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by fasterik 35 days ago
It's not controversial to say that democracy is a more ethical form of government than autocracy. It's also not controversial to say that violence is sometimes justified when it's in self-defence or to prevent a greater injustice from happening. So what's the ethical objection to that statement?
4 comments
bugufu8f83 34 days ago
You gave two statements which are different from what I quoted.

The idea of "defend[ing] the United States and other democracies" and "defeat[ing] our autocratic adversaries" are always the stated reasons for US military action. Iraq was certainly an "autocratic adversary" and hundreds of thousands of people died from the war there. Vietnam was about "defending democracies" and resulted in millions of people dying. These are atrocities on an incomprehensible scale.

The ethical objection is very simple. War is evil, and the military is in the business of war.

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tehjoker 34 days ago
The ethical objection is that the United States is an empire that kills for money, this is not a "defense" project. They even call it the department of war now.
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xp84 35 days ago
I wonder if GP subscribes to the narrative of moral equivalence between things the Iranian regime does (such as slaughtering crowds of anti-government protestors) and what Hamas does (such as the butchery and terror committed against innocent civilians on Oct 7th) and any deaths or injuries that occur directly attributable to a US military action. If so, then I suppose they'd say it's fair to condemn the US as evil because deaths have happened, after all. Pacifism and turning a blind eye to anything happening in another sovereign country seems like what that particular worldview advocates. Iran isn't pacifist, but would definitely like it if their geopolitical rivals would adopt pacifism.
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cmrdporcupine 35 days ago
It's frankly controversial to consider the US the arbiter of supposed democracy.

Especially given the context of these press releases was right at the height of "we'll have Greenland one way or another" pronouncements.

Anthropic showed their belly same as OpenAI anyways.

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