First of all, let me say that Kinsley does have a point in his latest piece -- Bush has been far too cavalier about dismissing the loss of life (American and Iraqi) his policies has brought about, and we should be more honest in accounting for them.
Nevertheless, Kinsley's analysis isn't quite correct.
First, and it gets tiresome pointing this out, nobody opposes stem cell research, or even "new stem cell research." What is controversial is embryonic stem cell research. Nobody opposes adult and umbilical stem cell research, which unlike embryonic research, has already produced treatments that are helping people.
Second, Bush does not intend to kill the six year old kindergartener. This is not so for the embryonic researcher. There is a chance, however infinitesimal, that the war could have been carried out with little or no collateral damage. There is no such chance with embryonic research. The embryos' lives will be ended. The researcher might dearly wish he or she could perform this research without doing so, but is still choosing means that necessarily involve the ending of life. It is intrinsic to the act of research itself.
Kinsley would be on firmer ground if he were to contrast Bush's pushing for the power to torture to his position on embryonic research. Like in embryonic research, the harming of the detainee is intrinsic to the nature of the act. Perhaps Kinsley didn't do so because kindergateners make for a more sympathetic comparison to embryos than terror suspects do.
As an aside, this is one of the struggles about Bush. I voted for Bush in both elections because of his position on abortion and embryonic research. But I fear that doing so may have set the movement back, because his actions in conducting the war make him (and thus the pro-life position) an attractive target for criticisms like Kinsley's. Almost all of Kinsley's pieces on embryonic research don't defend the practice, but attack Bush's consistency on life issues.
Now, we have two good Supreme Court justices, but I wonder if we've made a similar bargain to the ones implicit in torture and embryonic research -- tolerating a little evil for a good end.
Friday, September 29, 2006
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"Second, Bush does not intend to kill the six year old kindergartener. This is not so for the embryonic researcher."
Oh, what nonsense! "Gee, Iraq has children there and I am going to go to war there, but I don't believe in my heart that I will kill an Iraqi child and therefore it's okay if my actions lead to his/her death." ???
No law or morality allows you to get off with harming or killing someone if you merely thought your actions would not harm or kill someone else. You only get to hide behind that rationalization in war, and this one wears pretty thin in a war of choice.
The stem-cell researcher may be invading and destroying cells, but s/he is not invading a country and destroying actual, living, breathing children.
By the way, not that it matters to the neocons, but killing Iraqi children won't cure cancer, either.
Actually, no, our military absolutely do not want to kill any children in Iraq and often put themselves at great risk to avoid doing so. I abhor the violence in war also, but unfortunately some laws and some people's morality lets lots of people get off with killing. Embryonic stem cell researchers are doing more than destroying cells, they are destroying thousands of human lives. Actual, living humans, they are just not breathing on their own yet, because they don't have to. Not all humans can breathe on their own, anyway, but we shouldn't destroy them, either. Adult stem cell therapy is curing cancer, but embronic stem cell research is more likely to result in tissue rejection and tumor formation.
I'm not saying that it is not a serious act, and I am not pretending that Bush or anybody else did not know that.
I am saying that they did not intend it, which is different in character from the war. It is possible that one could drop a bomb and not kill any innocents. It is impossible to perform embronic research and not destroy embryos.
To think about it another way, it is logically, (though not practically) possible to prosecute a war without harming civilians. It is not logically possible to perfrom embryonic research without harming the embryos. The harming of the embryos is central to the act.
As I said in the introduction, this does not mean that the killing of innocents should not weigh heavily in the decision to go to war. But it does not remove it from the table as an intrinsically evil act. Torture and embryonic research neccesarily involve the harming of innocent life -- it is central to the act. Thus, they are never options for me as legal acts.
So, it is not a logical absurdity to support a war that harms children and oppose research that harms embryos. Where I agree with Kinsley is that the Administration has not seriously grasped with the harming of innocent life in prosecuting the war in the way one would expect from someone who claims to take life so seriously in other contexts.
"So, it is not a logical absurdity to support a war that harms children and oppose research that harms embryos. Where I agree with Kinsley is that the Administration has not seriously grasped with the harming of innocent life in prosecuting the war in the way one would expect from someone who claims to take life so seriously in other contexts."
But Bush does not take life seriously in any context, and that is why Frank's joke is so apropos.
To be morally and logically consistent, Bush would have to oppose abortion, the death penalty, and offensive war because all of these involve the deliberate taking of life. One could make a case for defensive war because one would be killing people who mean to take innocent lives and to protect those lives one could attack in order to defend oneself, thus Afghanistan would be morally defensible.
Bush seems to believe that everything should be done for cells, not life, cells. That's what he considers Right to Life. Once a baby is born, there are no guarantees that life will be in any way protected or supported, no right to equal treatment, to equal education, to medical care, to a living wage, and further a woman has no right over her body when it comes to giving birth, a prisoner can be put to death, a soldier can die in a fundamentally unjust war, and children can be killed if they happen to be in the way.
This is not only logical absurdity and indefensible inconsistency, it is intellectual dishonesty and rationalization at its worst IMO.
You (and Kinsley) argue that Bush is inconsistent. I submit that he is consistent to these principles: that it is immoral to deliberately take an innocent human life, and that embryos count.
Let's examine your laundry list with respect to those principles
Once a baby is born, there are no guarantees that life will be in any way protected or supported,
Not the deliberate taking of human life.
no right to equal treatment,
Again, not the deliberate taking of human life.
to equal education,
Again, not the deliberate taking of human life
to medical care,
Getting warmer, but still not the deliberate taking of human life
to a living wage,
Oh, and now we're not even close.
and further a woman has no right over her body when it comes to giving birth,
Still not close
a prisoner can be put to death, a soldier can die in a fundamentally unjust war, and children can be killed if they happen to be in the way.
These are closer, but still not the deliberate taking of innocent human life.
You can argue whether those principles ought to guide Bush's policies, but you can't pretend to be making a cold analytical case that he's incosistent.
"Where I agree with Kinsley is that the Administration has not seriously grasped with the harming of innocent life in prosecuting the war in the way one would expect from someone who claims to take life so seriously in other contexts."
This was your conclusion^^^. And what I am saying to you is, that Bush does not take life seriously in any of the other contexts which I listed. Actual, living human beings, as you acknowledge yourself, he does not take seriously insofar as can be judged by his and his Administration's policies. The extent of his seriousness regarding "life" appears to be an overactive, intrusive, and harmful, protection of stem cells.
To argue that he is consistent about the taking of innocent life, is parsing, picking and choosing from the totality of life, as to which is to be most protected and most valued.
That is inconsistent, almost eugenically so, IMO.
Hello John and all,
Why do religious leaders and followers so often participate in and support blatant evil?
The time is long past to stop focusing on symptoms and myriad details and finally seek lasting solutions. Until we address the core causes of the millennia of struggle and suffering that have bedeviled humanity, these repeating cycles of evil will never end.
History is replete with examples of religious leaders and followers advocating, supporting, and participating in blatant evil. Regardless of attempts to shift or deny blame, history clearly records the widespread crimes of Christianity. Whether we're talking about the abominations of the Inquisition, Crusades, the greed and genocide of colonizers, slavery in the Americas, or the Bush administration's recent deeds and results, Christianity has always spawned great evil. The deeds of many Muslims and the state of Israel are also prime examples.
The paradox of adherents who speak of peace and good deeds contrasted with leaders and willing cohorts knowingly using religion for evil keeps the cycle of violence spinning through time. Why does religion seem to represent good while always serving as a constant source of deception, conflict, and the chosen tool of great deceivers? The answer is simple. The combination of faith and religion is a strong delusion purposely designed to affect one's ability to reason clearly. Regardless of the current pope's duplicitous talk about reason, faith and religion are the opposite of truth, wisdom, and justice and completely incompatible with logic.
Religion, like politics and money, creates a spiritual, conceptual, and karmic endless loop. By their very nature, they always create opponents and losers which leads to a never ending cycle of losers striving to become winners again, ad infinitum. This purposeful logic trap always creates myriad sources of conflict and injustice, regardless of often-stated ideals, which are always diluted by ignorance and delusion. The only way to stop the cycle is to convert or kill off all opponents or to end the systems and concepts that drive it.
Think it through, would the Creator of all knowledge and wisdom insist that you remain ignorant by simply believing what you have been told by obviously duplicitous religious founders and leaders? Would a compassionate Creator want you to participate in a system that guarantees injustice and suffering to your fellow souls? Isn’t it far more likely that religion is a tool of greedy men seeking to profit from the ignorance of followers and the strife it constantly foments? When you mix religion with the equally destructive delusions of money and politics, injustice, chaos, and the profits they generate are guaranteed.
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...and here...
Peace…
Yes, agreed that there were terrible things going on under Saddam in Iraq before the war. I often had this argument with my leftie friends when they were resisting and protesting our going to war with Iraq, but the bottom line always came to this, and it's proven me out: Define victory in Iraq and how is that achievable?
Now, over 2000 American military deaths later, uncalculable Iraqi deaths, a brutal insurgency, and no good way to end our involvement, I say to myself, If we were going to go in because there was WMD, because Saddam was a bad guy, because we wanted to establish a democracy in the Middle East that would topple all the other bad regimes, whatever, then why didn't we define victory in Iraq and how to achieve that, then go in to win?
It also seems to me we could have used other means to achieve any of those goals, instead now we are just in a terrible mess, our own national security is threatened cuz we don't have enough soldiers or equipment, things are going from bad to worse in Afghanistan, and guess what? We still don't have Bin Laden.
Is this better?
I don't usually debate history or politics too much, but I just had to respond to seven star hand's anti-christian rant. "Christianity has always spawned evil"? I don't think that the greed & genocide of colonizers, slavery in the Americas or the Bush admin.'s recent deeds resulted from Christianity, as you claim. You do not even have the appearance of being reasonable when it comes to Christianity. If I remember correctly, the Crusades happened after Christians were brutally invaded. Yes, horrible atrocities have been committed by humans in the name of most religions. That happens when the faith is misinterpreted & NOT followed. It doesn't mean religion is inherently evil. Secular systems like communism & Nazism have "spawned" some horrors as well. Your use of such extreme statements as "Christianity has always spawned great evil" demonstrates your unreasonable bias. There are so many countless examples to the contrary of that ridiculous statement, but I will only waste enough of my time to remind you of a few. Many Christian relief organizations responded to Hurricane Katrina relief efforts & responded after 9/11. Catholic Charities was one of the 1st responders on the ground in many of the areas hardest hit by the tsunami in Dec. '04 because they were ALREADY in those areas, serving the indigent, as always...
"Winning.
"Many things make up a win.
"First, and obviously, bringing one of the world's worst war criminals to justice, is itself a 'win.'"
At what cost, and could we have achieved the same end without a war we are losing? Yes.
"Sending a message to other such cretins is a 'win'."
At what cost, and could we have achieved the same end without a war we are losing? Yes.
"Shifting the battlelines in the Middle East, is going to be, in the long run, a 'win.'"
This is an absolutely irrational definition of what is happening in Iraq. Did you read what the Intelligence Estimate just said?? We have made things worse for ourselves, not better. We don't have the manpower, the equipment, much worse, a viable strategy to win in Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating, and if there should be a crisis any where in the world, we can not meet it, plain and simple.
"Allowing the majority to have a important role in the future of Iraq is a 'win.'"
"That Americans care about Iraqis killing each other and want to help end such a cycle of violence is a 'win.'"
More delusion. There is no ruling, stable government in Iraq, there is no such thing as democracy in Iraq, and clearly what's happening is that Iraq has descended into sectarian anarchy.
"That Americans have made serious mistakes - intelligence; planning; maintaining the high ground (the torture incidents); shifting rationales - has been a loss, which can be turned into a win - but we'll only no the answer to this some decades from now when we look back."
No, no, no -- If we were going to go in, we had one opportunity to do this right, and we didn't. Now Iraq will have to live, is dying, with that terrible mistake.
"That the world stood by and allowed Hussein to commit atrocities - as it does now in so much of Africa - is a loss. That it didn't care that Hussein flaunted violations of U.N. resolutions is a loss. These are losses because it helps create the atmospher for more such atrocities."
Wait, the U.N. was in Iraq, Saddam was cooperating, and Bush and his neocons STILL went to war. Let's not make this anything other than what it was, a war of choice. A war which was lost before it began.
"That Afghanistan was forgotten about after Soviet abuse is a loss. That it is undersupported now is a loss."
It is a loss now because we didn't finish the job there, instead Bush decided, foolishy, stubbornly, disastrously, to go into Iraq.
"That contracts have gone out in Iraq to American companies with past ties to the administration, without an appropriate tendering process, is a loss."
Agreed.
"Mixed bag of course. That shouldn't be surprising."
Oh really? Funny. That wasn't the message Bush and his people were putting out before the war when they were deceiving the American people into supporting the war. It was going to be a cake walk, a slam dunk, the Iraqi people were going to be greeting their liberators with flowers. Bush tried to convince the American people that the worst was over with that declared "Mission Accomplished" bs. Rumsfeld said that the only people fighting on were "dead-enders." Ha ha ha ha ha. What a joke. What a sick joke.
"Ultimately, what percentage of Shiites in Iraq wish Hussein was back in power? What percentage of Kurds in Iraq wish Hussein was back in power? If they add up to more than 50% (my guess is it will) and you also have a "win."
I would think that taking Saddam out and replacing his regime with something better would be the real "win." Plunging a country and its people into war and making things worse for them and calling it a win strikes me as another very sick joke.
"Then there is the American public. It seems the debate has gotten less healthy and less interesting. That's a loss too."
The Bush administration and their supporters have done everything they could to suppress debate, by calling people who oppose the war cowards and traitors.
Let me be very clear: Bush took us into a war which, according to reports, he had decided to undertake almost the moment he took office. The justifications you cite, were honestly made by Blair and far more believable, than the excuses Bush offered for what he had already made up his mind he was going to do. He did not give a damn about the people who would be killed, Americans or Iraqis, men, women, old people, children, and even as the death toll mounts he goes forward obliviously pursuing a goal it is simply impossible to reach by the means he employed.
There's no win here. My only hope is that the next Administration will get us out as quickly as possible. Paraphrasing Kerry, if Bush won't stop cavalierly requiring each service person to be the next service person to die for his mistake, maybe the next real President will.
We won't be able to call it a win, just a reality check, at best. History will no doubt call it a loss for America.
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