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Edited on Fri Apr-08-11 07:14 PM by patrice
completely powerless, ergo, they deserve our absolutely complete commitment to their protection, while for persons in other countries' innocence is questionable (i.e. they may have somehow asked for the wars in which they die ((by refusing U.S. requirements)), so they are not innocent and even if they didn't ask for it and are, hence, "innocent", they, or those who control them, are not powerless to get out of harms way, so they or those who control them have the primary responsibility to protect them, not us. Ergo, these foreigners, not being innocent and/or not being powerless, they do not deserve our concern as we do what "higher/divine" powers "require" of us, what we "must", because we are "exceptional".
I THINK that's the official right-wing defense of war as compared to "pro-life" activism, that is. There are two conditions "innocence" and "powerlessness". Fetuses fulfill both, but in regard to war, failure on either criteria does not make the other ir-relevant.
Two problems with this:
1. Defining innocence in any absolute terms, but especially based upon support, or not, of American objectives, is pure BLASPHEMY. Historically, there have been situations, such as fighting the Nazis, in which this was a reasonable assumption, ... not so much since then.
2. Not everyone has the knowledge, means, and opportunity to exercise enough power to get out of harm's way, so many who die ARE powerless and if they're innocent that apparently doesn't matter, because they (or someone who had the power to do it for them) were SUPPOSED to get out of harm's way and didn't. Notice here how, unlike pregnancy, the determinative responsibility of others (foreigners) who have power to save, or not to save, these innocents (foreigners) IS part of the moral equation, whereas, in pregnancy that same power (the mother) is considered ir-relevant.
Additionally, others, though they do have the knowledge, means, and opportunity, i.e. power, to avoid the war are not innocent, because they may have decided that, though they had the power to avoid danger, avoiding the danger is Wrong and confronting it is Right in much the same way that "we" pretend each one of us Americans has freely done in making the decision to participate in or support war - and - to assume, as we often have, that these foreigners used their power to make that decision, but have made it Wrongly, is, once again, a claim to ultimate and absolute knowledge/understanding, i.e. Blasphemy.
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