Comments Elsewhere

DAP,

Are you referring to Onkar Ghate’s article, “Innocents in War?” If so, it seems to directly contradict your earlier claim that you do NOT approve of employing any means necessary, whatever the level of violence inflicted on innocent third parties, to assassinate dictators and terrorists.

Ghate explicitly argues that there is no moral limit to the level of violence that a “free nation” can use against a “terrorist state” in a just war. Thus: “The moral [sic] principle is: the responsibility for all deaths in war lies with the aggressor who initiates force, not with those who defend themselves.” Ghate goes on to argue that even deliberate targeting of civilians (as at Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Dresden) is justifiable.

I think this position is absolutely barbarous. But whether reasonable or not, it would entail a “Yes” rather than a “No” to my question above, unless there is some subtly I’ve missed.