How often do you see the conviction of a crime justified in the name of deterrence of future crimes in a courtroom?
In a courtroom, they don’t justify laws at all, except maybe relative to other, more foundational laws. They just interpret them.
Theater implies it’s not very much meant earnestly, by politicians and criminologists alike. And honestly I myself agree with that kind of deterrence, there should be rules that people are mortally afraid to break; anything else is a power vacuum and won’t last.
hey just intercepted a shipment of pagers going to Lebanon that they know Hezbollah members used and put in explosives. What happened if you’re just a regular guy trying to buy one of those pagers?
It’s actually known now that their own shell company sold directly to Hezbollah. It’s not like this was a random shipment to Lebanon, there was no risk of that. The civilian casualties were a result of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I genuinely don’t know how to explain to you that exploding a bunch of pagers with no knowledge of where they are or who has them at any given time has more potential for collateral damage than an airstrike using advanced weaponry on a military target.
I genuinely thing that’s empirically wrong. What you call “advanced weaponry” still uses the same explosives from WWII, but in even greater quantities. The 21st century electronics mean it will hit a specific building instead of “London”, but it’s still 2000 pounds of RDX or whatever.
I feel like you and I could go back and forth on this discussion for a very long time. I do disagree with your logic, but I also do see where you’re coming from(kinda). Hopefully you don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t see too much benefit in arguing semantics over a word choice of a problem we both agree exists. I think it’s best if we simply agree to disagree and go on with our days.
