Posted by
RationalGuy on Wednesday, April 25, 2007 6:15:52 AM
Arguments against our intervening militarily in Darfur on the basis that a particular plan would not achieve the objective of stopping or substantially reducing the genocide, and/or that others should do it, and/or that we have higher priorities, and/or that there would be substantial negative repercussions are all fair arguments, but each is debatable, and all must be weighed against our moral obligation to fellow human beings to help protect them from genocide unless we have extremely good reasons not to. We have to examine each of the above arguments, seek ways to mitigate the drawbacks they describe, and then put them on the "no-go" side of the scale. A particular plan does not seem good enough? Well, let's seek to improve it or search for a better plan. Others should do the job? Well, will they, when (after how many more children are slaughtered and women are raped), and how long should we wait for them before taking action ourselves? Higher priorities & potential negative repercussions? Well, if hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans were being slaughtered and raped, and millions forced to flee to refugee camps, would it be a sufficiently high priority to send a few thousand troops and/or bomb military targets from the air? If the answer is clearly "yes", we need to apply our values to the question of why we would be so much less inclined to do so for innocent people who had the misfortune to be born elsewhere.