post
Conservatives have argued for decades that the sins most dangerous to our society were rooted in lust when in fact they were rooted in greed.
E.J. Dionne Jr. 29438. alistairconnor - 3/20/2009 4:08:22 PM A teaching moment... 29439. wabbit - 5/23/2009 1:20:57 AM I may well be the only confessed atheist here, but I don't understand this at all. How these so-called Christians can do what they know is wrong, and excuse themselves for such specious reasons, escapes me entirely. Said Rembert G Weakland:We all considered sexual abuse of minors as a moral evil, but had no understanding of its criminal nature. Weakland, who retired in 2002 after it became known that he paid $450,000 in 1998 to a man who had accused him of date rape years earlier, said he initially:Accepted naively the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember or they would ‘grow out of it’. Really? I mean, really really?? Do we honestly need the threat of hell or the promise of heaven or sanctioned forgiveness to keep morality in the front of our brains? It seems the most sanctimonious among us are those who should shoulder the most shame.
Talk about someone born to live down to his name.29440. arkymalarky - 5/23/2009 3:23:28 AM Judith is an athiest, as well, but any belief should find them repugnant and as for Christianity, that and one other sin are what Jesus expressed as it would be better the sinner were dead or never born. So how they could really believe what they said they did and do that is something else. 29441. arkymalarky - 5/23/2009 3:26:29 AM And why that doesn't carry the death penalty or at the very least life without parole is beyond me. 29442. judithathome - 5/23/2009 1:07:47 PM Yes, I'm an atheist but I was a Christian at one time and the thing that got me out of there was the hypocrisy...the church I attened "withdrew" from a woman who fell in love with a man not her husband...after her husband, a deacon, had cheated on her for several years. I was 18 when that happened and decided I didn't want to be part of the church...then a lot of reading and thinking for myself led to me a few years later giving up on the whole fairytale.
Didn't Jesus say "Suffer the little children"? I don't think any translation, no matter how inferior, could make that into "MAKE the little children suffer."
...the common view that it was not necessary to worry about the effects on the youngsters: either they would not remember or they would ‘grow out of it’.
Oh, this made me sick to my stomach and I haven't even had breakfast. So it's okay to rape so long as the victim doesn't recall it or matures enough to understand people have needs? Where is all that bullshit about God Sees Everthing We Do? Right...that's covered by the old canard "Jesus died for our sins and God forgives us all of them if we only believe..."
What total and utter bullshit.
29443. alistairConnor - 5/23/2009 7:18:45 PM I suppose I'm an atheist (but it's a bit like asking a nun her marital status, or an Amazon tribesman his favourite TV show). I don't blame religion, in the present case. What it is : children should not be put into the unsupervised care of an all-male institution of any kind, certainly not an authoritarian one with no checks and balances. I see no point in blaming individuals for very ordinary human weaknesses (well yes, the individuals should be punished, but that's sort of beside the point). Rather, it's the institution that is ineffective at best, perverse and corrupt at worst. I'm not anti-religious in the slightest, still less anti-Catholic, but I believe it's time for the temporal power of the Church to be destroyed.
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