From: Kevin (kevin@xap.com)
Date: Thu Oct 31 2002 - 17:36:35 GMT
Platt,
I think you've grossly oversimplified this situation. I think Buff's
analysis is much more MOQish than yours for the simple fact that it
carefully addresses the role of ALL the levels in this situation.
Terrorists are not viruses no matter how much you may be revolted
(rightly so) by their methods. The situation is NOT a simple matter of
biological vs. social. I find that you consistently want to reduce any
complex moral question to exactly one level vs. one level which, IMO, it
utterly flawed.
The terrorists are made up of inorganic patterns, biological patterns,
working within social patterns and driven by Intellectual patterns (no
matter how flawed or unsound their Intellectual ideas may be to many of
us). It might even be argued that the terrorists Intellectual values are
of higher quality than the Social Patterns they are attacking. Certainly
we can agree that the method of change (violence against civilians) is
very low morality. But if the ends justify the means for the Russian
Security Forces (it's ok to kill three times as many hostages as
terrorists because it saved 60-70% of the hostages) why doesn't the same
rationalization work for the terrorists (it's ok to kill civilians if it
effectively leads to liberation of their people from repressive Social
Patterns)? I'm afraid that sword cuts both ways.
I think Buff did a very fine job of illustrating just how careful we
must be when using the MOQ to sort through exactly these kinds of swampy
ethical situations. It's much more complex than you would like to paint
it. The MOQ is a method of sorting out the grays of ethics. If
everything were black & white, we wouldn't need the MOQ.
I'm also shocked that you can be so calloused about the "unfortunate
byproduct". They actually killed almost 3 times as many hostages as
terrorists. I'm not sure how that counts as a "successful" operation in
anyone's book. Even if using violence to counter the terrorists is
morally justifiable (and I think it can be argued on both sides), the
result of their choice of action is very low quality indeed, IMO.
With hope,
Kevin
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