As the word "incidentally" indicated, I don't think it changes the moral assessment at all, though I guess the enormity of the carnage affects how intensely people feel. I remember feeling that people who argued that the Nazis "only" murdered hundreds of thousands of jews rather than millions during WWII were missing the point: However, I now think these arguments were calculated to diminish the enormity of the crime. >To: <> >Subject: [OPE-L:5946] Re: Re: war >Reply-To: ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu >Sender: owner-ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu > >On Tue, 18 Sep 2001, Ian Hunt wrote: > >> I think, incidentally, that the attack brought death and >> destruction on a far greater scale than the attackers ever >> imagined - if the engineers and architects who built the WTC were >> surprised at its collapse, then no doubt those behind the attack >> would probably have been surprised too. > >Possibly, but is this observation of any significance? Flying a >couple of large airliners into densely populated office towers is an >act calculated to cause maximal horror and carnage. Maybe the >carnage exceeded "optimistic" expectations. So far as our judgement >of the action is concerned, so what? > >Allin Cottrell. > >one thing (among many) that has been bothering me is the number of the people >on the planes. each plane seems to have had only about 50 passengers. i am >wondering whether the terrorists made reservations for about half the >seats and >then cancelled them at the last moment. Of course they would have done >this not >to minimize the carnage but to make the planes easier to take over...at which >they had horrifying success. If this is in fact what transpired, it's >chilling that the FAA does not have red lights start flashing whenever so >many >reservations are cancelled at the last minute . Of course i am speculating >that >the terrorists may have organized to make so cancellations to make the planes >tractable to hijacking...it's a "factoid" that is circulating among employees >at cisco systems. > >at any rate, nina totenberg on national public radio said a few days ago that >the lapses that will soon be revealed will send chills up peoples' spines. > >Rakesh > >ps there was a knife attack on a half indian-half hispanic software >engineer in >the south of market district in san francisco. his australian coworker >heroically intervened and absorbed the deepest cuts. just as troubling is >that >sf chronicle buried the story of the attack by these four white tough guys >who >announced that they don't like arabs in the local section of the newspaper >while it seems that local tv did not pick up the story at all. i have a deep >foreboding sense that all of us brown people with "foreign" names have had >our >futures mutilated by this trajedy...though we will be shunned by those who do >not even intend and know better than to do so. > > Associate Professor Ian Hunt, Director, Centre for Applied Philosophy, Philosophy Dept, School of Humanities, Flinders University of SA, Humanities Building, Bedford Park, SA, 5042, Ph: (08) 8201 2054 Fax: (08) 8201 2784
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