Yes, I agree it's unfair. Pragmatism is not a uniquely USAmerican trait or operating principle, neither is principled behaviour really absent from the USAmerican mythos, I think. I've just been watching a lot of things lately that lionize the American mil/espionage machine and one of the key aspects of its activity is its pragmatism: that is, the argument for doing dirty things, with collateral damage, is that the end justifies the means and "more lives will be saved" etc, etc, etc.
It's certainly fair to admit that the USA certainly didn't create this characteristic, nor that it isn't present, to a certain extent, in the statecraft toolkit of all governments everywhere.
It's not just in statecraft. I've been involved in (thankfully simulated thus far) exercises where I've had to knowingly allow people to die because of the greater good/more lives at stake issue, and these were purely civilian disaster response scenarios. And I'm confident enough that were I faced with a similar situation in real life, I'd make the same decision.
It's all well and good to be judgemental when you don't have to worry about facing that choice for real. Sometimes your only choices lie between bad and worse.
Note, however, there's a difference between this sort of thing and the torture-porn justifications for actively doing something evil for morally questionable reasons.
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2017-09-05 07:33 am
no subject
It's certainly fair to admit that the USA certainly didn't create this characteristic, nor that it isn't present, to a certain extent, in the statecraft toolkit of all governments everywhere.
no subject
It's all well and good to be judgemental when you don't have to worry about facing that choice for real. Sometimes your only choices lie between bad and worse.
Note, however, there's a difference between this sort of thing and the torture-porn justifications for actively doing something evil for morally questionable reasons.