humanities.philosophy.objectivism

On Mar 17, 10:00 am, Mark Sieving wrote:
> > What I'm saying different than you though is that on a practical
> > level it really didn't make any sort of difference making that
> > distinction, (and why I really don't really care if Bush did or didn't
> > make it)
>
> Do you think that there is no practical difference between an
> unfriendly country that may develop nuclear weapons and missile
> technology in the future, and an unfriendly country that has a fueled,
> nuclear armed missile on the launch pad with the countdown running?

Unless one has split second access to some communication intelligence
that shows a strike is in the immediate offing (highly improbable)...
in the real world there is just no way to tell for certain untiil the
birds are in the air. The time delay from simply bad relations to all
out war is way way too short to make such a preemptive/preventative
distinction practical in the modern world. That's just the reality if
21th century warfare.

This was probably true for most of the 20th century too. The Soviet
Union was FAR more militarily active than any nation in the middle
east has been. Without access to nuclear weapons.... I have few doubts
the US would have attacked it under justification of preemption. My
observation has been when politicians have access to large stores of
weapons they tend to shoot first and ask questions later. I really
think the guy that said absolute power corrupts knew what he was
talking about.

> Would you consider an attack on the latter to destroy the missile to
> be immoral? If not, then you can see the practical difference between
> preventive and preemptive war

I view all wars as immoral. There are no "just wars"in my book but
like various other crimes and follies of many... some wars are more
immoral than others. Unfortunately we are still too irrational beings
to think far enough ahead to avoid these messy pleasantries in the
first place (and I include myself in that collective stupidly) What
we do is react to situations when it's too late... rather then
effectively deal with the underlaying issues that cause these sorts of
conditions to arise. My hope is maybe one day we'll figure it out.