Presedential Election

[Norseman82]

[quote name='Aloysius' timestamp='1325866338' post='2363961']
no, they are not. though many attempt to make an argument that they might be justified sometimes, the just war tradition of the Church absolutely excludes the idea of a pre-emptive strike/invasion. the only type of war that is just is a defensive war.
[/quote]

I have a problem with being told that I have to wait until millions of people are nuked before I can take action.

Maybe if Britain and France acted in the 1930s before Nazi Germany had its war machine complete WW2 could have been avoided and millions of innocent people saved. In fact, I read that German generals were ready to stage a coup against Hitler if Britain and France acted against Germany when it illegally occupied the SAAR region in 1936.

[havok579257]

[quote name='Norseman82' timestamp='1325953797' post='2364459']
I have a problem with being told that I have to wait until millions of people are nuked before I can take action.

Maybe if Britain and France acted in the 1930s before Nazi Germany had its war machine complete WW2 could have been avoided and millions of innocent people saved. In fact, I read that German generals were ready to stage a coup against Hitler if Britain and France acted against Germany when it illegally occupied the SAAR region in 1936.
[/quote]

your advocating that the ends justify the means. that if we attack someone else first and take them out more people will be saved. the ends can never justify the means.

[Norseman82]

[quote name='havok579257' timestamp='1325955193' post='2364468']
your advocating that the ends justify the means. that if we attack someone else first and take them out more people will be saved. the ends can never justify the means.
[/quote]

If an unstable person were walking down the street with a knife or loaded gun, would you not consider it legitimate defense to disarm him?

The traditional concept of "just war" was developed in a time when the weapons were swords, arrows, and boulders being flung by catapults. WMD and global delivery systems were not a factor then; they are now. The traditional "just war" doctrine needs to be updated to include this fact.

Edited January 7, 2012 by Norseman82

[FutureCarmeliteClaire]

[quote name='Basilisa Marie' timestamp='1325852314' post='2363907']
Just vote for Ron Paul.

I don't know of any Catholic sites like that, but these let you take a quiz to find out which candidates most line up with your beliefs.
[url="http://www.votesmart.org/voteeasy/"]http://www.votesmart.org/voteeasy/[/url] and [url="http://www.selectsmart.com/president/"]http://www.selectsmart.com/president/[/url]

Votesmart seems to be kind of comprehensive on different levels, and is non-partisan.
[/quote]
I'm for Paul too.

[CatherineM]

The question for me is if taking out a nuclear facility with for example a smart bomb, is in fact a defensive act.

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='FutureCarmeliteClaire' timestamp='1325958016' post='2364489']
I'm for Paul too.
[/quote]

Me 3.

[dominicansoul]

me 4!!! lets keep this up!!!

[vee]

*sigh* only eleven more months to go. You people need far shorter campaign times

[vee]

presidents spend too much time running for the next election than presiding

[vee]

and do people really need so much time to make up their minds???? my last election I made up my mind in like a day.

[dominicansoul]

canadians....

[ThePenciledOne]

[quote name='vee8' timestamp='1325963289' post='2364531']
and do people really need so much time to make up their minds???? my last election I made up my mind in like a day.
[/quote]

Well hopefully time we are given people take it to become informed on issues and such in order to elect the best canidate, but then again that's the idealistic position.....

[quote name='vee8' timestamp='1325963190' post='2364529']
presidents spend too much time running for the next election than presiding
[/quote]

I think that's the nature of American soceity.

[quote name='vee8' timestamp='1325962974' post='2364523']
*sigh* only eleven more months to go. You people need far shorter campaign times
[/quote]

I wish that too.

[4588686]

[quote name='Norseman82' timestamp='1325953797' post='2364459']
I have a problem with being told that I have to wait until millions of people are nuked before I can take action.[/QUOTE]

straw man.

[QUOTE]Maybe if Britain and France acted in the 1930s before Nazi Germany had its war machine complete WW2 could have been avoided and millions of innocent people saved. In fact, I read that German generals were ready to stage a coup against Hitler if Britain and France acted against Germany when it illegally occupied the SAAR region in 1936.
[/quote]

Right. So Britain and France, both of whom had had an entire generation (and in the case of France, the nation itself) crippled in a massive war a mere decade before should have launched a massive ground campaign, against international law, into central Europe based on the hyperbolic speech of an Austrian fascist who wanted to annex traditionally Germanic parts of Czechoslovakia and Poland, when neither country had yet rebuilt itself to a point where they were really capable of launching such a ground campaign. That's an obvious course of action.

It's very fashionable to pretend that the only thing necessary for the prevention of the mass slaughter that was the second world war would have been for Chamberlain to have had a bit of spine but the hard truth is that there were no good options for dealing with the resurgence of Germany and we don't have any sort of guarantee that attacking Germany early would have had any better an impact in the grand scheme of things. Fascism was an organic movement and much more popular in even Western Europe than we like to pretend when we write histories of the region. And the fact is that for most of the buildup the western powers did a not awful job of trying to contain Hitler while they rebuilt their capacity to fight a serious land war against a historically massive industrial power (fighting wars takes a tremendous infrastructure than broken and bankrupt countries have difficulty furnishing in an instant).

We know in hindsight that taking Hitler out early was probably the best option but that was far from obvious at the time. And the particular circumstances that led an obscure Austrian fascist to power in post-WWI Germany an the geopolitical implications of this power grab do not, contrary to the chattering classes on cable news, provide some Rosetta Stone through which we can view contemporary current events and act with perfect knowledge.

People said the same thing about the USSR's incursion into Afghanistan. It was an act of expansionism, just like Hitler's early expansion into Czechoslovakia, and we must do exactly what we failed to do with Hitler, right? Wrong. Taking on the Russian's directly would have been disastrous. Particularly since, rather than a virile act of expansionism by a resurgent Russia, the invasion into Afghanistan was, although we didn't know it at the time, the last desperate bid of a failing regime to shore up its southern security. But we must fight the Russians, right? Indirectly, at least? Well, that's what we did. And it worked well at the time. Until that particular decision significantly led to the deaths of 3,000 Americans two decades later. So we should have stayed out, right? Well. Maybe not. By sucking Russia into a long, unnecessary war in Central Asia we helped expedite the collapse of the regime. And who knows what would have happened if Russia had collapsed a decade later than it did with different acts holding the reigns of power (and access to their nuclear arsenal).

International relations are opaque and the 'right' thing to do is never obvious. Stop pretending otherwise.

[4588686]

[quote name='Norseman82' timestamp='1325957576' post='2364487']
If an unstable person were walking down the street with a knife or loaded gun, would you not consider it legitimate defense to disarm him?

[/quote]

Right. So if you see someone who could be unstable and looks like he may have a weapon your first reaction should be to blow him away, just in case. That's a sound way to go through life and conduct international relations to be sure.

[Ice_nine]

I will admit I don't understand many of the political nuances. And I understand that the global ramifications for decisions made by the US government are innumerable and intricately complex. The only thing I'm really interested in is philosophy really, and as a Catholic I think there's much difficulty when it comes to security vs. morality. Those two things aren't always at odds of course but many times they are making discussion and decisions difficult.

Again I know I'm glossing over a lot here but I agree that America being a super-power and having control (whether militarily or not) over the state of affairs secures our safety, that does not mean it is right. Even if Iraq becomes a glowing democracy and an ode to American foreign policy and we became bffls, that does not mean it was morally right to invade Iraq and cause 100 k civilian deaths among the poorest of people. I'm not against self-defense by any means btw. I just think that when safety/security comes at odds with morality, morality should win, even if the consequences are potentially dire.

I understand sensible people disagree. Moral perfection is hard.

seacrest out