quote:

Originally posted by evil_bastard Don't be a hypocrite, your original post was both pompous and irrelevant, and when I pointed that out you accused me of throwing into doubt the validity of the claim and of being fallacious, neither of which were true. Now you complain that I have not made any assertions on something of which I have no experience, when your own assertions, besides being irrelevant, have yet to be backed up by anything other than your own say so. You might as well have said nothing at all eh? I'll admit two wrongs don't make a right, but your problem seems to be that you can't accept your comment contributed nothing to the thread whilst you happily accuse others of the same. In that case, perhaps you can point out what your original post contributed.

Your continued reliance on ad hominem attacks belies the fundamental emptiness of your attempts to avoid dealing with the fact that you have nothing even approaching an actual refutation of any of the assertions I have made. Furthermore, the false analogy you are attempting to draw between my original post and your response to it could not be less veracious.

The topic of this thread, in case you hadn't noticed, is Iraqi civilian deaths. In John's original post, he compared those deaths to the ones incurred by the United States in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Furthermore, his post implied that the war in Iraq was an unjust course of action with the deaths which have resulted being the given evidence of this claim.

I felt his claims failed to adequately explore the circumstances of the Iraqi civilian deaths. Unlike the American civilians killed in 9/11, who had nothing to gain from the attack, the Iraqi civilians had much to gain from the war in Iraq - namely freedom. As a result, I claimed that "It is better to die for a chance at freedom than to live a life rendered meaningless by tyranny" in an attempt to introduce issues that were highly relevant to the moral characterizations of the war in Iraq and the resultant casualties that were being made.

In response, you made the following statments, which you seem to mistakenly believe have comparable relevance to my own.

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Easy to say when you've never actually been faced with the choice.

I think it's quite obvious that this statement has absolutely nothing to do with the truth of my assertion. It neither elaborates nor refutes my assertion. It merely attributes to the assertion the meaningless and cliche label of being "easier said than done." Since this has no meaningful logical connection to any assertion even related to "Iraqi civilian casualties" it hardly could be said to contribute anything to the thread.

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We all like to think we'd be heroes when faced with a situation like that, but not many people are. Life isn't Hollywood.

Merely an elaboration of your original irrelevant statement, these statements also fail to add anything meaningful to the thread.

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Why don't you tell us all about the time you died for something you believed in.

Besides being a fallacious argument by demanding impossible perfection, this question doesn't really have any logical relevance to my assertion or the topic of the thread either. The simple truth of the matter is that you didn't like what I had to say, perhaps because you're uncomfortable with its logical conclusions. Unable to actually refute my assertions, you resort to a feeble attempt at demagoguery, hoping that you could drown out the voice of truth with irrelevant remarks and fallacious accusations of hypocrisy. It's a shame I've had to waste my time drawing out this issue in crayon for everyone - but I wouldn't want anyone to mistakenly believe your ideas had any credence, unlikely though that may be.

Arbiter, I'll just go back to your original statement:

quote:

It is better to die for a chance at freedom than to live a life rendered meaningless by tyranny.

Who's to say it's better? You can't say it's universally better, you can only say it's better for you. Nobody asked those people if they wished to die for freedom or live a life which is in your eyes rendered meaningless by tyranny instead. If a person who volunteered for a liberation movement or something like that dies, then your quote makes sense. But if a little child whose only thoughts at the moment were to get away from the shooting gets killed, your argument doesn't make sense because that child didn't have any choice. Infact, a civillian's choice is more likely to be living a life opressed by tyrrany than taking a chance and dying for freedom, as otherwise that person would be in a military/paramilitary group instead. The sole fact a person is a civillian means that person is more or less indifferent towards the conflict.

On another point, you imply that life under a tyrrany is completely meaningless. I must say that's wrong. Even under most hideous tyrranies, a person still has some choices to make. And even under most liberal democracies, you are still forbidden from taking some actions. So my question for you is this: Where is the boundary which separates meaningless life from a meaningful one? Or are you saying all life is meaningless untill you have absolute freedom?

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1+1=10

For the last time, it can't be fallacious if I'm not refuting the claim, so everything you say about ad hominem tactics is nonsense.

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It merely attributes to the assertion the meaningless and cliche label of being "easier said than done."

Your original post was nothing but a recycled cliche which we've all heard before. What a hypocrite.

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Besides being a fallacious argument by demanding impossible perfection

Wrong again. Nobody can tell a story about how they died, it was sarcasm and pretty blatant at that.

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Unable to actually refute my assertions

You're unable to support your own assertions. What a hypocrite.

This one sums you up though:

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fallacious accusations of hypocrisy

Classic!

So you think your cliche was a valuable contribution and my cliche wasn't, and now you're calling me a hypocrite! You really are a character!

Last edited by evil_bastard on May-18-2003 at 00:54

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Originally posted by evil_bastard So you think your cliche was a valuable contribution and my cliche wasn't, and now you're calling me a hypocrite! You really are a character!

I'm not calling your a hypocrite, I'm telling you that your argument, if any, is fallacious and that you obviously have nothing to contribute to the thread. And you continue to do nothing but provide more evidence to support that assertion with your pitiful attempts to defend your inane ramblings.

Last edited by Arbiter on May-18-2003 at 06:50

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Originally posted by DrUg_Tit0 On another point, you imply that life under a tyrrany is completely meaningless. I must say that's wrong. Even under most hideous tyrranies, a person still has some choices to make.

are you serious? despite freedom being 'relative', i really think this assertion you just made is really quite astonishing!

you are implying that even under the harshest tyrannical regimes people have choice? wow...and what choice are you refering to?


for instance, let's put your logic into a hypothetical situation...let's say your...i dunno jewish, and you live in a state where being jewish in every sense of the word is forbidden and punishable by execution. well, according to your logic you do have a choice, to A) get executed or B) get executed, did i forget C? Oh yes, executed.

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My comments were to point out how mundane your own cliches were, this was quite obvious in my first post. I can accept this, you can't. There's no point in continuing to argue with you because you can't accept that your cliche on page 1 wasn't new to anyone and added nothing to the debate. You can't accept it because you know fine well your entire criticism of my posts has been along the same lines, it would destroy every of your hitherto assertions were you to accept what is quite obvious.

I'd like to point out that the accusations you've made about fallacious arguments have had no merit at all (surprise, surprise): firstly you called my criticism of the delivery of such a mundane saying a criticism of the saying itself in order to render it fallacious, then, desperately, you take a blatantly sarcastic comment for what it's worth in order to render it fallacious. Pitiful.

Perhaps the worst hypocrisy was your accusation of feeble attempts at demagoguery before making, only a few words later, a feeble attempt at demagoguery! Your attempts to psychoanalyse me and your criticism of "inane ramblings" were close competitors though. But let's not forget the bit where you declared your own ramblings as "the voice of truth".

You can sit in your little ivory tower and enjoy having the last word now.

Last edited by evil_bastard on May-18-2003 at 11:12

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Originally posted by marcus82 are you serious? despite freedom being 'relative', i really think this assertion you just made is really quite astonishing! you are implying that even under the harshest tyrannical regimes people have choice? wow...and what choice are you refering to? for instance, let's put your logic into a hypothetical situation...let's say your...i dunno jewish, and you live in a state where being jewish in every sense of the word is forbidden and punishable by execution. well, according to your logic you do have a choice, to A) get executed or B) get executed, did i forget C? Oh yes, executed.

Still, you do have many choices to make. For example, you can try to escape, you can wait till they find you, or you can turn in. Now, as far as I'm concerned, in a situation where death is imminent, it is worth to put my life at risk in order to attempt to change something. But still, this hypothetical situation you described is nowhere near the situation in Iraq.

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1+1=10

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"Those are my principles, if you don't like them... well, I have others.”

quote:

Originally posted by Arbiter In John's original post, he compared those deaths to the ones incurred by the United States in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Furthermore, his post implied that the war in Iraq was an unjust course of action with the deaths which have resulted being the given evidence of this claim. I felt his claims failed to adequately explore the circumstances of the Iraqi civilian deaths. Unlike the American civilians killed in 9/11, who had nothing to gain from the attack, the Iraqi civilians had much to gain from the war in Iraq - namely freedom. As a result, I claimed that "It is better to die for a chance at freedom than to live a life rendered meaningless by tyranny" in an attempt to introduce issues that were highly relevant to the moral characterizations of the war in Iraq and the resultant casualties that were being made.

well, putting aside the needless banter of the gentleman from newcastle and yourself, i feel i should answer this.

I compared the deaths in iraq, with the ones in the WTC attacks, because, an innocent death, is an innocent death. The people in those towers no more deserved to die, than the people in iraq. Neither had any say whatsoever in their fate, and were killed for ideological reasons.

Both the hijackers on those planes, and the soldiers dropping the cluster bombs in iraq, are guilty of murder of the innocent. and the planners of the 9-11 attack are as guilty as the war hawks in the bush administration.

I agree, with your claim that "It is better to die for a chance at freedom than to live a life rendered meaningless by tyranny" which by the way IS a cliche, which in no way takes away from it's validity.

However, it is worse to have your choice taken away from you, (to live in tyranny or die for freedom), and made by someone else halfway across the globe. If the iraqi people wanted to revolt, and take out saddamn, then that should have been their choice.

Now, the obvious counterpoint is that they tried this, during the kurdish rebellion, in which thousands of kurds were killed, their mass graves only now being discovered.

THIS is when the US should have stopped this monster saddamn hussein. when he was gassing his own people. Instead, this is when they supported him. because he was serving their geopolitical agenda at the time.

Because of this, i believe the decision to invade iraq, had very little to do with wanting to free the iraqi people, and a lot more to do with freeing iraqi oil, and securing an american military presence in the middle east.

The reasons came and went, in 26 point font in all the newspapers(Weapons of Mass Destruction, Ties with Al-Qaeda) but since none could be proved, it was the "humanitarian" reasons that the US eventually settled on. I simply don't buy this, after nearly more than a decade of brutal sanctions imposed by the US, that they knew full well were killing innocent iraqis, and making saddamn stronger.

I am glad saddamn is out of power. However, i still do believe that the war was unjust, and in this case, i do not believe that the ends justify the means.

Also, you say that the iraqi people had something to gain? So did the americans. A chance to take a look at why their country is so hated, and consider changing some of their foreign policies to stop it. Instead they played right into osama's trap, and started attacking muslims in afghanistan and later iraq, setting the stage for ALL muslims to become involved in a holy war of east versus west.

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Update, the death count is now between 5425 and 7029.

or in other words between 2 and 2.5 times as many deaths as occurred in the WTC attacks.

mark my words, you will reap what you sow america, and you brought this upon yourself.

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you can't prevent civilian deaths...minimize...pffft....imo...one innocent life lost is too many in any circumstance. That goes for palestine-isreal and the ireland fiasco and any other war around the planet.

Imposing one's beliefs on another is taking away that person's freedom. What is especially ironic about this particular situation is that what is being forced on the other is "freedom" itself ... or, rather, what the imposing force's idea of freedom is.

In the end, what can we do about this? Nothing. The war happened, lives were lost, apparently for no good cause. So what? It happened because it could happen, someone had the power for it, and acted on that power.

Sure, the whole thing is as infuriating in principle for me as the next guy, but without an entire change in our way of thinking, stuff like this is bound to happen again and again ...

You think this is the first time such a tragedy has occured? Do you even dare to suppose that this is the worst tragedy to have occured in human history, or the worst to ever occur? That is a big egoistic error -- "Oh me, I'm living in such a horrendous time, murder left, murder right!"

Humans will always repeat themselves ... Machiavelli was one of the few people that really understood that fact.

What is important is not to get hung up by it. The world moves on. Even if the end of the world is to be tomorrow, the world moves on.

To paraphrase from the second Matrix movie, "We may very well be dead tomorrow. But then, how would that be different from any other day?"