Friday, August 18, 2006

"Israel's response to the AIDS virus has been overbearing, cruel and inappropriate"

Proportionality and Responsibility:

Interesting perspective.

I tend to think that proportionality in war is a mistake. I have some sympathy for the point of view expressed in On the Virtues of Killing Children about the unnatural wisdom of hardened hearts.

Proportionality in war increases the odds of war, or so it seems to me.

1 comment:

jj mollo said...

You have your finger on something very important here.

Blackfive is talking about the unbearable logic of war. The appropriate comparison is to the MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction, policy that saved us from the Soviets. Very, very smart people think this stuff up, and Blackfive is apparently one of them. However, he leaves out a secondary motive for the terrorists to hide behind children, which is what the first link was about.

The terrorists are also practicing a theater of horror. They, being just a natural phenomenon like virus or the weather, are off the hook. But we must be observed taking the lives of innocents. The propaganda value with their own base is immense, but the propaganda value among our naifs is even more important. How can you explain to Americans that they must stop caring about the death of those children in order to save them? What a wretched world we live in, and not enough adults to go around.