A Much Easier (Hypothetical) Question

There's a Frenchman claiming that the US Navy shot down the Malaysian airlines Boeing 777 that went missing this year.

It's just a theory, but the argument for such a policy is much easier than the torture policy we've been discussing below. On the one hand, it's always wrong to intentionally kill the innocent. On the other hand, the people who put the innocent in a position of needing to be killed to avoid a great harm are not members of the US Navy, but members of the enemy organization that hijacked the plane for presumably terrorist purposes.

So unlike the case of torture-for-information, here we have a case that is really justified. If this was done, the harm lies on the wicked who hijacked the plane for evil reasons.

2 comments:

Texan99 said...

I've been hearing about this theory, which doesn't yet strike me as particularly plausible. But I agree with you.

MikeD said...

The problem with these kinds of conspiracy theories is that they can only really be concocted and believed by people who have never in their lives actually known someone in the United States military.

I don't say this to imply that every man or woman in the US military is above such things, but to say that there is absolutely no way that you could get a ship full of 18-22 year olds to keep their mouths shut about something like this. It simply is not possible. From the most grizzled veteran on that ship to the E-2 on his first cruise, there is going to be someone somewhere who's going to run their mouth about something that big.

The people who create and believe these things assume that "the military" means "hive mind" and that huge secrets can be kept by large organizations because no one has any identity of their own. But anyone who's known a service member realizes that they're just people who do a pretty difficult job. They're not mindless drones, or machines who can shut up about something simply because they have "orders".

In reality, someone on a ship that shoots down an airliner would have a serious problem with it, or would just brag their ass off about it. Either way, word would have gotten out, and quickly, because who WOULDN'T want to be rich or famous.