>From: "J. Goard" <wyattoil@foothill.net>
>>At 01:22 PM 10/5/01 -0700, Brian D Williams wrote:
>>It's a matter of definition, in the tradition I was trained in
>>(USMC) it is impossible for someone who commits dishonorable acts
>>such as these to be considered admirable in any way.
>
>>By such tradition it is cowardly to attack unarmed civilians by
>>definition. The negative elements of the acts outweigh and cancel
>>out any remotely positive act (ethics).
>Forgive me here; I don't mean to be flippant. Do you really mean
>to say that no generally positive adjective, such as
>"intelligent", "efficient", or "obedient", would properly apply to
>these (or any other) deeply evil people? How about positive terms
>unrelated to the evil act, such as "well-dressed"? Surely it
>wouldn't be inherently unpatriotic to believe that the terrorists
>were more "well-dressed" than my teenaged neighbors, would it?
>Certainly it wouldn't be *significantly* positive, but you did
>choose to say "*remotely* positive".
I don't see you as flippant at all, this is a good question.
Such evil people as say Ossama Bin Laden for example, may have had
many traits we would consider positive before they committed evil
acts.
But after such acts any such traits are no longer relevant in my
accounting. I would never bother to refer to Mr Bin Laden as
intelligent for example (if he were) and would have no particular
reason to discuss such, except for military purposes. He is a
terrorist, a terrorist who is now responsible for thousands of
innocent deaths (by my accounting) and will now be held accountable
for his actions.
Whatever other traits he may possess are irrelevant.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat May 11 2002 - 17:44:12 MDT