Humanitarianism - moral dilemmas of action

[vimothy]

oh...right you are then:slanted:

Que?

 

[vimothy]

The Sri Lankan government has issued a deadline of noon tomorrow for the Tamil Tigers to surrender. With the embattled rebels unlikely to put down their guns before then, only forceful and immediate international action to halt the fighting can prevent the possible deaths of tens of thousands of civilians trapped between the warring parties.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4883

 

[mistadubalina]

Is there a moral position that can hold the following simultaneously: the state is organised crime; humanitarian intervention is wrong?

i suspect you'd have to be some sort of bizarre scorched earth extreme libertarian type to answer yes to that.

how about an extremely moral and righteous, fundamental religious type?

 

[scottdisco]

how about an extremely moral and righteous, fundamental religious type?

you're quite right.

i bet it's not a million miles from, say, some right-leaning American Christians.

extreme (and extremely committed) libertarians might say the state is just robbing us, a racket - therefore organised crime, whilst also recognising that the international order is based (largely) on the states they despise, and they might therefore hold that all attempts at multi-lateralism in the world (i don't even mean hypothetical interventions, just the UN and such) are totally wrong, like the people who hatch conspiracy theories about the NWO. (because they might figure they have enough problems grousing about the one state of the territory they happen to reside in, without getting headaches about a bunch more messing with their business.)

i'm making a bit of a straw-man approach to such people, i admit, but if your starting view of the state is "organised crime" you're clearly a bit laissez-faire, to say the least.

this is discounting individual situations where anybody can recognise the state has undoubtedly enriched itself through patronage networks or is undeniably criminal in parts and so on (like Kadyrov in Grozny or how the Philippines operates, or, presumably at a local level, mob tentacles in the various parts of southern Italy that have various mobs, or northwest Indiana's local politics, the Chicago machine etc), because not everybody will go and damn entire institutions with valid functions just because of some bad practice.

(i know that last paragraph is very obvious but thought i'd be clear.)

 

[mistadubalina]

The state is organised crime, an agent of the devil, humanitarian intervention is wrong!

Kill em all and let god sort em out means fuck humanitarian, we're talking divine intervention! People are expendable, Everyone is a martyr and should willingly lay down their life for the cause and if not then we'll martyr you regardless. After all, by creating apocalypse it's only hastening the return of * enter preferred messiah here* It is better they die in glory on the battlefield. Remember, You are doing god's work!

How much more morally righteous could you get ?

 

[scottdisco]

yes i was hoping somebody would fill in the details on my brush strokes

you are definitely on the money with that sort of crank.