| | Mark -- I guess we are going to have to agree to disagree about what is "unnecessarily engaged ... in total war". I gave you an analogy to what I think would be a comparable situation in ordinary life, in which nobody I personally know would be thinking it was a good idea to try to negotiate. Perhaps you think this is a flawed analogy, and would like to offer a better one. Perhaps you would care to answer your own question and explain what, exactly, you would consider a measured response to Pearl Harbor when that attack was conducted by a country run by nihilistic military folks who would later use kamikaze bombers and force their soldiers to fight on in hopeless situations, without surrender, until every single one of them was dead or had committed suicide?
I did respond to your 9/11 query as follows -- perhaps you could give a response, and I will weigh whether a response is indicated:
"Not familiar with the narrative being pushed by the 9/11 truthers ... what is the one-paragraph narrative of what you think went down?"
Re: this: "What ethical purpose would such warfare serve? To make you feel like a hero on this site?"
The purpose of such warfare would be to prevent awful, evil foreign leaders, who intend to take over your country and treat you like a subhuman or even kill you, from accomplishing their purpose.
My purpose in posting what I did was to respond to you by stating my beliefs, and allowing others to attempt to correct me if you or they felt my reasoning was flawed. I don't want to be a hero here or anywhere else -- in fact, virtually all of the time heroism involves altruistically sacrificing oneself for the good of others, oftentimes strangers, which is so very much not an Objectivist virtue. I don't desire the adulation of crowds -- I want to live my life for its own sake, which generally leads to the crowds reviling you.
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