THE ONLY THING NECESSARY FOR THE TRIUMPH OF EVIL IS FOR GOOD MEN TO DO NOTHING.
Edmund Burke
The question above is unanswerable in absolute terms, for it is based on a value judgment and on values. One part is judging the value of a life of another, from our own perspective. The other side is about what values we will fight for and what do we value, such as freedom and/or freedom for others.
Much of mankind has learned the value of cooperation with others. They have formed codes of "morality" designed to preserve the communities. Morality as an imposed value has worked more than it has not worked. But those who think more deeply about it find that they must harken back to asking whether the moral value or rule is still workable and ethical.
I know that if I am being threatened directly by armed men and am trapped, I will fight for my life.
But will I fight for another person's life? No, I won't, unless it serves in some way my selfish purposes and saving my own life because of us all fighting together.
Surely, I must defend against my being harmed physically. As a people, we must fight to protect ourselves against such harm.
But when it goes further out to the more abstract level, what is the right thing to do?
Most people will say attacking the Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan made sense. Beyond that, there is a debate.
Iraq was a stretch, but what were we to do once we discovered that there were no weapons of mass destruction? Were the world leaders who projected that Saddam Hussein would create weapons of mass destruction if allowed to continue to defy the international inspectors? Who knows. Perhaps they were right. People's lives were lost. Our soldiers' lives were lost - was it worth it to lose those lives, which we surely valued more than a foreigner's life? Was it worth losing Iraqi lives?
How can the worth be measured?
Happiness (or reduction of misery) is difficult to measure. So, in a global sense, the best measure might be lives saved that would have been otherwise lost. Though it is a guess, a reasonable guess will give us an answer to this.
"The result: 138 Iraqis and other Arabs killed per day, and 497 refugees created. That is what we're stopping in Iraq." Blogoram.com, NoBody Count . Saddam Hussein's Iraq was directly responsible for 1.26 million Iraqis and other Arabs deaths and for 4.54 million refugees. We can't quantify the number of deaths resulting from displacement and worsening of conditions to live. The current war has saved over 400,000 lives on an estimated basis that would have been lost due to Hussein - plus whatever other lives would have been lost due to terrorists that have been eliminated. (The above reference was included in the comprehensive Iraq war coverage by MarkHumphrys/Iraq., in which the weird, unsound estimates have been logically addressed, with facts to back them up.)
There is clearly no doubt that the net benefit to the world of this was high.
And, still, there is the question of whether it was worth the lives of American troops, in terms of themselves and the effect on their families. There is no way to determine that from their viewpoint. The world did, however, benefit and mankind did, so in terms of theoretical ethics "the greater good for the people involved" was accomplished.
Still, I am saddened by it all. But that is the level of our world so far. The real question is what can we do about it that is a quantum leap forward, but without losing lives!!!!
The Rational Problem Solver
For this and related questions and discussions link into Peace And Saved Lives - What Urgency Is There?
Whatever the conclusion is.
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