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How long until people realize that any authority saying “justified” is not using a definition found in any dictionary. The term used by any American imbued wit

How long until people realize that any authority saying “justified” is not using a definition found in any dictionary. The term used by any American imbued with the option of extrajudicial killings is only to - at best - match your pre-existing agreement with the action or your likelihood of agreeing with authority. “Justified”, for these people, does not mean “other actions were evaluated in a hierarchy and we were in a circumstance that this greater level of force was necessary” such as how a civilian is evaluated, it means “this choice was in a catalog of equally weighted choices, any of the choices including inaction would be justified”. I don’t view this as good enough, as it makes investigations and courts a waste of time and energy, when the only resolution can be to say “and now I present as evidence: the catalogue of choices that happens to list the choice taken” acquitting all.

pessimizer 5y ago
I think it's even worse. "Justified" means "we issued a document that says that in in order to kill more terrorists, killing a lesser number of civilians is justified, then we issued a document that declared 90% of the civilians terrorists."
- vmception 5y ago
  yeah, I think this is supported by a large number of people not understanding this. like, a lot of support comes from evaluating each event in isolation from more neutral people, but I think even more hawkish as well as bigoted people would say "hm this is not okay for domestic or foreign policy"
charbonneau2 5y ago
> The most foolish notion of all is the belief that everything is just which is found in the customs or laws of nations. Would that be true, even if these laws had been enacted by tyrants? > What of the many deadly, the many pestilential statutes which nations put in force? These no more deserve to be called laws than the rules a band of robbers might pass in their assembly. For if ignorant and unskillful men have prescribed deadly poisons instead of healing drugs, these cannot possibly be called physicians’ prescriptions; neither in a nation can a statute of any sort be called a law, even though the nation, in spite of being a ruinous regulation, has accepted it. Cicero
xkcd-sucks 5y ago
Substitute "rationalized" for "justified", "lawful" etc.

pessimizer 5y ago

I think it's even worse. "Justified" means "we issued a document that says that in in order to kill more terrorists, killing a lesser number of civilians is justified, then we issued a document that declared 90% of the civilians terrorists."

vmception 5y ago
yeah, I think this is supported by a large number of people not understanding this. like, a lot of support comes from evaluating each event in isolation from more neutral people, but I think even more hawkish as well as bigoted people would say "hm this is not okay for domestic or foreign policy"

charbonneau2 5y ago

> The most foolish notion of all is the belief that everything is just which is found in the customs or laws of nations. Would that be true, even if these laws had been enacted by tyrants? > What of the many deadly, the many pestilential statutes which nations put in force? These no more deserve to be called laws than the rules a band of robbers might pass in their assembly. For if ignorant and unskillful men have prescribed deadly poisons instead of healing drugs, these cannot possibly be called physicians’ prescriptions; neither in a nation can a statute of any sort be called a law, even though the nation, in spite of being a ruinous regulation, has accepted it. Cicero

xkcd-sucks 5y ago

Substitute "rationalized" for "justified", "lawful" etc.