Breaking News on Osama Bin Laden (necrobump)

[vlad321]

Beuli2 said:

vlad321 said:

The_vagabond7 said:

Honestly, I think he should've been brought back alive and made to face trial and sentenced. Ideally anyway, I certainly won't condemn the brave soldiers for doing what they did. I just don't think descending into barbarism is the way to go about showing the world how advanced of a culture we can and should be. It's a difficult dichotomy, weeding out evil without becoming the sort of thing you're fighting against. But ultimately if we got the bad guys, but we did so by means of torture, illegal imprisonment, and killing innocent people, did we really reduce the net evil in the world, or did we just transfer it to ourselves in the name of retribution, and then called it justice? Dancing over the death of our enemies never serves as a good example to anyone. Food for thought.

Each action has two parts to it, intent and consequences. In this case you are saying that the consequences of what we did are the same, murder. However, the intent is completely different and therefore the actions are very much different.

How so? Both the soldiers and him fought and killed for what they defended. The thing is, the soldiers are seen as the "good guys", while Osama is, according to us, just an heartless evil bastard. Their intent was the same: kill the other for "justice", whatever you think it is.

He killed civilians, and his purpose was to kill civilians. The goal of the soldiers wasn't to kill civilians, but a retaliation to the murder of civilians. One is the action, the other is the reaction. If you can't see the difference, then there is nothing more for us to talk about.