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I'm not saying that President Obama has the right to kill, really. The right to kill is a really difficult moral question, though not in the case of Tsarnaev.
by DannoHung 13y ago
I'm not saying that President Obama has the right to kill, really. The right to kill is a really difficult moral question, though not in the case of Tsarnaev.
Obama has been given the authority to kill along the officially legislated channels of his office. So, there is the distinction: Dzokhar Tsarnaev had no authority to do what he did. What he did was also clearly immoral.
President Obama has the authority. What he's doing is questionably immoral. It's also not the only thing he does that affects people in a material way good or bad.
- psionski 13y agoA hypothetical scenario - someone straps bombs to himself and detonates in the middle of a crowd. I think you'd agree that this is "clearly immoral" too? But to the other members of the terrorist cell this is either a moral thing to do or at least "questionably immoral", otherwise they'd have left the organization. This is the relativity of moral decisions and the only way out is to try to define morality in absolute terms, which has resulted in many religions and philosophical works. The purest (i.e. simplest) form of a moral framework is that of Jainism - it promotes full restrictions on all forms of violence except when necessary for survival (e.g. a farmer killing a farm animal to feed his family). This may seem like common sense, but it helps that it's defined in a simple form. This is why we don't agree with Tsarnaev or terrorist groups - what they do is not necessary for survival, it serves other purposes. This is why we sometimes just as easily don't agree with president Obama's choices. It has nothing to do with "proper channels", "authority" or any of those words.