Preemptive attacks elsewhere: instrumental cynicism

Preemptive attacks elsewhere: instrumental cynicism

Breaking the hard and slow advances in human rights, law and convivence, mr. Bush and his team argue that they will attack Irak because that nation has the "intention" and the "tools" to attack US, sometime in the next future.

Such an argumentation would not be accepted by any normal judge inside the US legal system because it presuposes:

1) that a preventive crime is a valid way to avoid an eventually possible future crime

2) that the accuser is an a priori-punisher and that the accused is an a apriori-guilty

3) that the accuser has an inquestionable capacity to advance others intentions,

4) that the judge/power does not have an a priori responsibility with national/world society

On such grounds, anybody might justify the worst crimes like S11, the jews holocaust, South African apartheid, palestinians 50 years genocide, latinoamerican paramilitars, soviet purges, slavery, colonialism, indigenous peoples masacres, catholic inquisition, children malnutrition deaths, racial exclusions, etc., etc.

For example, Bin Laden might say that the S-11 carnage was a preventive action to avoid the posterior Bush carnage on Afghanistan, or the next one that so many US citizens will approve –probably on patriotic and "decency" reasons- against Irak or elsewhere. Remember that the US parliament already authorized Bush to define the best moment to commit it.

NOTE: the term "instrumental cynicism" is borrowed from Enrique Dussel’s article "Del Escéptico al Cínico" (From the scheptical to the cynical), in spanish, at www.polylog.org, an interesting web place dedicated to intercultural dialogue, with articles in several languages.

The article is at:

http://www.milenio.com.br/ifil/Biblioteca/dussel.txt

Thanks, Emilio