Ends and Means

midcan5

liberal / progressive
Jun 4, 2007
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If you had the opportunity knowing what you know today, and had the chance, would you have killed Adolph Hitler? Joseph Stalin? Timothy McVeigh? Ted Kaczynski? Osama bin Laden?

An interesting question given the news below. Is there a substantial difference in this action and the action of prior administrations to eavesdrop, imprison, and suspend due process? Do ends justify means?

Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

"The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen."
 
If you had the opportunity knowing what you know today, and had the chance, would you have killed Adolph Hitler? Joseph Stalin? Timothy McVeigh? Ted Kaczynski? Osama bin Laden?

An interesting question given the news below. Is there a substantial difference in this action and the action of prior administrations to eavesdrop, imprison, and suspend due process? Do ends justify means?

Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

"The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen."

That question has a bias in it.

Which involved the nurture versus nature argument.

Is it genetic or environmental?
 
midcan5, et al,

Hypotheticals are always contentious examples.

If you had the opportunity knowing what you know today, and had the chance, would you have killed Adolph Hitler? Joseph Stalin? Timothy McVeigh? Ted Kaczynski? Osama bin Laden?

An interesting question given the news below. Is there a substantial difference in this action and the action of prior administrations to eavesdrop, imprison, and suspend due process? Do ends justify means?

Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

"The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike in Yemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki's 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen."
(COMMENT)

Unless you're the decision maker or contributing in a significant way to the actual process of how these decisions are made, there is not real metric by which to judge the the outcome.

These kinds of decisions are base, not on just moral and philosophical basis, or on Constitution Law, but also on the actual threat, the international consequences and the potential outcomes (successful or not). There are cost benefit discussions and risk assessments that are almost impossible for us to consider.

I don;t think it does the topic justice - to merely consider on Constitution Lawyers position, when there are so many facets to consider. It is not as Machiavellian as one might first gather.

Most Respectfully,
R
 
If you had the opportunity knowing what you know today .... would you have killed

that is a different question and is not the same as: "Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens".



there is no philosophy in killing someone, than maybe yourself.
 
Killing believe it or not can be a philosophical discussion:

Among the moral or ethical rules humanity has imposed on itself, not killing may rank as the first. It's no wonder, since life is all there is. As far as we know, death is the true an definitive end of the line. Most moral systems, religions and philosophies have devised all sorts of punishments, damnation and penance for those who kill. Some extend the bad image of killing to the killing of all types of living beings and some concentrate only on humans; but, in general, killing is definitely seen as not good.

Yet there are exceptions. Killing one's food is not only OK, but it can be a great sport. Killing predators to prevent them from eating the sheep before we do, seems fine too. Killing mosquitoes and ants is seen as... well nothing really. If we analyze the extremes there is hardly any argument: Murdering the neighbor because his house is too yellow, will not earn an once of sympathy for the chromatically offended; while flattening a worm out of existence, with a carelessly placed foot, will go unnoticed maybe even by the killer himself. The controversial part is when we try to analyze the blurry line that divides bad killing from the good or indifferent one.

We then come into the land of abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, war and other.

The Philosophy of Killing.

I just wanted the person who posted this thread topic to clarify whether they are coming from a nature or nurture standpoint.

The way it was worded impressed me as coming from a nature bias.
 
I disagree that hypotheticals or thought experiments serve no purpose, I think they, like Mom's 'if everyone does it, is it OK for you too' or some variation of that momism serve to make us stop and consider. No one answered - would you? Add Anwar al-Awlaki to our list.

By nature nurture are you asking do I think these people inherently evil? and thus the question or is that answer is simpler? It doesn't matter as the question makes an enormous assumption that you know the ends. I think McVeigh is an example of an act that was known by some or should have been.

This question was explored in an interesting movie 'The Last Supper,' Watch it if you get a chance. The murderers start out well intentioned (?) killers but find problems soon arise.

Sound familiar.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNPSHydODoI]The Last Supper--movie trailer - YouTube[/ame]
 

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