http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gNq_rHj9I8

"Would you sacrifice 100 Americans for 1,000 Syrians?
No, because it is not my right to do so. I might argue in favour of them doing so (probably not though) but certainly not sacrifice. If given the choice of saving the Yanks or the Syrians I'd opt for the Syrians.

Would you sacrifice 2 of your family members for 20 foreigners?
Do I get to choose which two :D? But taking the question as it is intended, no. You could crank up the number of foreigners by several order of magnitude and it would still be no.

Would you sacrifice yourself for ten strangers?"
Nope. I am quite happy to risk my life, but certain death for ten strangers ain't my style.

'If given the choice of saving the Yanks or the Syrians I'd opt for the Syrians.' - that just makes you an immoral person.

I mean if you are put in a place where you have the power to decide to kill. You may not be a minority in this, and that is part of the reason that the world sucks.

Invictus admits a maybe to the last question, he's entitled to sacrifice his own life - meanwhile soldiers are entitled to join the armed forces and put their lives on the line for 'the country' - so if you are entitled to sacrifice yourself, the question is, would action be in the interest of their country.

"The initiation of violence is always tyranny. You have no right to demand
anything of anyone, to suggest otherwise is to act from this farcical position
where you determine whether any action is right or wrong, and insist it is a
man's duty to follow your moral imperative. That is tyrannical."

US Military action in Syria would not be initiating a war, there is already a war, it would be joining it.

He isn't demanding, he is voicing his opinion - which as it happens is his duty in a democracy, everyone gets a voice they are each charged with using it responcibly - to say you can't share your moral point of view without being a tyrant is to sadly mistake what's going on in this conversation.

@Thucy, not just Ghana, Ireland's military has only ever been used for peacekeeping (and there is a justification that it's the only way to protect the country - because preventing instability from spreading helps promote irish security)

@thucy in particular and the thread generally.

"As I have said, international law is a cause worth dying for." The debate then developed into how we sacrifice our fellow citizens for the good of others.

War isn't about dying for a cause. It is about killing for a cause. War isn't about choosing to send thousands of your fellow citizens to die gloriously in order to further a just cause, it is about killing people, sometimes in large numbers.

Unlike many people I think there is a very fine line in this case between those who favour military action and those who favour increasing humanitarian assistance. This debate is necessary, but let's not fall into the trap of misusing language. People who favour intervention should be brave enough to say, "I think killing people helps" rather than trying to couch their arguments in terms of dying for your country or sacrifice for the greater good.

@ Ora

Saving, not killing. I made it very clear in the first couple of lines I am not inclined to sacrifice anyone.

Surely the point of that theoretical situation was that you were not given a choice. You have to sacrifice someone. You are in the position of direct control over life and death...

~that was @Oct, And sorry, i misread the later half of your quoted post.

Also, in the real world, you're not choosing to sacrifice anyone, there is no draft in the US. People have made a choice to join the military.

@ Ora

It largely was, but it was muddied by Thucy's use of 100 Yanks and 1000 Syrians which gave it a potential racial element. I was making it clear (well, attempting to :p) that the nationalities involved had no influence on the general point about sacrificing people.

Yes, that was the point he was attempting to illustrate...

Which point? The principle of sacrificing the few for the many or the placing of a higher value of the lives of those who share your nationality over foriegners? Both are very different.

Thucy: "I would trade 5,000 American lives for 50,000 Syrians, or Chinese, or Salafist Muslims, or fucking whoever, in a heartbeat. A life is a life, and if we believe what we preach about human rights and equality it's damn time we acted like it"

Octavious: That's all well and good, but you don't have 5000 American lives. You have just the one. Fortunately there is absolutely nothing to stop you getting on a plane, flying to the region, and taking an active part. Although in truth I think this would be a considerably less good option than New Orleans (although women love a rebel ;) ).


I pick that for repetition as a good summary of the discussion.

American schools are apparently very efficient in instilling an arduous idealist patriotism: A good American should be ready to sacrifice himself for helping the other, "less fortunate than his own", peoples of the world.
The Vietnam war is the most paradigmatic manifestation of this attitude.
Ivan Illich commented:
"The compulsion to do good is an innate American trait. Only North Americans seem to believe that they always should, may, and actually can choose somebody with whom to share their blessings. Ultimately this attitude leads to bombing people into the acceptance of gifts"

I comment the moral debate here. I cannot judge on what would be the best action for the American military to take in Syria if we have some general humanitarian ambition.

Have people seen this?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57600875/obama-seeks-syria-strike-with-congress-approval/

I'm torn as far as whether we should go in. I, like most Americans, would rather we didn't, but recognize there are times we have to do things we don't want. But I do feel strongly that we should let the legislative branch make that decision.

Thucy, I am afraid your moral argument here approaches incoherence. If you're worried about saving lives, spending billions on war is not the best approach. Ignoring that military intervention will likely only make things worse, just on a cost-benefit analysis you would be much better served spending that money on mosquito nets or microloans.

"I think killing people helps"

Yeah I'm willing to say that. I'm not hiding from what military action is. Sometimes the right thing to do is to kill. See my sniper example. If you can murder a man who is right now murdering many more, you must do it. You shoot a bullet into his head and his brain explodes.

It's fucking awful, but if that is your option, you have to take it. Or else the 100 exploded brains will be on your head instead of just one.

Thanks Thucy and I accept you honestly hold the position that killing people helps. There are others, myself included, that think killing people by stand-off missiles won't help. I think Assad will not simply stop killing people either conventually or chemically because the US and her allies launch an attack. At some point there will need to be a political solution to this (and other conflicts) the more killing that happens by more parties the harder that solution becomes. I agree that if the US could kill Assad tomorrow that they should probably take that action, but no-one is suggesting that, what is suggested isn't going to affect the situation positively IMHO.

I fully accept, as I've said before this is a fine judgement.

Thucy, why just Syria, then? It seems you could make that argument about North Korea, or Congo, or Cuba, or Belarus, or Iran, or whichever of the -stan countries have dictators.

Bit of a bugger when you discover that said sniper was busy picking off those people he knew would murder many more, and you've just saved 100 mass murderers.

The trouble is that the world has a lot of people dedicated to killing for the good of humanity. There are plenty of Syrian officers who have seen revolutionaries commiting acts of grusome murder and know the only way of making the world a better and more stable place in which their children can live happy and free lives is by killing the evil revolutionaries and the poor misguided idealists who are helping them. There are plenty of Syrian freedom fighters who know that the only way of ensuring the safety and futures of their children is to kill the oppresive government murders and the fools who fight for them.

@CK, yes, wherever there is violence and murder going on, we should do whatever is possible to stop it.

Cuba? Have they been doing something i don't know about? I mean, sure political opponents and journalists are jailed, possibly tortured.

But then the US justifies torture, and holds people in Guantanamo, people who might be a threat (oh, but they're not) the people in Cuba might be a threat to the stability of the state... Are they not just as moral as the US in their actions??

Are you entirely missing the point where Thucy says murdering your own people is wrong and murderers must be opposed?

North Korea is impossible because Seoul is held hostage.

Congo is a national disgrace but at least there is an intervention there.

Cuba is just a bad government, not a genocide. Ideally bad governments would merit intervention but that is so far outside of international norms that it is not realistic in modern times at least.

Same for Belarus, Zimbabwe, Iran, etc.

In my own moral system such governments would not be allowed to exist by the community of states. But as I have said we are far from that world. We are not however far from a world where chemical weapons are prohibited. That is worth defending because there is a chance it can really work.

That is why it worth bombing Syria. I am tired of repeating that I am not saying using cruise missiles on Assad's airfields is going to save very many Syrian lives or change the course of the war.

I am in a separate train of thought saying we should do what is necessary to do just that, but am aware we are not going to. That has been painfully clear for two long years of disgrace.

And lastly the third train of thought I am following is my general disgust that my countrymen value American lives over Syrian lives in general on a one-to-one basis. This is painfully clear from the way people respond to things like Congo. Most people don't even fucking know there is a war there. It is fucking bullshit and I've had enough of it. There's no excuse for such barbarism in 2013.

"Thucy, why just Syria, then? It seems you could make that argument about North Korea, or Congo, or Cuba, or Belarus, or Iran, or whichever of the -stan countries have dictators."

Great point. North Korea is the most oppressed, miserable country in the world. It has generational concentration camps, for heaven's sake! If humanitarian intervention is to be anything like a consistent policy, we ought to start right there.

Now class, can anyone think of a reason why that might not be a good idea in practice?

Invictus I think you take me to be more unrealistic than I am. I'm not convinced that any old kind of intervention in Syria would be for the good. I am however convinced that a strike to enforce the norm of a chemical weapons ban is worth it.

you don't know shit about the congo

they eat people alive down there

don't fuck with me

But that's not what would happen. Once the first bomb explodes in Syria we will own the outcome entirely. There will be steady mission creep until we are fully in the war, and it's impossible to predict what happens then. As I said above, what happens if HEzbollah shoots down an American jet? Do we intervene in Lebanon too? How would Iran respond if one of our missiles hits an Iranian military outpost? How will Russia respond if/when it looks like Assad will finally fall under American attacks, depriving them of their last military base outside the old USSR? What does Israel do during all this? What do Turkey's Kurds do?

You really are being unrealistic. Getting in to Syria means committing to a long, long fight in the region. As I said before, we are probably at the point where that's inevitable, but if we're going to do it we ought to go in strong and prepared for the long haul, not lob symbolic missiles at now abandoned bases to soothe the the consciences of liberal internationalists.

By the way, good on Obama for going to Congress. I'm still upset he's claiming that he doesn't constitutionally need to, but he's still doing the right thing on this in the end.

Okay, Thucy, I want to make sure I am reading you correctly:

1. In the actual world we live in, you would say that a missile attack on Assad is necessary to reinforce international norms about chemical weapons;

2. In a better but still flawed world, the United States would use military force to change conditions in places like Syria, North Korea, and so on;

3. You're upset with Americans because you believe the majority of Americans reject these opinions due to nationalistic bias that holds American lives to be more valuable than foreign ones.

I'm pretty sure that's accurate, so I am going to respond to it. A missile attack on Syria would not be effective. If we get lucky and American missiles kill Assad, it just creates even more instability which the United States bears responsibility. Missile attacks will kill innocents and promote anti-American sentiment. The lack of international support means such actions will hinder future efforts at collective action. The lack of domestic support raises potentially long-range Constitutional threats and increases an already bloated imperial presidency.

As to 2, I don't think the military solves problems. At best, it replaces them. Sometimes the problems are better (the Soviet Union controlling half of Europe is almost certainly better than the Nazis controlling all of Europe), but at great cost and uncertainty. As to 3, I think you're correct but that's not a uniquely American problem.

You're right, but I am American and it is my right to be ashamed of my own country for having no care for human beings.

You have a right to think that, but that doesn't mean it's true. Just because you don't want America to go to war doesn't mean you don't care about people dying in Syria.

If that is how you feel then you value a comparative handful of American troops over masses of innocents in Syria. I feel this cannot be justified.