Date: 30 Oct 2001 15:59:03 -0800 From: swear@blarg.net (Gary W. Swearingen) To: tlambert2@mindspring.com Cc: "Jason C. Wells" <jcwells@highperformance.net>, chat@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Course of law (was: Islam (was: Religions (was Re: helpingvictims of terror))) Message-ID: <lsy9lsel2w.9ls@localhost.localdomain> In-Reply-To: <3BDCC97B.43329BD3@mindspring.com> References: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0110281056510.20586-100000@server.highperformance.net> <3BDCC97B.43329BD3@mindspring.com>
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> > Then I see the annointed asking of we are any better than the enemy when > > reports of innocent (whatever that means) civilians are killed are heard. > > Civilians are, by definition, non-combatants. Personally, I > don't care if they are "innocent" or not: they are still > non-combatants. Innocence can never be judged: only guilt or > lack of guilt: that's why, in criminal trials, we find people > to be "not guilty", rather than finding them to be "innocent". It seems that that would put non-combatant armed services members (eg, the cook and the General in charge of West Point, or even the one in charge of Infantry maybe) in the same category. And note that the previous poster said, "innocent (whatever that means)". My dictionary says it means "not guilty" (among other things which you might be thinking of), so innocence can be judged if guilt can be judged. Both words can refer both to whether one has done something and to whether one has been or shall be held responsible for it. (Legalese isn't the language of FreeBSD-chat, so we can't always insist on the Legal meaning of each other's words here.) But I don't get the point anyway. Can't non-combatants be as important to your cause as combatants? In modern times, production of arms is more important than the use of them, in some ways. I agree that it's good to try to avoid civilian casualties, but there are more important things to avoid which I shouldn't need to list. BTW, we really shouldn't be finding people "not guilty" and we don't, really. We do not find them guilty. This is only one example of the very common misplacement of "not", as in "I do not recommend that you ..." vs. "I recommend that you not ...", or "I don't think that you should ..." vs "I think that you should not ...". There's a difference. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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