Do
the Ends justify the means?
The media is failing to ask the right questions about the
"Bush doctrine" and its implications for the future of relations
between countries. There is a vast difference between an IMMINENT THREAT
and "they are bad guys so it is good that we attacked them and overthrew
them."
Let's look at some "down home" examples:
2. I work for a large corporation that produces and sells
cigarettes. I find out that the president of this corporation has been
working on a secret plan to manipulate the nicotine content of cigarettes to
make them more addictive so they can kill more people over time. Meanwhile,
this boss is going before congress and lying about the situation and hiding
everything behind attorney client privilege by running all the information
through his in-house legal counsel. I do not have direct access to the
documentary proof, and am sure that I will be drowned out if I go public.
He is preparing to launch this project in six months time secretly and the
project is totally under his personal control. Do I have the right, under
the Bush Doctrine, to shoot this man, and thereby prevent him from unleashing
his "weapons of mass destruction" on an unsuspecting planet?
3. A police officer stops a pedestrian on the street for jay
walking. The pedestrian reaches into his pocket for something, that may
be his ID or it may be a weapon. The police officer is afraid because the
pedestrian looks like a Muslim and we are currently afraid of Muslims in our
country! Rather than wait to see what the pedestrian pulls out of his
pocket, the policeman shoots and kills him. In fact, it was his driver's
license and his undercover FBI identification. Does the policeman have
the right to pre-emptively attack someone just because he MIGHT possess a
weapon and MIGHT be thinking about attacking him, under the Bush doctrine?
4.
5.
6. The
DO THE ENDS JUSTIFY THE MEANS? Where does the right of
pre-emptive attack have its limits? Who sets those limits? If it is
okay for the
The entire issue of the future of world peace lies in the answer
to these questions but no one seems to want to ask these questions.
Sure Saddam is a bad guy. But every group or country has its
own viewpoint of who the "bad guys" are in their neighborhoods.
The Child Molester is a bad guy too! Does it mean that whenever we
identify a "bad guy" who MIGHT choose to harm us in the future, that
we attack first and throw all other balancing forces of statecraft,
negotiation, economic influence, alliances, mutuality, trade, economic
development, media power, political and state powers out the window?
What if some country were to decide that George W. Bush is a
threat to world peace and possesses weapons of mass destruction (the US
has the largest arsenal of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons in the
world) and might use them (we already use "spent uranium in our weaponry
which creates long term hazards wherever we use them for the civilian
population later), and that the USA is bent on controlling the world rather
than living in harmony with others in the world, would that country, exercising
its own sovereign form of the "Bush doctrine" have the right to
"take out" George W. Bush?
What kind of a world are we creating?
Santosh Krinsky
October 13, 2003