Is there a cause for which you are prepared to kill? Ghandi vs. Henry V

>>> As for whether enforcing a treaty would justify a war, I’d go back to the guiding rule that non-violent approaches should be used until there is a clear and imminent threat to the lives of others. Under the circumstances of enforcing international agreements regarding Iraq, I did not believe the administration had demonstrated that a clear and imminent threat to the U.S. that would justify a war that would likely result in the deaths of tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

Andrew, I am not trying to be difficult with this follow up question. It is being asked with complete sincerity.

Is this a rule you apply uniformly?

What I mean is, would you *really* believe that once a cease fire treaty is made with an enemy that you would not be in favor of restarting agression again until there is a clear and imminent danger?

If you only mean this for Iraq, I think I could understand (whether I agree or not, I’m not sure), though this would mean I have more follow questions to try to understand why you feel Iraq is different from the general case.

If you mean what you are saying uniformly, i.e. you ALWAYS mean this, then I’m not sure how you can justify it at all. It seems a bit weird to make cease fire treaties so meaningless. A smart enemy would simply continually enter into cease fires while advancing their cause until ready to start agression again on their own terms. It’s the threat of continued violence that makes a cease fire treaty effective. (Or so I believe in any case. Feel free to disagree and explain.) Could you explain yourself a bit futher?

Please understand, I am really just trying to understand other people’s point of view. I have a hard time relating to either the pro or anti-war camp. I am simply at a loss to understand either point of view. I’m not trying to be disparging here. I don’t mean “both camps are nuts” or something like that. I mean literally, I don’t understand them. i.e. they literally don’t make sense to me.

Both camps speak in simplicities (and perhaps a better word here would be “clarity”) that don’t seem to match the complex reality I perceive (or maybe am failing to perceive). It’s like I’m missing out on a joke that everyone else understands.

And both sides see their stance as “moral” when frankly I can’t tell what the moral thing to do was. I’m literally reserving judgement because for the life of me I can’t tell.

NM Tony,

I hope we can find what it is I think I’m paraphrasing because frankly I might be wrong. But it does make sense to me. If I believe the Old Testament (and I do) than I see that #3 is a necessity to make sense of the good old OT.

The problem is that #3 will be perceived as a “catch all” by those that fear fanaticism. But in the end, we always must take accountability for our action. #3 does not change that or affect it in the slightest. Fanatical fear of fanaticism is one of the biggest causes of violence in history.

NM Tony,

Pardon me, but I’m not sure I’m with you on this. #3 is either true or it isn’t, first of all. God either can command a war in rare circumstances (such as in the OT) or He can’t. You don’t seem to be taking a stance on this, you seem to be saying “that line of thinking is dangerous because people can abuse it.” Paradon me, but of course that is true. Are you saying #3 isn’t true? Or are you just saying we should not mention it, even though it’s true, because people will abuse it? Please clarify.

>>> Suicide bombers honestly believe they will be rewarded by Allah for killing infidels.
I think people should get this out of their head that suicide bombings are primarily caused by religious fanaticism. There is certainly no evidence to back this at this point in time. The vast majority of suicide bombings were performed by non-religion and in fact atheitic groups. The main cause it wanting to remove a foreign power from their soil. In other words, I have no reason to believe the suicide bombings performed by radical Islam are anything but political with religion used to justify what they were going to do anyhow — religion or not. I’m not saying that is the case, I’m saying I have no reason to believe on way or the other. Do you have some way of proving this is actually caused by their religion and isn’t primarily political? I’ve certainly seen no evidence proving one way or the other at this point in time. This sort of cause and effect thinking worries me for many reasons. It’s the very justification used to run the Mormons out of everywhere. The Mormons are fanatics so we KNOW they were going to do terrible things. So we burn their houses down and run them out of the state. Becareful with this line of logic. It is just as likely to be dangerous as the one you were trying to counter.

>>> I have to question this line of thinking and still proclaim it dangerous.
I am certainly not disagreeing with you on this. I don’t think anyone is. I believe we were only talking theoretically. Obviously this justification can be abused.

But isn’t that true of all 3? Can’t someone justify their own agression by claiming they are just defending themselves? Can’t someone justify their own agression by claiming to be helping out someone else that couldn’t defend themselves?

That’s what I meant by person accountability. One can ALWAYS justify themselves using the language of virtue. But that doesn’t remove the underlying possiblity of there being a virtuous reason for war as per those three points.

>>> see a difference between God telling the prophet of the church to tell the members to kill, and individual members deciding for themselves (like Nephi) that God wants them to kill someone.

>>> Do you have a position on that? If God tells me to kill someone, is that ok?

Good question. I wish I had this talk that I’m paraphrase from memory and probably wrongly. Truth be told, my memory is that we’re talking ordained prophets only that are heads of state. In other words, #3 does not apply modernly at all.

So to answer your question, I can foresee no circumstance where a person could legitimately claim God told them to kill because that would always be at odds with the revelation from the top, and thus (as per standard Mormon doctrine) always be considered a false revelation because personal revelation is never understood as being true if at odds with general revelation which trumps it.

However, John, I am not sure I agree with your example. Nephi is a prophet of the Church. Do you believe Nephi was correct to slay Laban after commanded by God to do so? To be honest, I’m not so sure Nephi wasn’t correct to slay Laban even if not commanded as per the laws of his time — after Laban robbed him. (I’m no expert here.)

Chris W: Good point. I know very little about ancient Hebrew law. Obviously what Nephi did would technically be murder by the Law of Moses. However, I’ve heard there were exceptions, etc, in real life and don’t know if this would count or not. That’s all I was saying. I really have no idea.

Clay said: “The third option, when considering historical legends like the OT, is that the author believed that God commanded the violence as a way to make sense of the contradiction”

Clay, this is just one of the two options I listed. You believe God can’t or won’t command such a thing. This is not a third option as you are suggesting.

Stephen Wellington,
What I am suggesting is that there could be a legitimate point of view that the Iraq war was actually just a continuation of the Persian Gulf war as a way of enforcing that cease fire. In which case the Iraq war (if understood in this light I’m saying) is in fact #2 because the war was started to defend Kuwait.

After reading “Plan of Attack” it is clear that this was Colin Powell’s point of view and that is why he ended up supporting the war effort. I wasn’t just misguided loyalty as some believe. He honestly thought it a moral war because it was an enforcing of the cease fire on a war to defend the helpless. He even became quite convinced that France had started this war by refusing to let diplomacy take place. I agree with Powell that a cease fire treaty with no threat of violence has no use at all. France let their back room deals with Iraq cloud their judgment and nullified the peace processes. There really were two options at that point: 1) walk away, 2) go to war.

I completely respect the point of view that it wasn’t worth it and we should have walked away. I think this point of view, in 20/20 hindsight, was obviously correct.

But I also respect the point of view that we needed to enforce the treaty because we honestly believed there were WMDs. (Or at least had no other way of being sure there wasn’t.)

For me, the question will always be “what if there had been WMDs.” If a person call tell me honestly “we still shouldn’t have gone. I thought there were WMDs but I was still against the war” I have respect for their point of view. I can’t say they were wrong.

As it turns out, it was a huge mistake because there were no weapons of mass destruction, though Husein was in fact in violation of his treaty. But that’s using my 20/20 hindsight. Those that decided to go to war didn’t get to know that at the time. They had to make a judgment call on the partial information they had. It was, in my honest opinion, a tough call. They made the wrong call.

But I honestly don’t get where the anti-Bushies are coming from. How can they not see the moral ambiguity here that Bush and Blair had to face with partial information? How can the anti-Bushies possibly not see the difficulty of this call that had to be made?

But then again, how can the pro-Bushies possibly not see that this was in fact a mistake? I just don’t get it.

Both sides seem to me to fail to understand what actually took place. Instead we get a lot of conspiracy theories. Anti-Bushies dream up that it was all about Cheney wanting to get rich on oil stocks and pro-Bushies dream up some conspiracy where Sadaam tricked us into attacking while hiding his weapons. It’s so infuriating I could scream. Like I said, it’s almost like everyone is in on a joke that I can’t understand.

Even just looking over posts here, I’m very concerned with what some people are saying which I feel the fact simply do not support:

“I can only see Bush as trying to finish daddy’s war, something they were planning from day one!”

This statement really concerns me as it is likely a non-factual rumor used to justify a certain point of view. If you mean the US government has had a policy of regime change from the beginning, dating back to Clinton actually, then I agree with you. In my opinion, this was a correct policy. I’m not sure how you could argue otherwise.

If you mean that Bush, from the beginning, had doubts that diplomacy would work, I can still agree with you. But I had doubts too, so I can hardly blame Bush. And, oh yeah, it didn’t work. So I guess he was right. (Feel free to feel like someone else could have been more effective. It’s just an unprovable opinion.)

But if you mean Bush didn’t make an honest attempt at diplomacy, this is provably false. Please read “Plan of Attack” to blow this theory out of the water. (This is NOT a pro-Bush book at all. Bob Woodward is hardly a conservative or pro-Bush type. He’s just a good reporter.)

“Did George W. Bush claim #3 at one point for Iraq?”
This is another concerning statement for me. We *must* understand the difference between a person making up their own mind and going to God for confirmation — what Bush and Blair did — and claiming a revelation from God as the sole basis for a war. Bush and Blair, actually really Blair, did a really good job of explaining the rationale for war as enforcement of the cease fire treaty and thus #2.

Please understand, I feel the war was a mistake. That much is clear. But that doesn’t give me an excuse to dream up conspiracies or misrepresent the facts as so many I talk to about the war (on both sides) do.

TJM, this is exactly what I’m talking about. It is concerning to see such a complex issue boiled down to such an obvious over simplification. While what you are saying is not necessarily “untrue” it’s certainly not representative of the real decision process that the administration went through nor of their real intent.

I know I can’t convince people simply by asserting an alternative view. Also, I know from having gone down this road a million times now with anti-Bushies that no matter what I say, I will be categorized as “pro-War” because when it comes to the anti-Bush camp, those that are not with them are against them.

Here is what I propose, TJM. Please please go read “Plan of Attack.” This is not a book that will change your mind about the war. When you are done, you will still be very anti-Bush and anti-War, I promise. (Go on to read State of Denial, the sequel, and it will confirm your existing view of Bush’s incompetence.) Hillary Clinton loved the book and Kerry had it on his recommended reading list during his campaign.

But reading this book will correct false or oversimplified information you currently carry around, as your post above proves. You may still hate Bush and the war, but it will be for the right reasons.

And my hope is that it will moderate your opinion a bit. You’ll be ready to really have dialog with the pro-Bush camp instead of talking past each other as is currently so common.

I don’t want to see anyone change their mind on this issue. There are very good reasons to be anti-war. There are very good reasons to be pro-war. It’s time for both sides to strive for some real dialog and understanding.

Incidently, I recommend “Plan of Attack” to pro-Bushies too. I promise reading this book will not cause you to stop being pro-Bush or pro-War. But it will help you straighten out a lot of the false facts the pro-Bush camp throws around. You’ll now believe in the war for the right reasons. And I hope it will moderate your view a bit and prepare you for dialog with the anti-war camp. (And you can read the book before it, “Bush at War” to confirm your view that Bush is a competent leader.) Bush had this book on his recommended reading list during his last campaign.

My concern is honest dialog. I don’t see much of it. It’s all hatred, polemics, emotion, and anger right now.

I’ve been tempted to try to write up a blog post and make the case for moderation on the war: that is to say, to keep your current view, whatever it is, but try to allow yourself to understand the other view so that you can have a bit more respect for it. I don’t know that this is really relevant to Mormonism, so I won’t do it. But I’d really like to go through some of the facts presented in “Plan of Attack” and tackle some of the false rumors I hear over and over again from both sides and try to get some real dialog going. It is so needed.

>>> “The problem with Truth is that it has a liberal bias.”

I was trying to moderate by views by reading a more liberal point of view. I was shocked how much it disproved many of the views you espouse while simultaneously giving plenty of reason to be against the war. Reading the book will not change your point of view, it will just moderate some of the false views you have, like the assumption that their plan from the beginning for regime change somehow equated to no honest diplomacy.

Clay, it seems like you are saying exactly what I am. I don’t know how to communicate it any better than you are. You agree with me, so good job! It seems to me that you are suggesting that God could command war, but you don’t believe He did, or at least aren’t convinced He did.

But this is still the same was what I am saying. There is still no third option. God can command war, He just didn’t. But if He did, it would be right. Thus you are accepting the Church’s position as true: it is right to go to war if God commands it. End of story. The fact that you disbelieve the old testament record in this regard doesn’t make it a third option.

>>> Energy independence is the only solution.

TJM, this is a statement I can get behind. I agree that if we take oil out of the equation a huge part of the conflict is resolved. I’m not as convinced as you that it’s 100%. But even if I were to accept that the war was really about rooting out terrorism and safe havens (a questionable position to be sure, though one I honestly believe Bush’s administration believed in at the time) I would have to realistically accept that oil was still an indirect issue, and a viable one at that, as it’s the source of funding Saddam and others. In other words I can agree with you but I can’t compartmentalize like you can.

Removing a non-compliant dictator who is in violation of his cease fire treaty is a worthy reason to consider war in my opinion, though not necessarily one that demands war. But ware must be an option. The oil is added motitvation but not necessarily the primary motivation. In this case, it was a huge factor on how the origial Persian Gulf war was justified, so it would be impossible to decouple that issue now. I wish someone in the anti-war camp would at least admit this to themselves.

Let me just say this. I believe the real question here is not “was it about oil?” It was in part. That neither makes it moral or amoral. Do you all believe the Persian Gulf war was amoral? It was far more about oil than the Iraq war is.

What would make it amoral is if it primarily or solely about oil. If this is true, then it’s amoral. But please note that not one of you has tackled this question yet. Do you even have evidence to suggest one point of view over the other? If so, why didn’t that come out first as that is clearly the issue here.

There is a simplicity to the arguements being made here that skips over the real issues needing consideration. This is what worries me. You may all be dead right and I’m just cynical enough to believe it could be true. But as of yet, I have seen no evidence that Bush did this “primarily for the oil.” Considering how this basically destroyed his political career, he would have to be mighty stupid to have done it only for the oil. It would be one of the most monumentally stupid moves of a politician ever since it benefited him nothing at all.

I think a much better explanation that fits the facts beter is that Bush honestly thought he was liberating people, protecting the world from WMD, while removing a tyrant that had a real source of power in his oil. There is also no doubt that Bush was very sensitive to how distruptions to oil supply (either intentional or unintentional) could disrupt the American economy. So, yes, it was in part about the oil. How could I believe otherwise?

I feel there is a lot of room for varied points of view that all fit the facts. I do not believe there is an obvious answer here and I’m distrustful of supposed easy answers here.

I believe this is what ultimately separates me from all the rest of you. It is not that I am pro or anti war, I’m really neither. What really separates me from the rest of you is that I believe both sides have a valid point of view worthy of discussion. Look inside your hearts and ask yourself this troubling question: “Am I so emotionally close to the situation that I can’t even listen to the other side’s valid points?” Then ask yourself this: “what type of damage am I doing by closing off dialog?”

How will we ever deal with a situation like this in the future if we don’t honestly ask ourselves the hard questions we are avoiding? We can’t just make a rule like “we won’t go to war if oil is involved” or even “we won’t go to war if there is an economic reason involved.” Rules like this just don’t work. They nullify every worthy war we’ve fought. We can’t make a rule like “we will never enforce a cease fire unless there is imminent threat of lives.” How could this ever work in real life? I don’t even believe we can make a rule like “we will only go to war with the UN backs it.” This puts us at the mercy of every country with veto power even if they are acting corruptly. We can’t even make a rule like “we won’t go to war if it’s against international law” as there is no judiciary body that can determine if it is or isn’t against the law and thus it’s just a matter of popular opinion. (Which meant we would go to war because at the time popular opinion in the America was that it was legal.)

It’s time to do some real soul searching here.

TJM Says: “War should be the absolute and completely unavoidable last result.”

TJM, you said it. I guess this is the bottom line isn’t it? If you think Bush and Blair didn’t exaust all reasonable alternatives first, then of course you’d be against the war. This makes sense to me. It’s much better than the other reasons given so far. Thank you for putting it that way. Of course the next question is “what else could he have done?” if one is anti-war or “did he really do everything?” if one is pro-war.

Stephen,
You suggested a completely different set of criteria for whether or not a war is moral. It think this would open up an interesting discussion by itself.

However, I can’t help but notice that by this standard every war ever fought has been amoral, including WW 2 and the revolutionary war. Did George Washington let people leave the army if they wanted to? Nope. Fails #2. Did people make profit off the war? Yup. Fails #1. Same with WW 2 of course.

So as a judgment for morality of war, I don’t think it’s much of a litmus test as it always fails in real life. But I think the underlying point is valid: war can’t be *because* of the profit, and should *always* be in defense of self or others. (i.e. the original 3 points about the Church’s view minus the idea of God commanding it which I agree can’t happen modernly.)

>>> When every other country in the world says that the war in Iraq is illegal…dont you think they are trying to tell us something?

If you are asking me, no, I’m not convinced that the rest of the world isn’t receiving propoganda and doing this out of self interest just like you feel the Americans are. If you are explaining your position, yes, I see where you are coming from. There is a certain safety in numbers, or at least a strong perception of it.

>>> It is just the same when every country in the year votes for Israel to give back the occupied terroritories of Palestinian land back to the palestinians except for Israel, the US and the Marshall Islands who vote no.

Way off topic, but good example. But is it really true that this is as simple as Israel giving back land taken during a war?

I’m not up on this issue, so I’m going to read this wikipedia article and see what I find: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli-Palestinian_conflict

Wow! This is a really morally murky issue. Can’t say I’m suprised. Real life rarely has moral simplicity that people pretend it does. I wouldn’t just give the land back to the Palestinians without a lot of promises first either. I can’t say Israel is handling this right, but I can’t say it’s anywhere near as easy as you seem to think.

Update: Okay, I’m still reading. I just got the section called “The question of Palestinian refugees.” Wow! This is morally difficult. I can see both sides here. The Palestinians apparently left of their own accord during the war (this is debatable, it would seem, in some cases) and the countries that brought them in refused to keep them. But I can see the other side too. They have stats that (to them at least) suggest that Arab call to leave wasn’t a huge factor. Who to believe? Both seem like reasonable points to me.

But this is really not clear cut to me. I think the UN should be condemned for simply voting to have Israel give the land back without brokering a peace first. (As you suggested, but I have no knowledge if you were accurate or not.) That is just awful. What in the world are they thinking? It’s very offensive.

If this is the example you want to hold up, fine, but to me it suggests that popular opinion in the world doesn’t mean much morally.

Update: Holy cow! From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_refugees

In 1957, the Refugee Conference at Homs, Syria, passed a resolution stating that “Any discussion aimed at a solution of the Palestine problem which will not be based on ensuring the refugees’ right to annihilate Israel will be regarded as a desecration of the Arab people and an act of treason (Beirut al Massa, July 15, 1957).”[15]

The Arab League issued instructions barring the Arab states from granting citizenship to Palestinian Arab refugees (or their descendants) “to avoid dissolution of their identity and protect their right to return to their homeland”.[16]

!!!!!!!!!!!

Update again: Ah, it sounded really bad. Looks like the neutrality of that article is disputed. I won’t assume it was true. If it is, that is really really bad.

TJM, I doubt we are talking past each other. But fine.

Okay, one more post and then I’m done here. I can’t imagine having anything else to say on this point without actually sitting down with someone and discussing actual details.

>>> There is no clear cut answer to the posed question which is why I asked it, but in terms of the context of the Iraq war it was clear cut for me personally.

I can certainly respect your opinion here. If it’s clear cut to you, you need to oppose the war as much as you can.

I wish I had your clarity and simplicity, but only if it represents reality. I am still in doubt on that second part, but open to it.

Someday let’s go to lunch (all you have to do is come to the States ) and talk actual details and you can help me understand where you are coming from without all the generalities and emotional banter which is unavoidable in posts like these. I can only really understand where someone is coming from by going through details and having them explain how they understand those details. I know of no other way.

Oh, and I will look at that video you posted. I thought it was the WW 2 proganda film of the same name, but just say that it wasn’t.

Update: Drat! It won’t download for me. Sorry. I’ll keep trying. It gets to just under 2 minutes and then stops for good.