[OPE-L:5948] Re: war

From: Ian Hunt (Ian.Hunt@flinders.edu.au)
Date: Wed Sep 19 2001 - 08:41:55 EDT


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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