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Comment by foobarbazqux | Hacker News Reader

I'm pretty sure his point is as follows:

  good means, good ends - no need for justification
   bad means, good ends - the ends justify the means
  good means,  bad ends - the means justify the ends
   bad means,  bad ends - no possibility of justification

UK terrorism is bad means. UK political change is good ends. If the ends didn't justify the means, they wouldn't be good ends. Any statement that the means were bad but the ends were good is justification; otherwise, your opinion would be that because the means were bad, the ends were necessarily bad too, even though they would otherwise appear to be good.

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I think I see the disconnect now. The assumption is being made that the British method for fighting terrorism that I'm advocating results in more or worse attacks than the American method. Therefore by advocating the British method, I'm implicitly advocating for more or worse terrorist attacks, and then justifying it by saying that the outcome is better.

The disconnect is that I don't accept this assumption. I see no evidence that the US method fights terrorism better. In fact, it appears to result in far more and worse attacks than the British method.

Therefore, I am advocating for something that I believe will mitigate terrorism as it happens, and produce a better outcome. Thus falling squarely in the "no need for justification" line of your summary.

The Irish terrorists didn't cease their attacks because of the British method of fighting them. They succeeded in bombing mainland Britain 14 times, and they caused more than 50,000 casualties including 3,500 deaths. London rail stations to this day have no trash cans because the IRA repeatedly left bombs in them.

They stopped their attacks when their demands were met.

I fail to see what you are advocating other than giving in to terrorism.

And what if I am advocating giving in to terrorism? That does not justify terrorism, as you seem to have said.

Sure, the Irish didn't cease their attacks because of how the British fought them. Likewise, various anti-American terrorists haven't ceased their attacks because of how the US fights them.

If you consider terrorism to be a valid means of advancing a political agenda, then you are justifying it.

Your proposal implies that killing civilians should earn you a seat at the negotiating table.

It makes the most sense to consider the IRA and the UK as two separate groups. The IRA getting their demands met justifies terrorism for them; bad means, good ends. The UK getting peace justifies capitulating to the IRA for them; bad means, good ends. Why is capitulation bad means? The same reason that giving in to any bully is bad - you lose, the bully gets power, and it sets a precedent.

That said, the UK government certainly did a lot to piss off the Irish and it's not clearly the case that in the events leading up to the conflict all of the UK's actions were great and the Irish's were horrible.

So, again, you're assuming that the UK approach (or outcome) causes more terrorism, while the US approach causes less. And again, I disagree.

Giving in to terrorism does not end terrorism, it only ends the violent expression of it. If you do this, you end up living in fear (i.e. terror) that if you do not continue to do what the terrorists want, there will be more violence.

Anyone who cooperates with an abusive power does so because they have been sufficiently terrorized by that power and they don't want to risk further abuse. That kind of cooperation is not a good outcome; it's only the acceptance of coercion, because the alternative is worse.

So, let's deliberately choose the worse outcome because... nope, I don't get it.

That's not my point. My point is that the lesser of two evils is still evil. If I rob you at gunpoint and you give me your wallet and I spare your life, it's still a bad outcome, it just isn't as bad as it could be.

Why is that an interesting point? There isn't necessarily a non-evil way to proceed, just worse and less-worse ways. I never said this was all roses and wine.

> I just said that it's a good outcome. Which it is.

I was only arguing with this.

> There isn't necessarily a non-evil way to proceed, just worse and less-worse ways. I never said this was all roses and wine.

This is all I mean by bad means, bad ends. This mindset opens up the discussion to debating the pros and cons of different approaches. Anyway, take care.

Clearly you don't. Giving in to the demands of whoever bombs you is not the lesser of two evils.

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