I have spent a significant portion of my morning ...

[patrice]

83. People do that, keep Democrats honest, in different ways, for example "sacrificing human beings in

the name of pragmatism is always wrong" is a true statement and that means, therefore, that pretending that certain kinds of risks don't exist, risks for which it is possible to rationally identify some relatively valid and reliable degree of probability and which risks could cost anything from relatively "few" to thousands of people suffering and dying . . . ignoring those risks, for politically pragmatic reasons (just like 9/11) is wrong, especially when you've had a significant historical role in setting them in motion, with things like completely supporting unregulated USA assault weapons dealers all over the world, not to mention our government arms sales, and proactively debasing one of the only international tools we have, albeit fundamentally flawed though it is, the U.N., and exacerbating the financial troubles and, hence, instabilities and the vulnerabilities of ordinary people in those countries to various kinds of indigenous gangsters, by means of the IMF, and not committing to international justice in the World Court. ALL of that stuff had effects and now that it would be politically pragmatic to "take our ball and go home" it would also be wrong to abandon ALL we set in motion and pretend that identifiable n probabilities, involving known personages of expressed intents, causing deaths, resulting from that abandonment, of anything from a few to thousands of people US or foreign and pretend that doesn't matter either.

If it is bad to use drones, it is just as bad to let people die, because we're being ir-responsible about our whole part in what can happen with an appropriate degree of probability, if we don't use drones.

Think of a analogous scenario on a personal level: you, victims, and someone with the means, opportunity, ability, and expressed intent to kill the victims and YOU are the one who has had an essential role in how you all got into that situation and now must decide if an expressed intent to kill will result in the deaths of others. Is it okay to pretend that it won't? Is it okay to pass the buck to non-existent others?

I'm not trying to tell you that you are wrong; I'm trying to tell you that things are not as simple as I would actually like them to be. The same principles, the same truths, have various dimensions and it's going to take all of us to have the courage to be honest and respectful of one another about all of those DIFFERENT dimensions of the same thing.