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So what does this mean?

WildCat said:
If suicide bombers attack military targets it's perfectly justified. But their MO is to get on a bus, enter a restaurant, etc. and kill as many civilians as possible. No excuse for that, is there?
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What if the civilians are all employees of a factory that manufactures tanks for the enemy nation?
 
TragicMonkey said:
The people who did it thought so. "Justification" is a fancy word one uses when trying to persuade other people of the rightness of one's actions. An action is considered "justified" by any given person when that person agrees with the argument made by the actor about why he was right to do it. Which contributes nothing towards assessing the good or evil of anything; "justification" is essentially just an opinion poll with a space for explaining why you hold that particular opinion.
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Justification is not an "opinion poll." It is a matter of law. Or at least, it should be. Otherwise nobody is protected from anybody else except by the rule of violence.
 
Katana said:
Damn.

OK. Hijack an airplane and fly it into the factory.
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Much more difficult to achieve, given new standards of security. The human bomb seems the easiest method, although you'd think it would be problematic as far as employee retention goes. I haven't seen the business plan for terrorism, but I suspect it's rather heavy on the vision statements and rather light on the practicalities and long-range business goals.
 
FireGarden said:
Justification is not an "opinion poll." It is a matter of law. Or at least, it should be. Otherwise nobody is protected from anybody else except by the rule of violence.
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Law and ethics are not synonymous. If you wish to make them so, you will run into considerable difficulties. The point of establishing something in law is to make it firmer than ethics, which is a matter of personal opinion.
 
TragicMonkey said:
Law and ethics are not synonymous. If you wish to make them so, you will run into considerable difficulties. The point of establishing something in law is to make it firmer than ethics, which is a matter of personal opinion.
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But it is laws that protect us, not personal opinions. So fine, "justifications" has nothing to do with law. Nothing at all.

But the law should be the final word. Otherwise it's just "might is right"
 
Mephisto said:
Do you mean morally justified (in keeping with Tragic Monkey's quote) or militarily justified? If a country/people don't have the means to deliver explosives via conventional methods (i.e. fighter aircraft, artillery, etc.) might they be justified in using fanatical "suiciders" to do it for them?
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Not if they are basing the reason for their attacks on any silliness like religion. If they could show clearly and unequivocally that the US was attacking them when they had done NOTHING to provoke the attacks (not attacked US citizens, property, etc.: had not arrested US citizens -this is hard for me to say but to be fair - for fake crimes like pushing other religions and so forth) then, I would say they might have a right to try to attack US military. No right to go directly after civilians. Same goes for other countries.

Hezbllsht has no legitimate reason to attack Israel, Hezdcksukrs hide among civilians. Hezbazhols shoot rockets at Israeli civilians. Therefore, Israel has the right and duty to its' people to defend itself/them and if that defense harms civilians, I am sorry - but of the two, Israel is not the guilty one.And Israel is not attacking because of some idiot religious beliefs but because they were attacked and acted on by undeterred Lebanese criminals first. Lebanon could have chosen to stop them and it didn't.
 
FireGarden said:
But it is laws that protect us, not personal opinions. So fine, "justifications" has nothing to do with law. Nothing at all.

But the law should be the final word. Otherwise it's just "might is right"
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Actually some laws include, sometimes by default and others explicitly, what justification constitutes. In many locales, I am justified in (won't be arrested for) doing whatever is necessary to stop someone from attacking me ( and most of my training is not recorded) - so a trained person in karate can potentially get arrested for breaking a persons' arm (if it is beyond what they had to do to stop them) where another would not get in trouble for killing the attacker in the same circumstances because they did not have the training to be able to do less than that. In Florida, I now do not have to chance being harmed physically at all thanks to the changes in the carry/use law. Sorry, but I have no interest in the continued exitence of physical attackers. I believe in Darwin.

Oh, if an attacker grabs your shirt/coat with both hands and thumbs up they are not fighters. Grab the thumbs, continue to disable them ( break/dislocate thumbs then balls and solar plexus simultaneously, head or a knee as they go down). That's education. No real fight should last over 10 seconds - if it does, the people are evenly matched and it becomes a dancing contest.
 
FireGarden said:
But it is laws that protect us, not personal opinions. So fine, "justifications" has nothing to do with law. Nothing at all.

But the law should be the final word. Otherwise it's just "might is right"
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Where do laws come from? From people in power (if you're lucky, they're in power because most of the people agree with them) writing down their consensus opinions of the acceptability of various actions. Whether you consider the law to be ethical or not depends on how much you agree or disagree with the opinions of the writers and enforcers of those laws.

And how is law enforced? Ultimately, by physical might. If you don't respond to warnings and fines, people will come and subdue you by force, and forcefully lock you up.

It's always been "might is right". We just dress it up fancier these days.
 
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