I agree with a lot of stuff said by FriendlyFlyer. Also, the bottom line tends to be this little gem here:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Splitter
What people will argue over is when a threat becomes a direct threat.
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and it has a lot to do with how people have gotten used to living their lives and the sense of entitlement that goes with it, or in plain talk "what is considered normal to be available to me". Let's take a seemingly unrelated story, differences in car design between US, Europe and Japan.
If i'm used to driving cars with engines as huge as 6.0L instead of using 1.4L cars with a turbo engine for the same amount of horsepower, it's true that i'm going to be up in arms over lack of cheap gas. Simplified example, but it shows us how the forces of habit and social inertia affect more than what we see at first look.
In the above example, why didn't the US automotive industry move to smaller yet still efficient models? It's not only the economic cost of research and shifting lines of production to a new concept, or even making sure to build cars with high consumption so that the oil companies can turn a profit as well (in the sense of an "industrial complex cartel"), it's also things like a sense of tradition/pride in workmanship, character in the machine (eg, when flying German planes in IL2 i get the same feeling as when riding in a German made car, the ruggedness and sense of purpose, similar for aircraft and cars made by other nations, they tend to exhibit similar traits although they are different classes of machinery) and the nice sound your old Camaro makes when you touch the gas pedal.
It took a combination of the 1976 oil crisis and proven health issues concerning leaded fuels (without lead you can't have high compression engines due to the premature detonation effect, hence you have to move to smaller ones) to start designing and producing cars with smaller engines.
There's more to a lot of our lives than meets the eye and it all ties down under the concept that people fight mainly to preserve their way of life. What i usually object to is enforcing one's way of life upon others, or pursuing a lifestyle that is detrimental to more people that it is beneficial.
The million dollar question here is how much does the force of habit of the common man makes him co-responsible for his government's morally dubious pre-emptives against third parties.
For example, it's commonly argued in a simplistic manner that it's ok to disregard civilian casualties because "they support guy X who's our opponent anyway". This argument not only punishes beliefs and thoughts instead of actions, something dangerous enough in its own right, but it sets the stage for the dismantling of its own self. This happens simply because the argument's application to the one advocating it would be so detrimental, that the only way to make it a feasible one is to resort to double standards regarding it's application. Well, that is the tell-tale sign of a flawed argument.
For example, a guy trying to raise a family of 10 without access to basic amenities like water/electricity/health care in a situation like the Gaza blockade (just the most recent example, you could also put this hypothetical family man in the Warsaw ghetto during WWII just to be objective and not blame the Israelis all the time
) is considered co-responsible for the actions of militant groups, not because he actively supports their cause but because he takes a neutral stance towards it.
He doesn't want to get involved in active fighting since he's a family man, but he obviously won't take up arms against the only party fighting against the ones that deprive him of the aforementioned basic amenities. In the end this is used as a justification to make him a target, a form of "guilty until proven innocent" collective punishment, which is essentially what the fascist ideologies practiced during WWII with de facto dehumanizing based on racial background and mass reprisals against civilians following resistance operations. Simply put, it's like expecting him to take up arms on the side of what he considers a foreign occupation force. Well, it's obvious it won't happen easily, soon, or at all.
Contrasting this guy with someone more like us, how much of a responsibility do you think we bear in that guy's eyes for his misfortunes? We want to drive our cars no matter how small the distance to travel, so his counrty is invaded to secure our cheap oil. We want our cheap iPods, so workers in China have to work 12-18 hour shifts in electronics assembly plants where even exchaning a "good morning" with your colleague on the next bench in front of the conveyor belt is punishable by losing your job. It costs in productivity when workers talk among themselves, which will raise the price of iPod componets, the price of the iPod itself and then the manufacturers will turn to another component provider, hence no talking allowed (i'm not making this up btw). We are not directly responsible for the workers who jumped to their deaths in that factory plant a few months ago, but it's our force of habbit that creates the chain of events which set certain events in motion.
And while it is utopian to think that our realization of the fact alone will change it and maybe even useless to feel remorse about things outside under our direct control, it's not useless to exercise some critical thinking to expand our "horizons of empathy" outside our direct surroundings and act accordignly in a mitigating fashion. It would be a bit hypocritical of me to accuse a man as an accomplice just because he doesn't arrest the criminals himself while he has problems more immediate to his survival to contend with, like lack of access to running water, while at the same time i'm comfortably crusing around in my car and listening to my MP3s.
I'm not exactly starving to death or dying of thirst like, you know, he is, i'm just upset i'll have to walk an extra 10 miles this month and i'm going to run a shorter playlist on my MP3 player because the prices of SDRAM and gas have gone up and when i think of it, it makes me feel like a spoiled brat with an entitlement complex. Kind of puts the whole thing in perspective.
I took a brief look at the pdfs linked a few pages back about British COIN methods and there was a very important bit there, make the locals see and realize that you are operating within the law, not above it, if you want them to accept it as law.
That's why i'm all for maintaining a sense of morality in the current worldwide happenings and conflicts. If we advocate unconditional co-responsibility and collective punishment, we set ourselves up for receiving the same. The only thing that changes is the weapon delivery, but dead non-combatants of any national heritage and religion don't really care if they got hit by a suicide bomber in a cafe or a laser guided bomb dropped from 20000 feet, they would just prefer if it hadn't happened at all.
This is getting a bit too philosophical at this stage and it's also somewhat straining for me, as i'm typing much more than is needed to convey the point, just in order to make sure i don't leave any gray areas that could be misunderstood as bias towards either one.
I'll just say i enjoyed this good natured debate immensely and i'll rest my case while on a good note, before i accidentally slip up and get caught in a mud flinging contest, like so often happens to all of us when touchy subjects are discussed through the written medium alone. Cheers to everyone involved