I suppose if my neighbor's teenage son attacks my daughter it would be OK for me to burn the neighbor's house to the ground and kill everyone inside. What else can I do? He was using his mom and younger siblings (and perhaps a hostage) as human shields; maybe he even had them locked in a closet so they couldn't get away, so their blood is on his hands. I'm the good guy here.
He's a bad guy-- no question about it. If his family didn't kick him out or kill him, then they are complicit in his crimes. They are fair game at that point. He made me do it by his actions.
I'm blameless. Right?
Wrong. So wrong.
Revenge is wrong, even if you call it "war" and say it's for "national security". Even if bad guys come from somewhere you can identify and then target. Revenge-- punishment-- is not justice, but the opposite of justice.
Bad guys exist. You are within your rights to use violence in defense against them. You are not within your rights to become bad guys because they were bad first-- even if that's what happened.
It would have been ethical for a sniper to have taken out Hitler because he was an ongoing credible threat.
It was evil to firebomb Dresden or to nuke Japan.
I don't support any state or any government military. It amazes me that anyone does, when I would think they would know better. But people do. Just like they support The Blue Line Mafia against their own interests. Do you realize how much theft, slavery, and other archation is required to even keep a government military operational? I can't support that, even if they somehow managed to refrain from doing anything evil in other countries.
Most people seem to kind of like war. At least as long as they aren't personally fighting in it. It gives them a team to cheer, villains to jeer, and a Grand Purpose to get behind. It's exciting. I don't have that reaction at all.
I support the victims, not the perpetrators. On all sides. I hate the perpetrators-- the bad guys-- on all sides. And there are plenty of them to go around.
It's rough to stand firm when the world around you is half-crazed with militaristic statism. It makes me feel like an outcast. An outcast who is watching otherwise normal people go nuts, "The Purge"-style, doing and supporting evil while saying I am wrong if I don't join in the human sacrifice.
It would be so much easier for me to just "Rah-rah Israel!" just as it would have been easier to have said, "I stand with Ukraine". I could do so, but I would be lying and I wouldn't be able to live with myself. Is it principles? Is it naivety-- "Sometimes you have to do things like this in the real world."?
Well, if supporting evil is a requirement for living in "the real world" then I'm simply not interested. You go ahead, though.