You are walking on the street in the public square of your town. You encounter a child and someone who you perceive as a parent having a struggle. The struggle escalates and you see the parent start bludgeoning the child with their fists. Other than the absolute trauma of the experience, you fear the child is going to receive some long term injuries from this. How do you act?
I misread your comment. I wouldn’t have agreed that US would be the aggressors in that case. In such a hypothetical case, they would be defending the sunnis from Assad’s aggression. Assuming they got there in time to do anything about it and were actually interested in defending the region’s peoples and prosperity instead of securing oil.
It’s not aggressive to stop a bully from striking a child- the opposite actually- though you might have to use aggression.
Unfortunately at the geopolitical level, things are not always so morally easy, as I suspect you already understand.
Even in my brutish example, it depends on the lens in which we see things. In an orthodox culture, it may be the parent’s duty to harshly discipline a child. Perhaps meddling would be seen as a faux pas. Or perhaps leaving matters to authorities would be considered cowardly. Even still, maybe it just depends on the day and who’s tribe witnessed the event. The human experience is paradoxically wonderful, isn’t it?
You are walking on the street in the public square of your town. You encounter a child and someone who you perceive as a parent having a struggle. The struggle escalates and you see the parent start bludgeoning the child with their fists. Other than the absolute trauma of the experience, you fear the child is going to receive some long term injuries from this. How do you act?
I misread your comment. I wouldn’t have agreed that US would be the aggressors in that case. In such a hypothetical case, they would be defending the sunnis from Assad’s aggression. Assuming they got there in time to do anything about it and were actually interested in defending the region’s peoples and prosperity instead of securing oil.
It’s not aggressive to stop a bully from striking a child- the opposite actually- though you might have to use aggression.
Unfortunately at the geopolitical level, things are not always so morally easy, as I suspect you already understand.
Even in my brutish example, it depends on the lens in which we see things. In an orthodox culture, it may be the parent’s duty to harshly discipline a child. Perhaps meddling would be seen as a faux pas. Or perhaps leaving matters to authorities would be considered cowardly. Even still, maybe it just depends on the day and who’s tribe witnessed the event. The human experience is paradoxically wonderful, isn’t it?