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You're just replacing moral relativism with counterfactual thinking. Just because you can imagine an alternate scenario where things might have been worse, that
by spamizbad 8y ago
You're just replacing moral relativism with counterfactual thinking. Just because you can imagine an alternate scenario where things might have been worse, that doesn't provide moral justification for an action. This is especially true since we know what the original justification for the invasion of Iraq and I can't imagine it being aligned with any counterfactual thinking on the subject.
The type of thinking you espouse can be used to justify virtually any military action, including war crimes. All you'd have to say is "it could have been worse..."
- golergka 8y agoNo, I'm imagining the whole space of the alternatives not just "it could've been worse". You clearly are constructing a strawman out of my argument and it doesn't feel that well-constructed, because my argument is not about giving a judgement to a particular situation (especially Iraq) but about the whole method you use for such judgements.
- spamizbad 8y agoAgain, what you’re describing is counterfactual thinking. It doesn’t stop being counterfactual just because you considered lots of stuff. And if you want to make the extraordinary claim of “Imagining the whole space of the alternatives” you should provide some evidence of such. Because right now, most experts who have attempted that have come to the conclusion that Operation Iraqi Freedom was a mistake: not merely one of bad planning or execution, but rather it never should have been attempted to begin with. This includes some of its biggest architects and boosters.