Hi Luke,
In the interests of free debate, I'm glad to see your
viewpoint, even though I disagree with it. Although it doesn't seem to
apply directly to the violence reported in the Gandalf case, I believe
your argument is a major theme in the US media, so is well worth
replying to....
> raise the question of when violence is jusified. The way I see it, violence is
> justified to defend oneself or another from an already violent attack. The
> way I see it, the initiation of violence in a nonviolent situation(such as in
> aggression) is called crime, and the response to it in kind is called
> justifiable use of force(as in fighting a defensive war against invasion).
...
> force to stop him. Since it is difficult to judge the "minimum necessary"
> force without knowing one's oppnent and ll of his possibly concealed
> weapons, anyone who kow anything about warfare knows that when you
> don't know your opponent's capability the "minimum necessary" amount
> of force is, in fact,everything you'v got.
Defining the "minimum necessary" in a general way would be
pretty tough, but I think "everything you've got" is (in most cases,
and certainly in the case of "national" or "terrorist" armed forces)
way above the minimum.
This can be argued from either (1) a moral or (2) a practical
(utilitarian) point of view:
(1) It's difficult to know who really started the violence first.
E.g., Israel/Occupied Territories; Northern Ireland; ex-Yugoslavia.
(2) Even if there really is one "nation" who starts violence against
another, the government of the agressor nation generally justifies
its violence by claiming that the opponent is violent. In which case,
your moral rule risks causing an increasing spiral of violence
(positive feedback).
The combination of (1) and (2) is what really makes it dangerous
for the "minimum amount of violence" in self-defence to be similar to
(or stronger than) the agressor violence.
At least think about the three cases listed above. Surely these
conflicts have been going on so long that the minimum amount of
violence should be limited to that allowed within international human
rights law, i.e., emprisonment with fair trials of suspected
individuals involved in violence (both "terrorists" and security
forces).
Defining the "minimum necessary" should at least
not exacerbate the three cases above.
If we consider your suggested cases of McDonald's as responsible
for violence against (Central) American peasants or Shell for violence
against the Ogoni in Nigeria, the problem (1) is very difficult to
judge, and even if you make a precise enough definition, it could well
be an American peasant or Ogoni resident who commits the first act of
violence. In this case, does the multinational have the right to
pay/encourage the security forces to use "everything they've got"
against someone who simply doesn't know how to react without violence?
Even if it's the multinational who uses violence first (OK, this is
more likely in reality!), any use of violence by the locals will be
used as an excuse for escalating the cycle of violence by the
corporation. And the corporation has a much better chance of it's
claim "They started first!" getting TV coverage than the locals' "They
started first!"...
Either way, the risk of "everything you've got" is a cycle of
increasing violence.
A cycle of violence can only be broken by
making the "minimum necessary" really the minimum, i.e., non-violent
if possible.
Cheers,
Boud.
None.
