Iraq & Syrian Civil Wars - Page 129

On September 08 2013 01:14 white_horse wrote:


Are womens' rights "western ideas" that western countries shouldn't "force" on islamic countries? Or are womens' rights "universal ideas" that should be supported by every country? The answer is different depending on who you ask, so it's a very difficult situation.

The root of all the problems in the middle east is (1) religious tradition that goes to the extreme (note: I never said religion itself is bad) and (2) different islamic sects being unable to get along with each other. Just check out iraq where shiite and sunni are blowing each other up every week.

Actually, yes, we are.

Moral relativity is the coward's way of excusing inaction in the face of evil. Some things are simply not relative, an absolute truth can be found.

A society which does not deny basic rights and freedoms to half of its population is morally superior to one that does not, for example.

On September 08 2013 02:59 DeepElemBlues wrote:


Yes, a nation that does not brutalize half its population and terrorizes and kills fascists in societies that breed fascists like locusts, who then proceed to terrorize and kill in their own societies and others, is morally superior. That's not a hard conclusion to draw for someone who is not morally obtuse.



You're damn right human rights violations aren't enough to go bomb a country over especially when people rage and foam at the mouth over it. Why would firefighters try to put out a house fire if there were a thousand people in their faces screaming that no one appointed them to take care of fires and they only want to stop that fire so they can loot the house.

On September 08 2013 02:17 KwarK wrote:

Moral relativity is the coward's way of excusing inaction in the face of evil. Some things are simply not relative, an absolute truth can be found. A society which does not deny basic rights and freedoms to half of its population is morally superior to one that does not, for example.

On September 08 2013 04:39 Meta wrote:
I think it's funny that nobody gives a shit when 100,000 civilians are killed with guns and bombs, but when a few hundred are killed with chemical weapons, suddenly THAT's an atrocity. What a bunch of horse shit.

On September 08 2013 04:39 Meta wrote:
I think it's funny that nobody gives a shit when 100,000 civilians are killed with guns and bombs, but when a few hundred are killed with chemical weapons, suddenly THAT's an atrocity. What a bunch of horse shit.

On September 08 2013 04:54 Shiori wrote:

Well, the problem is that reacting to guns & bombs killing a bunch of civilians by military action generally results in a lot of civilians dying to...guns & bombs. Kinda makes the "noble" intervening nation look like a bit of hypocrite. Civilian deaths are civilian deaths, whether you call them "collateral damage" or a "massacre."

On September 08 2013 04:47 TheRealArtemis wrote:


Its all political I guess. I think its horse shit that nobody want to take action and free Tibet. And I think its horseshit when North Korea can ruin the lives of millions. I guess on a world scale they need something to pin their actions on. And chemical attacks were that.

Edit. But you are right. 99% of the dead were due to guns, and when 1% (or less) die due to gas, everybody freaks out.

When I teach my ethics class, there is always someone who disagrees with everything on the grounds that morals are relative, i.e., there is no way to judge which morals are superior. I always straight-up fail them in the exam. When they come to complain to me, saying that their exam was well argued, etc., I respond that I felt like failing them. When they are outraged at this, I point out that, according to the student, morals are relative, so he cannot judge me wrong for it. Usually, the come to their senses afterwards.

On September 08 2013 03:02 Shiori wrote:

Double Barreled Question(s).

Women's rights are Western ideas.
Women's rights shouldn't be "forced" (i.e. by military invasion/action) on Islamic (or any) countries.
Women's rights are universal ideas.
Women's rights should be supported by every country.

There are four different questions here that you've combined into two. The general fallacy seems to be that one cannot move from "Syria should support women's rights" to "we have the moral right (or, for some, the obligation) to take military action against their country in order to rectify their lack of support for women's rights." A rather simplified analogy, in my mind, would be that this is rather like disciplining a child by beating him when he does something wrong, rather than by actually investigating and/or correcting the (flawed) reasons he has for doing wrong things. People who think that women are equal to men generally don't oppress women. People who are subject to sudden, unilateral changes in the law at gunpoint will probably obey the law, but they won't gain any particular respect for women. If anything, they'll probably hate them more, since people really hate arbitrary reasoning when it's used against them.


It's incredibly simplistic to claim that there is some magical "root of all the problems in the middle east." There isn't. There are many different problems, many different possible solutions, and many different hypothetical causes for these problems. Claiming that the Islamic religion (in some reducible form) is the root cause of issues in the Middle East is nonsensical, because it's impossible to separate the Middle East from Islam; Islam has been with them for over a thousand years. Many of those years bore a civilization that was arguably more sophisticated (in terms of human rights) than its Western (medieval) counterparts.



No, actually, we aren't. The imposition of beliefs is not only morally reprehensible, but it's arguably impossible, given that beliefs are, generally speaking, not decisions, barring some level of abuse against the psyche (e.g. if you torture someone, you may eventually break them enough to make them believe something). People who believe that women are not equal to men cannot be forced to change their minds. All that can be done is to educate them and find common ground. You could force them to act as if women were equal to men, but this would be rather useless at achieving the more important aim of, you know, actually creating a society that thinks women are equal to men because they actually are, rather than because a bunch of white guys with guns came into your country, deposed the government, destabilized the justice system, killed a bunch of people, and then asserted a bunch of new laws.

You seem to be of the mind that this sort of process (i.e. conversion by the sword) is actually legitimized by your belief that some particular ethical position is correct. But that's a ridiculous position, because there hasn't been a person in all of history who didn't believe the ethical/religious/philosophical/political system they were imposing at the end of a sword was incorrect. What I'm saying is that your conclusion (that women are equal to men, for example) is correct, but that attempting to threaten people into believing it is both immoral and doomed to failure.

On September 08 2013 06:16 Ghanburighan wrote:
Whenever I meet a Moral relativist (I cannot prefer moral package A over moral package B, because it can be culture-dependent or we lack an arbiter or we lack sufficient knowledge, etc) I'm reminded of the following story by an ethics teacher.

On September 08 2013 01:14 white_horse wrote:


Are womens' rights "western ideas" that western countries shouldn't "force" on islamic countries? Or are womens' rights "universal ideas" that should be supported by every country? The answer is different depending on who you ask, so it's a very difficult situation.

The root of all the problems in the middle east is (1) religious tradition that goes to the extreme (note: I never said religion itself is bad) and (2) different islamic sects being unable to get along with each other. Just check out iraq where shiite and sunni are blowing each other up every week.

On September 08 2013 06:35 Sub40APM wrote:

There were these people, they were called the Nazis. They thought certain people were superior to certain other people. Than America and Russia eliminated them to the wrongness of their belief and now most dont.
There also these other people, they were called Southern White Americans. They thought that certain people were superior to certain other people and sought to limit contact between superior and inferior people. Then the US government and lobbying groups representing the supposedly inferior people educated them and now a black guy is president.

That's a very childish way at looking at things.

On September 08 2013 06:46 Shiori wrote:

Are you really using Soviet Russia as an example of fighting against the idea that people were better than other people? Wow.




That's because only adults are crafty enough to convince themselves that war is anything but a morally repugnant enterprise.

Pro-war people always have at least one hidden premise presumed before the argument begins, so it's generally not worth debating it with them. I don't mean that critically, either; it's just that these people tend to make a particular leap in logic (i.e. from "X is committing a moral evil" to "it is no longer immoral to murder X") without explicating a coherent moral framework (it's especially weird if these people are, say, religious, since religions tend to eschew utilitarianism, which makes this kind of argument almost self-contradictory).

If you're referring to my statement about collateral damage still being essentially a moral crime, then I'll simply say that the following things are true:

1) Actions are judged (morally) within the context of the agent (i.e. you have to understand the situation and what you're doing)
2) Collateral damage is generally predictable
3) Collateral damage is not morally equivalent to accidents.

I mean, whatever floats your boat, I guess. But you have to be pretty delusional to think that you can simultaneously claim the absolution of moral responsibility afforded by the accidental character of an action and plan this shit ahead of time.