[MD] atomic bomb and torture

[Platt Holden]

> Platt,
> 
> Forgot to add this in my last post. You seem to agree with Pirsig's
> assessment on WWI:
> 
> "With Victorian spirits atrophied and their minds hemmed in by social
> restraints, all avenues to any quality other than social quality were
> closed. And so this social base which had no intellectual meaning and no
> biological purpose slowly and helplessly drifted toward its own stupid
> self-destruction: toward the SENSELESS MURDER of millions of its own
> children on the battlefields of World War I."
> 
> "The Victorian social system and the Victorian morality that led into
> World War I had portrayed war as an adventurous conflict between noble
> individuals engaged in the idealistic service of their country: a kind
> of extended knighthood." (sound familiar?)
> 
> "... the Victorians and their Edwardian successors sent an entire
> generation of children into the trenches of World War I on behalf of
> these ideals. And murdered them. FOR NOTHING. That war was the natural
> consequence of Victorian moral egotism." (the natural consequence or
> moral egotism... sound familiar?)
> 
> You say, "Pirsig's moral rationale for the Civil War applies to the
> Revolutionary War, World War II and all the subsequent wars we've
> engaged in." Can you explain your rationale further as to why WWI was
> "immoral" but "every war we've engaged in since" has been "moral"? What
> was different about WWI that has not been a factor at all in "every
> subsequent war"?

If I left the impression that our participation against Germany and her allies
in WW I was immoral, I appreciate this chance to correct it. In hindsight the
war may appear to have accomplished nothing because it's goals of preserving
freedom and establishing peace were so quickly and thoroughly dashed by
the errors committed in the Treaty of Versailles, providing fertile ground for the
rise of Hitler and the Nazis. Our involvement in WW I  began when Germany
virtually declared war on all nations by announcing it would use it submarines
to sink any vessel that approached the ports of Western Europe, and did in
fact, without warning, sink American ships as well as other neutrals, violating
international law. In appealing to Congress for a declaration of war, the
"intellectual" President Wilson cited as rationale the preservation of human
rights, saying"

"There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making; we will not
choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our nation 
and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now
array ourselves are no common wrongs; the cut to the very roots of human life." 

I need not remind you of the high moral value of freedom and human rights in
the MOQ -- hardly the consequence of moral egotism.

Platt