1+2. What part of this is so hard to understand? Law is individual to a society, so international law must be employed to an issue involving different societies (Islam and the West). As international law was created with unequal input from the US relative to the Islamic world, I think it is unfair to apply it to actions of Muslims. Beyond that, I think that murder, killing and manslaughter are all equivalent, regardless of motive or intent. Taking the Taoist view, action taken with a clear view of the situation is right. As the essence of life is perpetuation of the species, an action that results in this is well carried out (regardless of intention or foreplanning). Nature makes no distinction in types of death, why do we insist on inventing them?
3+4+5. Ok, no offence, but I disagree entirely with most of that.
Captain Alfred T. Mahan - believed that America’s survival depended upon a strong navy. He argued that a strong navy would require island possessions to serve as naval bases. The time had come, Mahan wrote, for Americans to turn their “eyes outward, instead of inward only, to seek the welfare of the country.”
Commodore Perry - 1853. Opens up trade with Japan, due largely to demonstration of great technological superiority. Within a short few years, the Japanese navy upgrades to ship capable of matching Perry`s. This was triggered by the apparent threat of a superior force, and the experiences elsewhere in East Asia, where European colonization had entailed a breach of indigenous beliefs and traditions. There WAS a percieved threat, and this stimulated the Japanese midset that they must establish themselves as a force, or else their culture be conquered.
Modernisation is not essentially due to external influence, nor must it always follow the Western model. Your “sequence of events” is flawed because it assumes the better force must be that from outside. This is Western teaching, and understandably lacks impartiality.
Closer to the present. No historian will argue that Japan was not under US pressure. Their acts might have as much a basis for pre-emption as the US does now. There also is documented evidence that the Japanese had prepared surrender documents before the first bomb. These were as much a show of force to the rest of the world as they were of military importance.
The bombs - The half life for the plutonium used in the bombs is 24000 years! There was no structure of DNA then, let alone the concept of genetic engineering. The genetic lesions caused by the bomb will continue to effect offspring many generations beyond those who actually experienced it. Your suspicions are ill-educated and wrong!
6+7+8. Is this the 1929 Geneva convention? The one that pre-dated Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki - where civilians WERE treated collectively? Its a simple concept. The Geneva convention is another one of those silly international laws that everyone ignores. We are talking about the responsibility of a society to control those that represent it.
- The videos say a lot of things. I didn
t say OBL was pised because the Kuwait invasion was repelled (remember, he doesn
t like Saddam). He HAS mentionned the sanctions against the Iraqi people, amongst other things.
The Soviet Union was buit on a Western economic model. The Bolsheviks had tried to reorganise agriculture on the Western model, but the dash to industrialisation destroyed Russias farming (under the late Tsarist times it had been the world`s biggest grain exporter, the Soviet system essentially relied on subsitence farming by peasants). Every attempt to Westernise Russia has failed, the Soviet one was doomed too. The collapse was a matter of time; the concept of a Westernised Communist state was too ideologically strained to survive.
10+11. I simply disagree. The US has been the dominant player since WW2. The wars afforded it too much credit with Europe, and decimated their power. Colonial influences were hardly strong. Iraq sided with the axis.
- If we go to the slightly more interesting higher level debate, commonality of philosophy seems unlikely across the globe. This might be achieved by conquest (read genocide), or else simply ignored. The Soccratic view of “greater good” and generic humanity is flawed. Their are no great multi-animal societies, just equilibrium. I would prefer to preach an equilibrium through toleration of our differences. Accept that there is no “better” way, just the path that acting skillfully takes us upon. Deal with situations as they arise in whatever way is best suited to the time. In the case of Iraq, I think that containment until Saddam`s rule is overthrown, unaided from within, is the most suitable choice now (especially given more pressing issues such as NK and OBL).