German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung is under fire for declaring that he would order a hijacked passenger jet to be shot down if it were being used in a terror attack, despite last year’s Constitutional Court ruling that it would be illegal. (Spiegel)
I’m stunned at the gross level of sheer stupidity in this. I’m not speaking about Minister Jung, though he should have answered with the vague that “all options would be considered”. The highest court in Germany has intervened in matters of national defense and severely weakened their country. I echo Hot Air‘s question of “If the court was meeting as the hijacked plane was zooming toward it, would the court change its no shoot down ruling?” If the people of Berlin, Hamburg, Muncih, or Frankfurt ever have to face a day like this…
…one wonders what their opinions of this decision will be afterwards. God help us from such useful idiots who mistakenly believe they are doing good. Of course, the fact that Germany has a “union representing the interests of military personnel” is breath-taking in itself, but that’s another matter.
— John (Average Gay Joe)
Recognizing that it is very unlikely my explanation will help, let me, a resident of Germany, give you some perspective.
German governments (that of the Third Reich and the DDR) and the societies they represented, have been actively involved in the deaths of literally millions of innocent human beings. After World War Two, and in full awareness of its crimes, the Bundesrepublik was founded, and part of its founding involved prohibiting the state from murdering innocent human beings. This was not a slippery slope, nor was it a ‘liberal’ argument – after having killed babies, children, parents, and grandparents, killing those with ‘imperfections,’ and working millions of slaves and prisoners of war to death, Germans were aware of the evil their state had caused, and in which they had participated, whether actively or passively.
The German state is simply not allowed to take innocent life, for whatever purpose, and this is a founding principle of the Bundesrepublik. As is the idea of the rule of law. The German Verfassungsgericht (Constitutional Court) had already ruled that the state can not shoot down an airliner containing innocent people when deciding on a proposed law to permit this. The blood of the victims is on the hands of the criminals that crashed the airliner, a point clear to any rational person, as the court pointed out. Killing innocent people as a ‘preventative measure’ is beyond illegal, it is immoral for the German state to ever practice again.
After clearly ruling that such action is against the Grundgesetz and immoral, to have a defense minister argue that he is above the law, and that he would order such action is a clear declaration of how unfit this individual is to command the German military, which after its experiences in the Second World War, takes very seriously the idea of never again following illegal orders. Which such an order from the defense minister would clearly be.
Again, there is absolutely nothing slippery slope or theoretical about any of these circumstances. The actions the defense minister declared he would order have already been declared illegal, and German society shares the consensus that killing innocent people is wrong, after the mass killing it engaged in.
And please, to tell people with still living memories of cities that were destroyed in firestorms (Hamburg) or bombed for years (Berlin) that a couple of buildings falling down justifies killing innocent people, shows a massive lack of historical knowledge. After all, it was British bombers that purposely attacked German civilian populations for years, and American bombers that flattened most German major cities while destroying transport and industrial facilities. A distinction the Germans are very of, and which in part actually plays a role this debate – that American airmen flew in daylight, increasing their own risk to spare innocent victims, provided a stark contrast to the expediency in the pursuit of evil that marked the Nazi state, and provided a concrete example of the morality which Germany should demand of itself. Ironically, decent treatment of war prisoners by Americans was also part of this contrast, one which was deeply wounded by what happened in Abu Ghraib – normal Germans could easily imagine the Nazis running such a prison, but it was shocking to think that Americans would be involved in such barbaric practices.
Most Germans are not pacifists because of some higher moral purpose, they lean towards pacifism because they or their parents have an intimate knowledge of war, and the evil which it causes.
While you may disagree with German beliefs of what is demanded of a moral society, whether it be not killing innocent humans or not using torture. A Frankfurt police commissioner was tried and found guilty of threatening tortuer when attempting to save a kidnap victim – who was dead at the time that the police broke the law, since life is not a made for TV series. People had sympathy for his personal decision to rescue a child, but the revulsion towards torture is far too deep seated in Germany to allow its use by the state, regardless of justification, in the same manner that killing innocent people is beyond justification.
The facts and reasoning supporting these beliefs is written with more blood on German hands than will be washed off in either of our lifetimes.
Uh-Uh, here’s the death toll figures for 9/11 (from Wikipedia).
There were 2,974 fatalities, not including the 19 hijackers: 246 on the four planes (no one on board any of the hijacked aircraft survived),[24] 2,603 in New York City in the towers and on the ground, and 125 at the Pentagon.
In short, had the four planes been shot down, 246 innocent people would have died.
But because they weren’t, over 2700 MORE innocent people died.
In short, rather than acting to prevent it because doing so would cost innocent lives, you would allow ten times as many innocent people to be killed.
That goes well beyond the lesson learned from the Nazis and into delusional psychosis.
Sorry, your moral logic is flawed. If the state had murdered 246 people, it killed 246 innocent people through its own actions. The hijackers killed whatever number of innocent people they killed – this marked those who committed the hijacking as criminals and murderers.
Again, no slippery slope in Germany – the state here has committed evil and wicked acts far beyond the most deluded visions of Osama bin Laden.
To avoid going down that pathway, the Germans have created absolutes, in much the same sense the Catholic Church has – for example, euthansia is equally unacceptable in German society, for any reason. These are not arguments one can make by claiming ‘greater good’ – after all, that is what all of those committing their acts of evil claimed.
Germans have decided they will not place themselves again at the level of the criminals who kill innocent people, something you seem to think they should do, to abstractly save innocent lives by murdering a lesser number of innocent people. The state is not responsible for those actions committed by others, it is only responsible for its own actions. A moral position based on Germany’s blood soaked experience.
To put it simply – your balance is flawed, because you fail to see the distinction between murderers and those who do not murder.
What clap-trap…..
If’s that the mentality of today’s Germans (and the rest of Old Europe); they are too stupid to survive and Darwin’s theory will winnow-out the gene-pool. I’ll stick with the rough men doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, knowing that it needs to be done, right now! We can have the navel-gazing post mortem chat at our lesuire afterwards.
If a man raises his hand against me, I’m not giving him the chance to succeed…I’ll take off his hand. Try again, lose the second hand….I’ll have no truck with “offering the other cheek”. That only works with gentlemen, who wouldn’t strike you in the first place.
As usual uh_uh´s thinking is flawed. When the Bundesrepublik was founded there was no precedent like 9/11 for them to take into consideration. The ¨greater good¨ most certainly applies. When a plane is hijeacked for the purposes of using it as a weapon of mass destruction, the passengers are already doomed. It is better, for the greater good, to sacrifice 198, than to allow 198 + 3,000 to die. While United Flight 93 wasn´t shot down the passengers were willing to sacrifice their lives than allow those radical islamist to reach their intended destination of destruction.
Its fuzzy thinking that has convoluted so much of what has gone wrong in our nation; concern for criminals over their victims, coddling delinquents, schools trumping parental authority. Hopefully the pendulum will swing back the other way.
Then, by uh_uh’s logic, the Allies should never have fought the Nazis — since they knew it would result in the death of innocent people.
They should have just stood by, secure in the knowledge that they were “morally pure” and that to interfere would be worse than just letting the Nazis do it — they themselves would be “murderers”.
Furthermore, those Germans who resisted the Nazis are criminals and evil — since, in the process, they doubtless caused the deaths of innocents.
To avoid going down that pathway, the Germans have created absolutes, in much the same sense the Catholic Church has – for example, euthansia is equally unacceptable in German society, for any reason.
Right.
Now, a study commissioned by Germany’s Stern news magazine following the Dignitas debut, reveals that 74 percent of Germans believe doctors caring for terminally ill patients should be allowed to put an end to their suffering by being given the authority to administer lethal injections.
A mere 20 percent of those questioned voiced opposition to the practice, while six percent were undecided.
Were I to invoke logic, however, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
– Mr. Spock (The Wrath of Khan)
How about triage during a Mass Casualty Incident, uh_uh? Sometimes as medics, we have to pass on treating some, letting them die, in order to save others. In the perfect world, you might be able to do something for them, but when you have others in need, you can’t spend the time. Essentially, you can’t waste time on someone you might save and use the effort to treat someone you know you can save.
Would you suggest that I make the effort to treat someone who is more than likely going to die or would you rather I make the effort to treat someone who needs it?
Interesting reading, and none of it addressing the fundamental argument, which is that the German state is forbidden from killing innocent people. A prohibition based on the mass murder of millions of innocent people, mass murder often justified as improving society, removing imperfections from society, or saving the German nation from destruction.
And a moral argument which clearly assigns the responsibility for murder to those that murder, and does not accept the idea that murder serves any other purpose than killing, whether for the greater good or because the state decides it is necessary.
Strange how such a simple moral position seems so hard to grasp, or worse, is seen as a sign of weakness or somehow being a sign of unfitness (at least one previous German ruling party would agree with that, by the way – even though they only lasted 12 years, instead of the 5 decades of the Bundesrepublik). Of course you may disagree it with it, but then, it is unlikely you, your parents, or your grandparents have the intentional death of millions of innocent human beings on their hands.
However, to discuss the point about euthansia and terminally ill, as it is another difference between the U.S. and Germany. In Germany, people die – they have been doing it as long as people have lived, and it happens on a daily basis. In America, the Hollywood script and faith in medical technology often obscures the reality that we will all die. It is completely illegal for a German doctor to provide the sort of morphine treatment that an American doctor offered for ensuring my mother a painless ‘transition.’ She lived four years after this offer was turned down. Yet it would be equally illegal for a German doctor to turn off her equipment, even though she requested it, and filled out the various paperwork which does not even exist in Germany (she died after a couple of hours). My mother was terminally ill, you see – but she decided when the disease was truly terminal. Did she commit an act of euthansia? And would her case be the sort that 77% of Germans consider acceptable? If so, then the German feeling about ‘euthansia’ may be as much a question of semantics as it is absolutes. At least if you believe that being able to choose how and when you die is a right, and not a crime.
Oh my Gracious, uh_uh, you still keep missing thew point. You keep obsessing about euthanasia. The German Defense Minister was referring to an occasion such as 9/11. The object of the German state´s prohibition of killing innocents is to prevent any future genocides such as the holocaust, the Final Solution, and using the argument ¨for the greater good¨as a reason to keep the Aryan race pure. Including euthanasia in the list of forbidden acts has its foundation in avoiding any act that might be misconstrued as genocide.
If I were terminally ill I would certainly authorize my family or lover to
pull the plug or a morphine drip.
Actually, the point does seem to be missed. German laws forbidding the state from taking innocent life are based on the killing of millions of innocent lives. Lives that were taken with a number of justifications, including mercy, at least in the eyes of the doctors killing those judged unfit to live, and for the greater good, when killing those who would take food from the Volk.
Germany is now a nation of laws, something that several former German ruling parties, both left and right, saw as a weakness. The proposed law in question, allowing the state to murder innocent people in the service of a higher goal (and Germans know all about higher goals – Endsieg was the final justification Nazis used when sending children to the front lines while marching concentration camp inmates to death before they could be liberated by advancing Allied armies) has already been decided to be against the German Grundgesetz, which of course, the defense minister is sworn to uphold.
And which he publicly said he wouldn’t. To the credit of the German military, its members publicly said they would not obey an illegal order. Especially as in the past, they did obey such orders, slaughtering prisoners or fleeing German civilians, for example. Yes, fleeing German civilians – the Germans do not have a theoretical perspective about ‘evil,’ they or their parents or their grandparents experienced or practiced it.
The German constitutional court merely decided that taking innocent life is a criminal act as defined by the Grundgesetz, and that those who do it are criminals, whatever their justification. And the defense minister was claiming the right to be a murderer, in the pursuit of a higher goal. Something Germans have heard before, before their entire nation was destroyed following that vision.
You are welcome to disagree, but recognize, at least in terms of the society from which the Nazis grew, you are arguing for the right to murder innocent people for whatever justification you feel necessary. Germans believe, after their society killed millions of innocents, there is no justification for taking innocent life, and those who do are murderers, without exception. The murderer is responsible for their actions, and no murderer can lay the blame at the feet of anyone else. German society has committed mass murder in its past, and this awareness is the foundation of its understanding of itself and its laws.
I do disagree. When thousands will die viz a viz, 9/11, then choosing to let them live and sacrifice 150 is common sense, as well as the greater good. The hi jackers are suicidal to begin with and in their mind killing thousands, well as their 150 passengers, earns them eternal rewards. In the last analysis it is justification for the death penalty, which is also a deterent to violent crime. If radical islamist know in advance they will die before completing their mission, they might abandon the idea altogether, resulting in the greater good that 150 don´t have to lose their lives either.