Comments on: Thank You For Your Service http://www.dissentdecree.net/2009/11/11/thank-you-for-your-service/ Fri, 02 Jul 2010 18:49:34 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: shoreacres http://www.dissentdecree.net/2009/11/11/thank-you-for-your-service/comment-page-1/#comment-647 shoreacres Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:55:46 +0000 http://www.dissentdecree.net/?p=892#comment-647 How ironic that the current brouhaha in scientific circles - the hacking of the Hadley Climate Research Unit (or, more precisely, the University of East Anglia) - raises in a different context the issue of science-in-the-service-of-politics you note here. Watching global warming proponents and climate sceptics conduct their skirmishes, it might as well be the run-up to Iraq, or the interminable horror of Vietnam, with the same massaging of data, fear-mongering, personal assaults and power-brokering that seems to afflict everyone who's managed to make their way to the top of the heap. It's been a while since I've seen anyone raise the traditional just-war theory, as you do here. I'm afraid the controlling question no longer is, "What is just?", but "What can we get away with?" Unfotunately, that's a question guaranteed to create the conditions that produce veterans. How ironic that the current brouhaha in scientific circles – the hacking of the Hadley Climate Research Unit (or, more precisely, the University of East Anglia) – raises in a different context the issue of science-in-the-service-of-politics you note here.

Watching global warming proponents and climate sceptics conduct their skirmishes, it might as well be the run-up to Iraq, or the interminable horror of Vietnam, with the same massaging of data, fear-mongering, personal assaults and power-brokering that seems to afflict everyone who’s managed to make their way to the top of the heap.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen anyone raise the traditional just-war theory, as you do here. I’m afraid the controlling question no longer is, “What is just?”, but “What can we get away with?” Unfotunately, that’s a question guaranteed to create the conditions that produce veterans.

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