Re: Saddam didn't attack us? (#37624)
by Roderick T. Long on July 6, 2004 at 2:36 PM

Certainly some criminal gangs are preferable to others. (I'd rather live under Mafia rule than under al-Qaeda rule, for example; the Mafia doesn't care how people think or live so long as it gets its cut.) My point was not that the U.S. government was as bad as other criminal gangs. (I do think it's more dangerous to the world than most other criminal gangs right now, but that's because of its greater power, not its greater evil.) Rather, my point was that legalistic arguments about who violated what treaty, while they may have strategic/pragmatic value in various contexts, are of no moral relevance, since treaties between criminal gangs have no moral authority.

I agree that "since we can't undo the past, we have to deal with its effects” -- but I don't think that makes the causes irrelevant, because the causes in question are not just initiating causes but sustaining causes (and causes that our military actions exacerbate).