Would/do you support the War In Iraq?

[TNF]

No.

How can anyone say yes, with everything that we now know?

[TNF]

I don't support war under any circumstances.

That's an insane position.

[TNF]

I don't support war under any circumstances.

That's an insane humanistic position.

ftfy. Taking another human being's life under any circumstance is morally objectionable and should be avoided at all costs.

That's not how morality works.

[TNF]

You would have to be literally retarded to vote Yes at this point, knowing all we know now. (Not that it justifies supporting it in the first place, given that even in 2003 you didn't have to be a f**king genius to realize that Saddam Hussein had absolutely f**king nothing to do with 9/11)

[TNF]

There is literally no rational reason to support the Iraq any war.

Yes there are. This is patent nonsense. War is at times necessary to bring forth desired social changes: the Civil War and the American Revolution both stand out fairly explicitly in that regard.

[TNF]

I tend to think that it's okay to kill people who hold other people as slaves, or exercise absolute tyrannical authority over people, but that's just me, and I think that's a fairly sane position.

[TNF]

Sorry, I got a little too militant there for a minute, haha...

No worries. Look, I'm almost absolutely on page with you about war (I can't think of one the U.S. has engaged in since the Civil War I can say that I would support), I just take a more nuanced attitude toward the use of violence and the making of war, I'd say. Violence can be tactically advantageous in a given situation, but it should only be used (a) to free someone or a group of persons from an outside oppressive and controlling force and (b) when you're sure you can use it to win.

I tend to think that it's okay to kill people who hold other people as slaves, or exercise absolute tyrannical authority over people, but that's just me, and I think that's a fairly sane position.

 

To fight and to kill are two different things, there are ways to oppose tyranny without killing anyone.
If people have a right to life, then killing them is wrong.

No, there really aren't ways to oppose tyranny without removing the source of said tyranny. You would never be successful in kindly, gently asking the slaveowners to free their slaves. They had to be exterminated or rendered incapable of exercising their power to purchase and hold slaves.

I do not intrinsically hold that all life has value or that life should be placed upon a pedestal or any of that, either. I think that doing so is a mistake and causes a lot of undue suffering in the world, precisely because such thinking leads to the kind of thing you are arguing here.

[TNF]

My god I was an idiot/asshole in the first two pages of this thread.

And TNF was surprisingly making sense at the time.

My position has not changed. Pacifism is disgusting nonsense peddled by those who do not understand actual power relations in society. I have always maintained that. Opposing specific uses of violence =/= pacifism, of course. I am not and never have (and never will) be a pacifist, because pacifism is immoral and throws the class struggle out the window for peace at any cost. I oppose wars between imperialist powers and do not think that the US should engage in them or pick sides in them. I support wars for national liberation (as is ongoing in Palestine against Israel), and of course, the class war waged by the proletariat in every nation against their own national bourgeoisie.