L's Q&A: Preemptive Attacks

[lulie]

Q: If we attack people preemptively, what if other people start attacking us preemptively?

A: The West is not a threat. It doesn't make sense to say people will attack us 'preemprively', because we were not going to attack. (Same argument applies for any moral person/group/country/whatever.)

Comments

[ubermammal]

You seem to have ignored the premise of the question: "If we attack people preemptively..." We are a threat to those people. We are going to attack them. So, to say "The West is not a threat" is false - under a policy of pre-emptive attacks, the West is a threat to those who would attack it.

There are two consequences this has that can be negative:

Firstly, it encourages people who would attack to act as quickly as possible, to not give the West time to make the first strike. This could be good in that it discourages them from taking lots of time to plan and prepare, but bad in that it encourages people to start damage exchanges that might be entirely avoidable if given more time. (E.g. maybe letting them sit around and plan works out better because they run out of money, motivation, or people before they can act).

Secondly, it makes people who have little faith in the West's threat perceptions very nervous. What if you're not going to attack the West, but you think that the West thinks you are, and you know the West has a policy

[lulie]

"the West is a threat to those who would attack it."

That's absurd. If I shoot a murderer coming towards me with a knife, that does not count as me being a threat to him because I am not intending to kill him for any reason but to save my own life. I'm not a threat because it's an entirely defensive action. If we both only took defensive action, neither of us would die. My attacking is conditional only on if he tries to kill me.

The West goes to great lengths to not even defend against its enemies. You have to be pretty fucked up to get on the West's 'shit, they might attack us' list. If you reasonably think the West might pre-emptively attack, maybe you should try to work out why, and reassure the West somehow. You don't even have to not appear like a bloodthirsty lunatic -- all you need to do is make sure you don't look like a bloodthirsty lunatic *who will attack the West or its allies*. You can even attack your neighbours if you want, as long as it doesn't seem like it will go on to the US or its allies. This shouldn't be too

[ubermammal]

"That's absurd. If I shoot a murderer coming towards me with a knife, that does not count as me being a threat to him because I am not intending to kill him for any reason but to save my own life."

You become a threat to him the moment you pull out the gun. Intentions and reasons are irrelevant to that.

Your intentions are only relevant when he is trying to form a theory of why you are pointing a gun at him. His theory allows him to make predictions about how you will respond to his actions. If his theory is correct, then he'll predict that continuing to brandish a knife at you will get him shot at, and that putting the knife away will see you lower the gun

L's Q&A: Preemptive Attacks - The politically correct answer

[anonymous]

When about to be gang-raped, tell the gang that you will not fight back until actually raped.

(That is because if you tell them anything else, that will make them think you are about to rape them, and then it will be your fault if they rape you first.)

When raped, you may fight back against those of the gang who have already raped you, but not against the rest.

In fighting back, you must not use force until after the suspect has been convicted of a crime.