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January 19, 2006

Excogitate this

(Yeah, I was looking for a synonym for ponder.)

Few things give the mind more to chew over than a moral dilemma. Michael Stickings emailed me his piece (citing Kevin Drum..whose citation is in italics) about justifying the bombing last week in Pakistan:

Kevin Drum:

For the sake of argument, let's assume that we had pretty good intelligence telling us that a bunch of al-Qaeda leaders were in the house we bombed. And let's also assume that we did indeed kill al-Masri and several other major al-Qaeda leaders. Finally, let's assume that the 18 civilians killed in the attack were genuinely innocent bystanders with no connection to terrorists.

Question: Under those assumptions, was the attack justified? I think the answer is pretty plainly yes, but I'd sure like to see the liberal blogosphere discuss it. And for those who answer no, I'm curious: under what circumstances would such an attack be justified

An important question, to be sure. And what is the answer? I encourage you to come up with your own. For whatever the realities of the war on terror and the inevitable loss of civilian life, this is a profoundly personal issue that comes down to this: What means are justified by the end (the end of the war on terror, the end according to your own personal perspective of the war on terror)? How many deaths are worth it?

This is an important question. Is it worth killing 18 innocent civilians to possibly get one bad guy? Where does it cross the line? How many innocents must die before it becomes unacceptable?

(I'm not making a value judgement either way here. I'm asking.)

Posted by Carla at January 19, 2006 02:59 PM