I'm not sure whether the propaganda used by governments to gain the compliance of it's citizens is immoral or not. In some cases it undoubtedly is but in others maybe not.
Sometimes it's that virtuous moral sort of lying. Right.
If a government's decision is correct and moral is it then immoral to propagandize it's people to get 'em to go along?
Since governments can be counted on to make incorrect, immoral decisions, the question is rather moot. But supposing so for the sake of argument, the answer is no. The ends do not justify the means.
God grant me:
The courage to change the things I can.
The serenity to accept those things I cannot.
AND the WISDOM to know the difference.
There's a difference between serenely dealing with evil, and declaring that it isn't evil in the first place. That's important. I'm quite serene as I point out the evils of propaganda, despite what Maned may claim to the contrary. Like cancer, there's no cure in sight. But imagine how foolish it would be for people to decide that, since cancer is incurable, therefore cancer is not a disease.
Is the Iraq war just? I think it started out that way. I believe that Bush and his gang truly believed that Sadaam had weapons of mass destruction and it was necessary to eliminate them to keep the USA safe. That might make me one of the schmucks I suppose.
I believed the propaganda as well. It was the realization that I was a schmuck that snapped me out of my blind conservatism and awakened the inner libertarian.
When it was discovered that he didn't (have WMD's that is) and the administration started waffling on the reasons we were there was when I started doubting that the war was just.
Same here.
AND that was the time to get out. But it's too late now to just up and leave. The power vacuum that would be created and the potential ramifications of that are just too dire...
The aftermath will be ugly. The question is whether there's any better alternative. I think the argument can be made that staying is much worse than leaving. If we never withdraw, that would be a moral obscenity akin to our continued occupation of Korea, Germany and Okinawa. If we
do withdraw, whenever that is, the aftermath will be as bad as if we withdrew today--so on net it will be worse by the amount of carnage between now and then. In addition, the longer we stay, the more blowback we store up for the future. Which of course means more attacks in some form or other, followed by
more disastrous wars, etc.
We've got to finish what we started.
I said that too, for a long time after realizing that the WMDs were never going to be found. The above considerations, not to mention the multi-trillion-dollar price tag, changed my mind.
Mistakes happen. When they do you learn from them, clean up the mess and move on.
The assumption that we can clean up our mistakes is dangerous hubris. You can't unkill the dead, and you can't put humpty-dumpty together again.
--Len.