Ethics Of 9/11

3 Pages 839 Words

The events of September 11, 2000 have greatly altered the lives of the American people. Today we find ourselves living in a scared nation where people are constantly worried about terrorist activities, and when or where the next terrorist strike may be. Our citizens twitch every time the terror alert level moves to orange. We hesitate when we board airplanes, or even attend a baseball game. Americans rely on a sense of safety and the events of 9/11 have definitely made everyone think twice about exactly how safe our country actually is. In the wake of these cowardly attacks we have taken decisive action in fighting a war on “terrorism.” Over the past week we have discussed the morality of the war in Iraq, and have heard speeches from both Mr. Seacord and Mr. Zerella. These two gentlemen both made some interesting arguments that raised a lot of questions about the morality of what we are doing in Iraq.
On the fist day of class we discussed the trolley problem where we talked about both intrinsic value based reasoning, and benefit based reasoning. We discussed when, or if, it would be permissible to sacrifice someone’s life in order to save other lives. Both Mr. Seacord and Mr. Zerella used different types of reasoning to either justify or dismiss the reasons for going to war in Iraq. While they both made good arguments there were several questions about both strategies. Mr. Zerella’s argument reflected a benefit based system of reasoning. Zerella contended that “It is the moral obligation of the president to protect the citizens of the United States, especially when the people who will be harmed are not U.S. citizens” (Zerella 1). He believes that the sacrifice of non U.S. citizens is permissible to ensure the safety of the United States population. He argues that the sacrifice of Iraqi lives was morally right because if we didn’t act then there would be a loss of American lives as a result of inaction. I understand what h...