General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Noam Chomsky blasts Obama: He has no moral center [View all]coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)suppose Saddam Hussein discerned that Bush and Cheney were devising a genocidal campaign against the people of Iraq and the Middle East, a campaign based entirely upon easily-debunked lies. Suppose further that Hussein possessed the capability to deploy pilot-less drones against the Bush Junta with an eye to stopping genocide. Would you not find Saddam Hussein's use of said drones to evidence his "lack of a moral center" and thereby to be morally objectionable?
Hence, applying Kant's notion of 'universality of morality' to your proposition, if an action is wrong when one of our adversaries commits it, it must also be wrong when we ourselves undertake it. (My apologies to Kantians on this board if I have mis-stated or bastardized unduly Kant's position).
Or, as a T-shirt I saw displayed by a vendor on the Venice Beach boardwalk so aptly put it, four native Americans hold rifles under the caption "Fighting Terrorism since 1492".