Do the ends justify the means?

1. Did anyone outside of the house die?

2. If you run with dogs, you die like a dog.

 

There ultimately is no end, so all means should be ethical and peaceful.

 

I like your honesty and directness. Personally, I believe ends don't justify means at all, unless you do not want to justify anything. Ends and means are always seperated, because ends are normally phenomenon, and you will have your personal view on it, whether you like it or not. Means are actions, which can be judged by laws/rules/moral. They are 2 totally different entities. If anyone tries to link those 2 together, 10 out of 10 times, those means are questionable at the best, when those ends are perceivably good.

War is a terrible thing, no matter how you slice it. A pre-emptive war is much worse, no matter how patriotic or democratic you are. This isn't an ideal world, and I accept that things are done out of interest, including starting wars. However, I do have problem with hypocrites glorifying wars.

Same thing with the hypothetical question. I don't think police will shoot through "huamn shield", if a serial killer is holding 2 women as hostages, even if they are foreigners, on American street, although you could argue that you kill 2 but might save another 10 later on. However, I have no doubt that they will shoot if it's happening in Iraq or any other remote places in the world. Difference? Those helicopters with camera crews. In another hypothetical question, what if that happens in the forest in US, no one is around, will they shoot the criminal or terrorist with the hostages? I don't know.

Justification is usually just spins after the fact.

 

Funny, your statement sounds a lot like an evil dictator like say, Sadam himself. Ask Isreal how this mentality is working out for them.

 

But it would be to the countless victims of whom the serial killer murdered.

Pilots who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima use the same rationale.

The question doesn't fit the topic's title because in there's a sliding scale everyone's mind.

 

I haven't read that. Do you have a link for that tidbit? Of course, what I was really driving at was innocent parties who lived across the street or next door and didn't know (even from the mysterious comings and goings in the middle of the night) that this was a safe house....

Don't be silly. Now that is sort of a complicated question, but if you are consorting with a known mass murderer and terrorist who is wanted and pursued by the US Military and the Iraqis aren't you guilty by association in some obvious way if you hang with him rather than turn him in? I don't think it applies to children in the same way because of their naivete, but it is not the pursuer who puts the child in danger.

No. I think that is a preposterous way to undermine an argument. If you have a wanted fugitive in your sights (enough to recognize a child held in his arms) there are obviously many ways to apprehend him.

Killing from a distance, i.e. bombs, is more prickly but we can't just go around assuming that every bombing target has children in it.

Don't be silly, Sishir, it is NEVER the child's fault. However the adults that put them in harm's way can burn in hell for all I care.

 

I didn't vote because I think the question is also skewed... would you kill 3 innocents w/ the murderer to probably save hundreds or thousands of others? hmmm....

 

Since there are two questions I have two separate answers.

1. No you shouldn't kill an innocent person in order to punish a guilty person.

2. The end should never be used to offer open justification of the means.
If the end or result is used for this purpose then we would have a confused world, just like we have. The end is always used to justify every kind of evil in the world and this is absolutely wrong.

Any time you allow the end result to justify the means the possibility of evil, abuse and bad decisions increase greatly.

People quickly learn how to justify terrible things. Politicians and governments are experts at this.

Study the eugenics movement. Observe the justification for prisoner abuse.
Why are thousands and thousands of kids being drugged with Ritalin? Abortion. Genocide. Invasions. Human Rights abuse, don't forget shooting up chickens with dangerous growth hormones and shipping them to your local grocery store.

The greater good is the most stupid thing I have ever heard. When humans decide what is 'the greater good' you can be sure someone is about to suffer for it.

I often think little children understand right and wrong better than adults.

Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Then find out what is a morally right choice and what is a morally wrong choice.

That 'end justifies the means' thinking is what gets presidents shot at and buildings blown up.

 

I don't think anybody has suggested that they wouldn't have killed AZ or that they think the troops ought not to have killed him -- even if they had known there were civilians with him and even if one of them had turned out to be a child. That's the primary problem with this poll IMO.

What was suggested was that maybe it was okay to both be glad a mass murderer was dead and still mourn the deaths of innocents that might have been caught up in the bombing. One side said they had mixed feelings due to the loss of innocent life and the other side said that wasn't okay (some even said that if you had mixed feelings you loved AZ and hated America).

This poll is interesting I guess, but it doesn't have anything to do with the AZ thing or the arguments that arose from it.

 

To anyone who thinks it's ok to kill the innocent in order to secure the death of a "murder", I ask this, what if it was someone you know. Your mother, daughter, son?, the innocent have families, are wives and children to someone?

Or is it only ok if they are in a foreign country and don't look like you?

 

Hypothetical -
It's 1942 and the Allies have info that Hitler is meeting with a bunch of Nazi party officials in a house in the German countryside. Some of the party officials will be bringing their children to the house. Do you bomb the house or not?

 

Yes. And then I both mourn the children and celebrate the death of Hitler. What about you?

 

I wouldn't mourn anything. I would be too pissed off that Hitler and his minions had placed me in the position of making that decision.

Here's another hypothetical.
It's 1942 again, and you are the commander for an air road on Tokyo using specicially modified Army planes flown off of aircraft carriers. You're still several hundred miles from your launch point when you're spotted by a Japanese fishing boat with both adults and children. Do you blast them out of the water before they can give away your position?

 

If it's a perfect world, I wouldn't. But it's a real and less ideal world, given it's Hitler, I would probably do that, but I will feel somewhat guilty towards those dead children, if I am the one gave the order. However, an even more hypothetical question, if they held a meeting in a house surrounded by hundreds of POWs, the question might be tougher to answer. Let's go even further, instead of couple of hundred of captured soliders, if they were surrounded by 10 thousand Jews as hostages, or 10 thousand any civilians white, black, or asian. Would you bomb that area? Remember, there was no precision bomb back then.

Now, AZ is no Hitler. Another hypothetical question, if he hides in a bunker, get 100 Iraqi women and children as human shield above the bunker, would you bomb that place? What if those aren't Iraqis, but rather people from all other nations? What about the number increases to 500 or 1000?

We are evaluating human lives everyday, in plain numbers. As cyber space posters, we can say whatever we want to without any real consequences. But those ones in power, they carry out different commends based on their own evaluation of human lives based on their own criteria. I just hope they consider alternatives, really hard, when it comes to "sacrificing lives", especially others' lives.

 

Would it be okay with you if I went ahead and mourned the dead children? Or would that mean that I loved Hitler?

 

This has me thinking of the 1964 movie Fail-Safe with Henry Fonda as the U.S. president. He has to order the dropping of an atomic bomb on Manhattan, even though his wife and son are currently there, in order to stop the Soviets from launching their full arsenal after the U.S. accidently dropped an A-bomb on Moscow.

Also these hypothecital questions assume your intelligence is 100% accurate and that you'll be 100% successful. How much time do you get to analyze the situation and the intelligence given to you?

Another past situation was the U.S. receiving intelligence of Admiral Yamamoto's travel plans. They shot him down, but he was travelling on a military plane.

 

Mourn away. If it's therapeutic for you to have sympathy for the devil, so be it.

 

You are so full of crap. I said I would drop the bomb myself, celebrate Hitler's death and mourn the children. How does mourning innocent children equal sympathy for the devil?