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Originally posted by Spanky
So there is no difference between the US sending soliders into WWII where some of them forseably died, and the government intentionally infecting black men with syphillis (which they knew would could them - the Tuskegee experiement) for a study.
Pretty much the same thing?
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No. But that wasn't your original example. In your original example, which concerned Iraq, I don't think there is much difference between Saddam killing his citizens to maintain power and us killing thousands of innocent Iraqis to overthrow him. The killing of Iraqi civilians may be an unfortunate but supportable evil. But they're just as dead either way. And Saddam is gone, but we're still killing Iraqis, which suggests to me that they aren't all that thrilled we're there.
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That is what happens when you have moral relativists sitting around saying that we can not be the policemen of the world, we can't shove western values down other peoples throats, and if innocent people died when we were trying to stop the genocide that would be just as bad as the genocide.
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I don't really think that you can blame that entirely on moral relativists. In the first place, we can't afford to be the world's policemen. In the second place, the fact that we generally choose to act only when it also suits our economic or geopolitical interests belies the notion that what has kept us from acting to stop genocide is people saying we can't shove western values down peoples' throats.
Call me cynical, but where have we been throughout the last several decades when various tribes in Africa have been engaging in widespread genocide? We've been either ignoring it, or sitting on the sidelines generally decrying it. But I haven't seen a Republican groundswell in favor of marching from Khartoum to Pretoria, spreading democracy and peace all along the path.
