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This is not moralism, it is practical. It helps to go to X-2 when if the extra one eliminated created the first situation (X-1) and is likely to continue that subtraction process.
Key point is IS LIKELY. It is NOT LIKELY if they are imprisoned, is it?
As such, going to X-2 is a net loss with no benefits.
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Now you have just contradicted yourself. First you claimed that a person cannot be charged with a crime before it has been commited, now you say that a court which allows itself the right to kill has become a proven killer.
Are you suggesting they have not killed? If they have passed a sentence, and it was carried out, they are observably known to have killed, its all in the public record.
You can't escape the fact that your proposal is Just As Bad as the alleged crime you claim to be correcting.
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Why don't you try going back to step one. Who was the first person to grant themselves tha right to kill and actually do so? The murderer. A court steps in if and only if someone has granted themselves a right to kill, and has done so. That's a conditional, and ironically initiated only at the action which you yourself condemn.
So what? You just claimed above you are not resorting to moralism, and here you are resorting to moralism! You are saying that two identical acts of killing can be dinstinguished on the moral basis of "fault". that is unimportant. I don't care who started it - thats a childs retort.
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Suicide bombers do NOT in any sense "fight in their own defense".
Yes they most certainly do.
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They are not killing in the midst of an attack on themselves.
Yes, they are. In Palestine, in Iraq, and at the Twin Towers, suicide bombers were and are fighting in self defence as any soldier in an army does. The fact that they accept a 100% chance of dying in the doing only highlights their bravery and commitment.
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The difference between war and an execution is the target, one is internal and the other external.
Seeing as you should know by now that I do not accept the distinction, I can't understand why you bothered advancing this argument.
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You lauded AQ and Hamas. They are just as much enshrined social orders as any gov't. You are right that one should not demand passivity, nor should one glorify the violence necessary to protect onesself from oppression.
I have not glorified it - I have merely refused to join in the Western hubris of criticising of people defending themselves, merely because they are defending themselves against us. Furthermore, I don't think Hamas or AQ - if it exists - are much like governments. They are military resistance movements and have the appropriate structure, just like the ANC and IRA. If you don't want the resistance, relieve the oppression.
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