[Fwd: Re: [ RadSafe ] RE: [AMRSO] On This Day( NY Times) - Observation of Moment of Silence]

[Peter Bossew]

((sorry something went wrong in my previous mailing attempt))


Action, which is assumed (correctly or incorrectly, but subjectively 
honestly) as necessary to prevent a crime from happening, is no crime 
itself, by definition, given that the action is (again: correctly or 
incorrectly, but subjectively honestly considered) adequate.


As to your examples, this is hard to follow from a non-US perspective.
1) In Europe only lunatics have weapons at home (except CH, where this 
is the base of defense philosophy). Such cases which you describe happen 
once in years, if at all.
2) The Vietnam war was a monstrous US crime altogether, also sui 
generis. What happened within that war, Mi Lai and other collateral 
damage, were sub-crimes, so to say.

pb


davidhelton1 at bellsouth.net wrote:

Sometimes one crime does justify another crime. Two examples follow:

1.	Your house is being broken in to. It is legal to use force to stop the entry, including deadly force which results in murder. The crime is breaking and entry, the other crime is murder. When someone is breading and entering you have no idea what there intent is including to murder your whole family.
2.	You are engaged in battle, such as Vietnam, and many US troops are going to die unless the Vietcong are killed (they have mortars). The Vietcong are among many Vietnamese civilians. Do you take a chance on killing a few civilians during the combat or retreat with many US soldiers dying during the retreat due to mortar fire and the Vietcong getting away free? Do you accept possibly killing a few civilians’ verses the possibility of the Vietcong killing many US troops?

For item 1, I, and a lot of people like me, own a semi-automatic high powered pistol which is by my bed in case of need for home and personnel protection. Since I have no idea what there intent is on entering or if they armed and if so with what, I believe in the use of deadly force, which means I would shoot with the intent to kill.


  


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Peter Bossew 

European Commission (EC) 
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Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) 

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