None of us are without sin; it's how you handle that realization that matters.
And a lot of it also depends upon exactly what you did "in the war."
Despite agreeing with much of what Spartacus says, I don't think that means that my grandfather was a "bad" man (for example) for leaving his family and volunteering to fight in WW2. He liberat…
None of us are without sin; it's how you handle that realization that matters.
And a lot of it also depends upon exactly what you did "in the war."
Despite agreeing with much of what Spartacus says, I don't think that means that my grandfather was a "bad" man (for example) for leaving his family and volunteering to fight in WW2. He liberated a death camp as his unit closed in on Germany in the aftermath of the Battle of the bulge in 1944. How does one factor that in the moral calculus?
IOW, Spartacus may have correctly identified the war profiteers as the truly bad people, but I don't think that means everyone who was swept up along in that carries the same culpability. There is no transitive property of Evil.
In the same way that the law protects the bona fide (ignorant) purchaser of stolen goods, for example. We don't say that the people who Bernie Madoff swindled (i.e. his victims) share his culpability, do we?
Correct. Most normal people aren't even playing the same game as the war profiteer con men. These are two separate social games with two separate sets of rules, and the ones playing the hidden game don't let their victims look at the rulebook.
I think that you're asking the right questions, but you seem to think that "the truth" exists in some Platonic-state that is knowable to ordinary men. Let me offer a story.
I was off the coast of what we called the "FRY" (the Former Republic of Yugoslavia) in 1995 when that all went to shit. I was part of the amphib task force that rescued a USAF pilot shot down while enforcing the no-fly zone over that country. We had no internet and very little understanding of the situation on the ground. Can you say definitively whether the no-fly zone was "evil", with no room for nuance? Fortunately, our helos didn't shoot anyone during that rescue, but if they had returned fire (the rescue aircraft were fired upon once they went inland) and killed someone, would you call that also "evil"? I have a hard time seeing that.
We had one guy in my unit who was getting a Master's and he was the only person I knew who had any books that even discussed the history of "FRY" and from all we could glean, it was a mess - with plenty of so-shit evil done by ALL sides in that civil war. Much of that blame for those starting conditions lies with Tito and many other leaders that far predates our arrival.
A Brit Major who was on the ground w/ peacekeepers in the UN enclaves came aboard our ship to explain what we would likely encounter if we tried to evacuate those enclaves.
He said: "The Serbs (BSA) will shoot at you for coming ashore. The BiH will shoot at you for coming into these particular areas. And the people we're protecting will mine the landing zones because if you take us out, they know that the BSA will move in and slaughter them. Therefore, you should understand that everyone there will try to kill you for their own separate reasons."
That's what war looks like "on the ground" I'm afraid. So who gets the blame for acting "evil" in such circumstances? Where is "The Truth" there? Do you blame the soldiers for having chosen service that on the surface is to "defend our own people" but gets turned into "using force in extremely murky and unclear circumstances." And then consider that those who refuse to participate in missions they consider wrongful are court-martialed and thrown in jail for disobedience. See, for example, U.S. v. New. https://www.armfor.uscourts.gov/opinions/2001Term/99-0640.htm)
None of us are without sin; it's how you handle that realization that matters.
And a lot of it also depends upon exactly what you did "in the war."
Despite agreeing with much of what Spartacus says, I don't think that means that my grandfather was a "bad" man (for example) for leaving his family and volunteering to fight in WW2. He liberated a death camp as his unit closed in on Germany in the aftermath of the Battle of the bulge in 1944. How does one factor that in the moral calculus?
IOW, Spartacus may have correctly identified the war profiteers as the truly bad people, but I don't think that means everyone who was swept up along in that carries the same culpability. There is no transitive property of Evil.
In the same way that the law protects the bona fide (ignorant) purchaser of stolen goods, for example. We don't say that the people who Bernie Madoff swindled (i.e. his victims) share his culpability, do we?
Correct. Most normal people aren't even playing the same game as the war profiteer con men. These are two separate social games with two separate sets of rules, and the ones playing the hidden game don't let their victims look at the rulebook.
We get separate economic playbooks, too. ;-)
I think that you're asking the right questions, but you seem to think that "the truth" exists in some Platonic-state that is knowable to ordinary men. Let me offer a story.
I was off the coast of what we called the "FRY" (the Former Republic of Yugoslavia) in 1995 when that all went to shit. I was part of the amphib task force that rescued a USAF pilot shot down while enforcing the no-fly zone over that country. We had no internet and very little understanding of the situation on the ground. Can you say definitively whether the no-fly zone was "evil", with no room for nuance? Fortunately, our helos didn't shoot anyone during that rescue, but if they had returned fire (the rescue aircraft were fired upon once they went inland) and killed someone, would you call that also "evil"? I have a hard time seeing that.
We had one guy in my unit who was getting a Master's and he was the only person I knew who had any books that even discussed the history of "FRY" and from all we could glean, it was a mess - with plenty of so-shit evil done by ALL sides in that civil war. Much of that blame for those starting conditions lies with Tito and many other leaders that far predates our arrival.
A Brit Major who was on the ground w/ peacekeepers in the UN enclaves came aboard our ship to explain what we would likely encounter if we tried to evacuate those enclaves.
He said: "The Serbs (BSA) will shoot at you for coming ashore. The BiH will shoot at you for coming into these particular areas. And the people we're protecting will mine the landing zones because if you take us out, they know that the BSA will move in and slaughter them. Therefore, you should understand that everyone there will try to kill you for their own separate reasons."
That's what war looks like "on the ground" I'm afraid. So who gets the blame for acting "evil" in such circumstances? Where is "The Truth" there? Do you blame the soldiers for having chosen service that on the surface is to "defend our own people" but gets turned into "using force in extremely murky and unclear circumstances." And then consider that those who refuse to participate in missions they consider wrongful are court-martialed and thrown in jail for disobedience. See, for example, U.S. v. New. https://www.armfor.uscourts.gov/opinions/2001Term/99-0640.htm)