Is Goodness a Machine?

Wretchard at the Belmont Club writes a blog entitled Love and Death In it he discusses what is obvious to even the most casual observer of the affair in Iraq. We go after the bad guys with Geneva Conventions, habeus corpus, and Miranda while they [i.e. those many in the MSM refuse to term terrorists] go after women, children, and others with lunch box bombs with nails, acid bombs, very public and brutal assassinations.

It is at heart a struggle between good and evil; and must begin with an understanding of what is good. Many liberal commentators mistakenly argue that "catch and release", and strict adherence to the letter of the Geneva Convention and international rules of evidence are necessary to attain the Moral High Ground; and thereby overawe the world with an admiration for America's shining moral superiority. But no one is impressed, not our friends nor our enemies. Because those pretensions to superiority based on legalisms are undermined at every turn by actual betrayals.

Source: The Belmont Club – Love and Death In western society good and evil have become a matter of law. This view is also extremely mechanistic. The law must work like a machine no consideration on the circumstances, no understanding of what is behind a given act. So, since a soldier is constrained by some inane rule put forth years ago to govern warfare between nations even though there is absolutely no expectation held by the other side. Joe kills a terrorist before it becomes obvious to Code Pink the terrorist is about to shoot at him and he is investigated and hounded. Ali blows up a mosque full of Worshipping Shias or a bus full of school children and he is a "founding father". The machinery of the system can process Joe but not Ali, so to the processing factory you go Joe.

In the Third World especially, America's moral quality will be judged more by its willingness to keep its word of honor than in any self-absorbed liturgy to the gods of political correctness. Moral superiority must first of all begin with a determination not to sacrifice men who have decided to fight on the American side; because without the ability to stand by those who have risked their lives for us, no sweet words, no fastidiousness references to law will adequately substitute. Against fear we must set not Moral Superiority, but love. Fear is the lunchbox bomb; yet our love is that we should lay our lives for our friends until the lunchbox bomb is no more. Down that road of love the road to winning over terrorism lies; down that path and not the path of Judas.

Source: The Belmont Club – Love and Death This is what bothers me the most. There are many people in Iraq who have placed much at risk to help follow through on the idea of popular government on the path to liberalism. Now, what is the proposal everyone is talking about? Abandoning them.

I leave you with a question. In Dante's Inferno what crime is rewarded with eternity in Hell's deepest and coldest pit?