Avivmimus, I agree. Nothing more to say except that the sins of the father cannot be visited upon the son. All of us that were "there" when something happened bare some responsibility, good or ill. Those not yet born...no, I can't say that.
Just an example: The German people of the time bare some responsiblity for Hitler. They let him come to power out of desperation. The rest of the world has some culpability for not stopping him before he he became too powerful. Do either of us (you or I) have any responsibility for his actions? Should a present day German feel any shame for his actions or the actions of their forefathers? I say no.
Galway, there are just wars and justified killings. I don't buy that there are no good guys and no bad guys. If your premise is correct, Churchill = Hitler. Roosevelt = Stalin. I don't buy that.
If you go to war to protect people from oppression who cannot protect themselves, is that not justified? I would say that is maybe the best reason to go to war morally. If I knowingly let my neighbor be tortured and killed by some bad guy and never go to their aid, am I not "guilty" in some respect?
If you go to war to protect your country, is that not justified? If you kill someone who seeks to do you harm, is that not justified?
Was Bush right? I seriously don't know. I would not have done what he did....I would have gotten rid of Saddam and let the Iraqis sort if out for themselves. My solution would have probably ended up in a lot of bloodshed amongst the Iraqis. But, are the Iraqis better off today than they were under Saddam? I think most of them say yes. So was the war justified? You decide.
Heck, I don't like the guy, but he might just have been a better person...had a better vision...than me. He believed in the Iraqi people, I didn't. Neither do you. Maybe in the end you and I will be proven right, but so far we are wrong. They actually do seem to be capable of voting for their leaders and defending their fledgling democracy....we'll see though. Old hatreds die hard and the factions DO hate each other.
Perhaps they are just in an artificially induced lull in their hostilities toward one another. If that is the case, when they decide to start killing one another, should we all just stand back and see who wins? Are we then culpable, through our inaction, for all of the killing? If we intervene are we then just postponing the inevitable? These are probably questions the world is going to have to eventually answer.
Since the West probably knew about the concentration camps and the mass murders, were they somehow derelict in their moral duties by not attacking Germany? Is pacifism the only moral way? Or is it sometimes more "right" to go kill people to end their evil?
You are right in that you never bring a knife to a gunfight
. You either go into a fight full bore or don't go at all. Of course, if you go full bore there will be plenty of people there to criticize you for "over reacting".
So did this recon pilot somehow overreact in straffing retreating German troops? Did the pilot who landed his plane only to get out and shoot a downed German pilot because his family had been raped and killed by Germans overreact? Where the line is drawn is what is up for discussion....But I really don't think one should not be equated with the other.
Splitter