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Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Indian Tenis star sania Mirza wedding.....
Indian Tennis star Sania Mirza Wedding Photos and pictures. Indian Tennis star Sania Mirza married to Pakistan cricketer Shoaib Malik recently and the marriage was held in Hyderabad
Newly married couple sania and ....
Saina Nehwal wins Singapore open!
Indian Grand Prix Added to Formula1 2011
Indian Grand Prix Added to Formula1 2011 Season. Indian Grand Prix F1 race will be added to Formula One's 2011 calendar season.The Indian GP is scheduled to be held on October 30, 2010 with subject to approval of the new circuit. The number of F1 races will increase to 20 next year with this addition of Indian Gp and other 19 races will be as in year 2010. Also according to FIA there will be no addition of 13th F1 team unelss the team meets the major requirements to be granted an entry into the 2011 championship seaso
India vs Australia 2010 Cricket Time Table (ODI and Test Matches)
India vs Australia 2010 Cricket Time Table (ODI and Test Matches). India vs Australia 2010 Schedule (Timetable) for ODI and Test Cricket Matches. Australia will play 2 Test and 3 ODI matches. Here are fixtures of India vs Australia 2010 -
Date | Teams | Match | Venue | Time |
---|---|---|---|---|
01 Oct 10 | India vs Australia | 1st Test | Punjab Cricket Association Stadium, Mohali - Chandigarh | 09:30 IST |
09 Oct 10 | India vs Australia | 2nd Test | M. Chinnaswamy Stadium, Bangalore - Karnataka | 09:30 IST |
17 Oct 10 | India vs Australia | 1st ODI | Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, Kochi | 09:00 IST |
20 Oct 10 | India vs Australia | 2nd ODI | ACA-VDCA Stadium, Visakhapatnam | 14:30 IST |
24 Oct 10 | India vs Australia | 3rd ODI | Nehru Stadium (Fatorda Stadium), Margao - Goa | 09:00 IST |
- Australia — Network Ten (Live)
- India — Neo Sports
Democracy
IT HAS BEEN WIDELY HELD that as democracy spreads, there will be fewer wars and that the wars that are fought will be more just. Although this idea can be traced back to Kant, it has been developed in recent years by Doyle, Rawls, and others. (1) While giving us reason for hope, such ideas should be accepted cautiously. Uncritical acceptance of the ideal of the democratic peace can lead us to fight wars in the name of spreading democracy: an outcome that betrays the Kantian roots of the theory. And excessive idealism can be used to rationalize violations of just war principles. There is a mixed lesson to be learned from past democratizing wars and past experience in nation-building, even prior to "the war on terrorism." (2) When we acknowledge the ambiguous legacy of democratizing wars as well as the difficulty of justifying war in general, we should be more critical of the myth that forcible democratization is a legitimate way to create lasting peace. If we believe the myth that democratizing wars are both morally acceptable and easy to win, we can end up making moral compromises: atrocities can be rationalized as means to forcibly spread democracy in order to build peace. (3)
Evidence of this problem can be found in the example of World War II--an example that has been used as the model for the war on terrorism. President Bush has routinely invoked the World War II paradigm in his defenses of the war on terrorism; and he has looked to Truman as a model for his own presidency. But Truman supervised the most egregious use of weapons of mass destruction in the history of warfare: the fire bombing of Japan, which culminated in the atomic bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Japanese example is often invoked by defenders of the Bush Doctrine as one of the success stories in the history of forced democratization. Japan has become democratic and it remains a close ally of the United States. But what is often overlooked is that the democratization of Japan was the result of a series of atrocities that resulted in the deaths of millions of innocent Japanese.
Idealistic appropriations of the democratic peace theory can be used to rationalize immoral means. Moral and political life is organized around ideals. In Kant's sense, ideals are regulative principles with practical power. They are "archetypes" that allow us, in Kant's language, "to measure the degree and the defects of the incomplete." (4) But Kant also reminds us that we must not be deceived about ideals: we can be deluded when we believe that our ideals are actually realizable. It would seem that the democratic peace ideal would be resistant to those manipulations that call for war and that are used to justify atrocity; after all, the democratic peace ideal is about peace. But the democratic peace ideal has a sort of mythic power that can seduce us toward wars that fail to live up to the very standards of justice in war that are central to the ideal. The myth of the democratic peace relies upon eschatological hope for a peaceful world. Since war is such a horrible thing, it is easy to believe that the ideal of perpetual peace can be actualized. In order to actualize this hoped-for end of history, earnest idealists are willing to make moral compromises along the way. In this paper, when I discuss "ideals" and "myths," I mean to use these terms as a way of describing good ideas that go astray as a result of an uncritical and overly optimistic use.
This occurs quite obviously when the democratic peace ideal is combined with utilitarianism in a way that was quite clearly foreshadowed by John Stuart Mill. Indeed, Mill's defense of colonial power shows us a useful historical example of how idealism becomes mythological. Mill held that English intervention in India and elsewhere was justified because of the benign value of English colonial power. A similar sort of idealism underlies much of American foreign policy in which American power is supposed to be unequivocally benevolent. And indeed, straightforward utilitarian calculations were employed in justifying the use of atomic weapons against Japan. As an antidote, I argue that we must remain true to the deontological roots of the democratic peace ideal, as found in Kant, and that we steadfastly respect deontological prohibitions against the use of indiscriminate and disproportional force. While utilitarian idealism that advocates using unbridled force to spread democracy is understandable, it should be resisted because of serious prohibitions against using war as a means to promote historical change. Kant's political philosophy is grounded in the idea that war is wrong. For Kant, "a universal and enduring peace is ... the ultimate purpose of law." (5) To utilize war to promote peace is to use immoral means in pursuit of the mythic ideal of perpetual peace. And Kant's moral philosophy would hold that weapons of mass destruction--from atomic bombs to high-altitude bombardment and the use of cluster bombs and land mines--are immoral. Kant condemns "a war of extermination in which both parties and right itself might all be simultaneously annihilated." (6) Although the use of weapons of mass destruction in World War II did eventually result in a peace among the reconstituted democracies of German and Japan, this peace was obtained at the expense of morality. We should surely hope for a world in which liberal democracies live in peace; but this hope should not mislead us into thinking that war may be used as a means toward actualizing the ideal, especially in the era of weapons of mass destruction.
II
Critiquing the Myth of the Just War
ONE OF THE MAIN HINDRANCES for genuine dialogue and progress is our tendency to fall back upon shared myths that obscure the truth. Political life is full of powerful myths that prevent clear thinking. True believers in the myth of democracy tend to think, for example, that democracy is unequivocally good and that it is the solution to all social problems. This sort of mythological idealism is also linked to the Enlightenment idealism about "civilization" or modernity: the myth holds that enlightenment civilization has such an unquestionable and universal value that it should be spread across the globe. These sorts of myths become militant when linked to what I have called elsewhere "the just war myth." (7) The just war myth is the idea that war is a just and noble endeavor that creates progressive historical change. When the just war myth is linked to mythic idealism about democracy and civilization, we have an especially dangerous mix of political mythologies. The myth of the just war holds that just wars are easy to fight, easy to win, and historically progressive.
A similar mythic idealism is connected with Enlightenment ideas about civilization and modernity. Crusading idealists tend to think that the rest of the unenlightened world needs to be brought forcefully into the light provided by democracy and civilization. Progress toward democracy and human rights is a good thing. But we should avoid a misguided use of idealism, which advocates forced enlightenment as an acceptable means toward that end.
I have argued elsewhere that war is rarely just. (8) Despite this obvious empirical fact, it is astounding that many continue to believe that war is a just and noble thing. The problem of what I call "the myth of the just war" is that we believe war is just even though reality shows this belief to be false. One reason for this is that the just war myth is a socially constructed ideal that is supported by social institutions and that in turn helps to prop up those same social institutions. But it is also easy to be deceived by the powerful and persuasive arguments that are made in defense of the principles of the just war theory. The just war tradition combines utilitarian and deontological elements with the goal of focusing
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