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I agree with Paul Spicker's comments on the issues raised by the study (an
estimate that the US occupying forces are clearly unwilling rather than
unable to make) but the bits before and after are puzzling.
--On 29 October 2004 10:25 +0100 Paul Spicker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> an accident win which five people die is worse than one in which one
> person dies..... moral and religious tradition which holds the value of
> life to be infinite
> ..... there is no moral difference whatever between 50, 100 or 200
> thousand deaths. I don't accept that numbers trump morality.
This seems to confuse two aspects of "worse" - leaving aside the
mathematical nod to "infinity", it seems self-evident that 100,000 deaths
are 'worse' in the sense of more awful, tragic, waste of human life
irrespective of whether one thinks they are 'worse' in the sense of more
immoral. It would certainly seem that the protagonists of the invasion and
occupation of Iraq felt the numbers killed by Saddam were significant, even
though as others have observed, a high degree of selectivity (re Saddam
himself between the 80's and 90's let alone other vile despots) is evident.
> Having said this, I'm uncomfortable at the form of the question which sets
> "Would you rather have Saddam Hussain still in power?" against the
> question "Was it worth the loss of 100 000 civilian lives?".
I think Paul rather misses the point of John's brief comment in his initial
post to this list.
The "So you'd want to see Saddam still in power [i.e. killing and torturing
people]" argument used in almost those terms by, amongst others Messrs.
Straw and Blair, does now deserve the rebuke that such sympathy for Iraqi
suffering sits oddly with the death toll resultant on their mission of
mercy. (Of course the previous figures 30, 20 or 10 thousand deaths also
questioned their honesty but see my first comment re 'worst').
In short they are either innumerate or hypocritical (inclusive OR).
It is also pretty clear why Iraqi deaths are deemed uncountable by the
Coalition.
> ..there is a profound moral difference between the loss of life through
> air strikes and the mass murders of the Ba'ath regime ..... The
> destructive violence used by the coalition is regrettable; but the
> massacre of the civilian population was evil.
There is no indication of what calculus is being used here (is there an
objective value to the term "massacre" I wonder and does it have an upper
limit the Occupation forces have now passed?)
The relative numbers we have been told are not relevant to calculations of
morality (fortunately for Paul's conclusion...) so why the flagrant
disregard of multiple provisions of the Geneva Convention (refusing to allow
non-combatants to leave, e.g. Fallujah, indiscriminate bombing of civilian
populations, violation of prisoners' rights, etc) is merely "regrettable"
while the US-backed (intelligence, materiel, ideological) torture and
killing of Iraqis and Kurds in the 80's is "evil" is alas unexplained.
John
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