Killings of newborn babies on the rise in Pakistan

[Scotty]

But that should hardly be the response of a civilized (non-barbaric) society. The objective would be to find a way to get them to stop being barbarians, without becoming barbarians ourselves. I know, that is a very very tall order. It's far easier and quicker to go down the ladder, than it is to go up.

I don't know how you can tell people that they're religious beliefs are wrong, especially when their religious beliefs include physical violence against anyone who questions their religious beliefs.

[Sir Bandelot]

I don't know how you can tell people that they're religious beliefs are wrong, especially when their religious beliefs include physical violence against anyone who questions their religious beliefs.

I don't pretend to have all the answers either. I just think part of the solution is to encourage and support the good muslims, and firmly oppose the radical nut jobs. We need to discriminate, not paint them all with the same brush. Treating them as second class citizens (muslim apartheid) would give the nut jobs more justification for their anti-western message. Then the muslim youth, then next generation will grow up despising the west because they are disadvantaged from birth, just by nature of being a muslim.

[WIP]

But if the people of a nation or culture believe these things, believe them strongly, should we not call them barbarians?

And what comes after calling people barbarians? Once you objectify an adversary as non-human, then it's morally permissible to just go ahead and kill them....which is the ultimate aim of fascist-inspired conservative foreign policy.

[bloodyminded]

Perhaps because these are deliberate efforts with a political goal carried out by a functionary,

But this--by the standards we have laid out--is the textbook definition of terrorism.

ARe you saying that "deliberate" and "politic[ally]"-motivated acts of extreme violence intentionally perpetrated against innocent civilians is a hallmark of civility and sober behaviour?

I recall reading an article about a riot in India a few years back. I believe it was an anti sikh riot, but it oculd have been anti-muslim, and the tale involved screaming men with swords and torches burning whole neighborhoods, throwing sikhs into fires, throwing babies into the air and beheading them with swords, etc. etc. How can you describe that as anything but barbarism?

Of course it's barbarism. And your example is, as luck would have it, a pitch-perfect example of what I mean: because the US funded, armed, diplomatically supported Contras behaved exactly in this manner (up to and including skewering babies!), as well as raping women in front of their families, torching villages, and executing peasants at will.

So...this is different how, again?

Edited February 4, 2011 by bloodyminded

[Shwa]

So...this is different how, again?

Well clearly there is a difference. The barbarians in India were uneducated and immoral while those running the contras got degrees from the School of the Americas.

[bloodyminded]

Well clearly there is a difference. The barbarians in India were uneducated and immoral while those running the contras got degrees from the School of the Americas.

What's really funny is that, ultimately, I believe this is about what it comes down to.

It results in an idea of worthy versus unworthy victims. I was about to call it a "cold calculus," but on reflection I don't think that's accurate. It's not, by most people, thought-out at all, but a reflexive or impressionsitic response.

Hell, I was just informed that the same kinds of barbarity are not barbaric, since they're carried out by functionaries with political ends!

!!!!

I'm not of the Orwell-is-God school of thought, but I can plainly see that he's still relevant.

Edited February 4, 2011 by bloodyminded

[Scotty]

Yes we should.

And if a people elects leaders who advocate preemptive wars of aggression, and ignore the plight of a nation put under sanctions for 20 years, resulting in the death of innumerable, some say up to 500,00 children, they should be called barbaric as well.

I disagree. Where you have a rogue state you have varying arguments about what to do about it. I seem to recall that sanctions were all the rage when the enemy was South Africa. Nobody then talked about this as harming children, or, in fact, causing the least disturbance among the ordinary populace. Suddenly, sanctions are cruel. But if the alternative was war, then perhaps not. It's not like sanctios were put in place with the deliberate intent of harming children. And there are plenty of arguments to be made that the regime was responsible for that more than the sanctions, as it had it within its power to do much to aliviate harm to the general population and chose not to bother.

So knowing this I ask, what are you going to do about it? Bomb them into the stone age? Cause I got news for you pal, they're already there.

Why are you arguing against terming people barbarians when you yourself are, in effect, calling them primitives from the stone age?

[Scotty]

And what comes after calling people barbarians? Once you objectify an adversary as non-human, then it's morally permissible to just go ahead and kill them....which is the ultimate aim of fascist-inspired conservative foreign policy.

If I look at a woman and call her beautiful it doesn't automatically mean I'm going to try to seduce her. And if I look at a people and call them barbarians it doesn't imply I'm going to start killing them either.

[Scotty]

But this--by the standards we have laid out--is the textbook definition of terrorism.

I disagree. There was no political intention, no consulting the forebrain at all. It seemed to be a raw,animal expresion of hate and rage.

ARe you saying that "deliberate" and "politic[ally]"-motivated acts of extreme violence intentionally perpetrated against innocent civilians is a hallmark of civility and sober behaviour?

Obviously not. I was suggesting that the act of a single man, or a single organization which never consulted its populace was not the same as the act of a populace engaging in violence on a raw, personal level.

Of course it's barbarism. And your example is, as luck would have it, a pitch-perfect example of what I mean: because the US funded, armed, diplomatically supported Contras behaved exactly in this manner (up to and including skewering babies!),

I would certainly say the men who did such things were barbaric. But I would say that the men far away in Washington had an emotional distance from such things and probably had an ability to look at the broad view and ignore the dirty, nitty-gritty details.

Note that this does not infer they are nice people. Calling people barbarians doesn't necessarily infer they're NOT nice people. It's not a moral judgement, so to speak, but an intellectual one.

[bloodyminded]

It's not like sanctios were put in place with the deliberate intent of harming children.

Are you sure? Because that's far from clear:

In 1991, a few months after the end of the war, the U.N. secretary general's envoy reported that Iraq was facing a crisis in the areas of food, water, sanitation, and health, as well as elsewhere in its entire infrastructure, and predicted an imminent catastrophe, which could include epidemics and famine, if massive life-supporting needs are not rapidly met. U.S. intelligence assessments took the same view. A Defense Department evaluation noted that Degraded medical conditions in Iraq are primarily attributable to the breakdown of public services (water purification and distribution, preventive medicine, water disposal, health-care services, electricity, and transportation). . . . Hospital care is degraded by lack of running water and electricity.

According to Pentagon officials, that was the intention. In a June 23, 1991, Washington Post article, Pentagon officials stated that Iraq's electrical grid had been targeted by bombing strikes in order to undermine the civilian economy. People say, 'You didn't recognize that it was going to have an effect on water or sewage,' said one planning officer at the Pentagon. Well, what were we trying to do with sanctions-help out the Iraqi people? No. What we were doing with the attacks on infrastructure was to accelerate the effect of the sanctions.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2002/11/0079384

Denis Halliday, who was charged with administering the humanitarian oil for food program, resigned in protest at the "genocidal" sanctions, which were "intended, designed, and sustained to kill civilians, particularly children."

His successor, Hans von Sponeck, larer resigned as well, concluding that the sanctions (and especially US/UK intransigence and meddling on sanctions matters) violated the Genocide Convention.

Edited February 4, 2011 by bloodyminded

[bloodyminded]

I disagree. There was no political intention, no consulting the forebrain at all. It seemed to be a raw,animal expresion of hate and rage.

???

I was responding to your remark:

these are deliberate efforts with a political goal carried out by a functionary,

That's to what I was referring.

I would certainly say the men who did such things were barbaric. But I would say that the men far away in Washington had an emotional distance from such things and probably had an ability to look at the broad view and ignore the dirty, nitty-gritty details.

Note that this does not infer they are nice people. Calling people barbarians doesn't necessarily infer they're NOT nice people. It's not a moral judgement, so to speak, but an intellectual one.

Ok, but these are specious distinctions.

And even if I were to accept your icy mathematics as reasonable, the effects, on human lives, are what ultimately matters...not whether someone is raging in the streets or acting as Mob Boss with technically "clean hands."

(And as far as my analogy goes, the courts consider the Mob Boss who orders the hits to be worse than the hitman. And I'm inclined to agree.)

Edited February 4, 2011 by bloodyminded

[WIP]

If I look at a woman and call her beautiful it doesn't automatically mean I'm going to try to seduce her. And if I look at a people and call them barbarians it doesn't imply I'm going to start killing them either.

It means that you have no reason not to kill them (drop laser-guided bombs on their villages for example) if you decide that it would suit your purposes. To Germans before the end of WWII, who had been indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda and Lutheran tradition, Jews were subhuman; and they saw nothing more to object to living next to a concentration camp, than they would to living near a slaughterhouse. That could start a side discussion of its own, since most people today wouldn't be able to eat meat or consume dairy products, if they had to visit the factory farm facilities that make cheap meat possible....but I'll leave that for another day.

That opening post linked article does not say that infanticide is a culturally valued custom in any part of Pakistan, but that did not stop the usual rightwing bombthrowers from repeating the refrain "barbarian" over and over again! The same factors that favour male babies over female exist in China and India, and have resulted in populations that now have a gender imbalance. But when it comes to who the rightwingers decide to focus attention on, the enemy of the day is a barbarian, and that makes it easier to kill them, bomb their villages, use illegal methods of torture etc.

[Scotty]

???

I was responding to your remark:

That's to what I was referring.]

My mistake then. Clearly it would be terrorist, unless it was a matter of barbarians running amok, as it were. But I think that unlikely, or rather, less likely than a deliberate intent to terrorize.

And even if I were to accept your icy mathematics as reasonable, the effects, on human lives, are what ultimately matters...not whether someone is raging in the streets or acting as Mob Boss with technically "clean hands."

But we're not dealing with mob bosses, we're dealing with the Western powers, who tend, often enough, at any rate, to have somewhat morally superior goals. Suppose a given nation's government is considered an imminent danger to an entire region? Suppose it is thought it is likely to export revolution, violence, chaos and civil war throughout that region. Could it not then be seen as the lesser evil to support a guerrila group to overthrow that government, even if thousands die in the struggle?

[Scotty]

It means that you have no reason not to kill them (drop laser-guided bombs on their villages for example) if you decide that it would suit your purposes. To Germans before the end of WWII, who had been indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda and Lutheran tradition, Jews were subhuman; and they saw nothing more to object to living next to a concentration camp, than they would to living near a slaughterhouse.

Perhaps, but I like to think we're somewhat more enlightened than the Germans back then. I don't think you could drop bombs on a herd of deer without causing a huge fuss, so I'm not too worried we'll start killing off the barbarians any time soon - unless they're seen as threatening to us.

The same factors that favour male babies over female exist in China and India, and have resulted in populations that now have a gender imbalance.

The Chinese and Indian cultures are often pretty backward, especially in rural areas. On the other hand, I was including in my consideration the polling results showing the broad support for such things as Blasmphemy laws, death for adultery and switching religions or being gay, lopping off hands of thieves, etc. I don't believe those sorts of beliefs are common among the Chinese or Indians.

But when it comes to who the rightwingers decide to focus attention on, the enemy of the day is a barbarian, and that makes it easier to kill them, bomb their villages, use illegal methods of torture etc.

[bloodyminded]

But we're not dealing with mob bosses, we're dealing with the Western powers, who tend, often enough, at any rate, to have somewhat morally superior goals.

That's if we take bland claims by leaders as fact. But there's little reason to. Every aggressor justifies through noble intent, so such things tell us nothing.

Suppose a given nation's government is considered an imminent danger to an entire region? Suppose it is thought it is likely to export revolution, violence, chaos and civil war throughout that region. Could it not then be seen as the lesser evil to support a guerrila group to overthrow that government, even if thousands die in the struggle?

You'd have to be more specific. We're talking contra terrorism in this case: outright terrorism.

At any rate, whatever conclusions we may come to, you are asserting that terrorism is sometims justified. (So long as it's Western-backed, of course: our terrorism has "morally superior goals." )

That rather changes the discussions we've been having for ten years about how "terrorism is bad," don't you think?

As for the case under discussion: once you have determined how raping women in front of their families, stabbing children and committing torture and kidnapping will lessen chaos and violence--and how it is a "lesser evil"--I"d be fascinated to hear the rationale.