War In Afghanistan Essay Research Paper In

War In Afghanistan Essay, Research Paper

In response to the September 11 attacks, the United States should declare war on the responsible group. As a nation, we should do only the actions that bring about the best consequences, and the best consequences would occur by bringing the responsible group to justice. In this case, killing the Taliban and its supporters is the right action because it produces the greatest amount of good.

The theory that we should only do the actions that bring about the best consequences is a consequentialist theory. Consequentialism is correct because if the action taken creates the most possible good, then that action must be the right action. Consequentialism leads to the right action because the right action is the action that produces the greatest amount of good or the least amount of bad. For example killing one person is bad, but killing two people is worse. If you could only choose between killing one person and killing two people, the action that brings about the best consequences is killing one person, because it produces the least amount of bad.

The Taliban and terrorist groups like it are a threat to people all over the world. As we have seen with the September 11 attack, they are ruthless and very dangerous. This attack killed 700 people with 4,569 people still missing. (USA Today). These types of groups should not be allowed to roam free to cause havoc on innocent civilians around the world. We cannot let the Taliban continue to kill because they could easily do the same thing again to us or other nations. In order to produce the most good we must quash these terrorist groups before they can strike again.

I think that the United States should use force to capture the Taliban terrorist group. We are limited in our actions only by what would bring about the best consequences. I believe that we should start by bombing strategic military targets that could possibly be used by the Taliban against us. After these targets are destroyed, we should use ground troops and aircraft to search for and destroy the enemy and its resources. These resources include: factories that produce bombs, guns, etc.; command centers; and all wartime equipment.

In a war, innocent people will die. It cannot be helped. Although bombing runs may kill innocent civilians, they must be done. For example, a school with 50 children in it is located next to a Taliban bomb factory. The U.S. should blow up the bomb factory even if it means that the 50 children will die. This is because the bombs that are produced in the factory can be used to kill many more than 50 people. These deaths are justified because a greater good will come from the destruction of the factory. Until it is feasible for a war to be fought where no innocent people will die, these civilian deaths are justified because a greater good will come from the destruction of a threat to a greater number of people.

So far, the Taliban has reported that 1,500 people have been killed on the U.S. bombing raids. (Washington Post) Even though these numbers are suspected to be exaggerated, these deaths are justified because the Taliban has the potential to kill many more than 1,500 people. The September 11 attacks prove that. Also the Taliban is partly to blame for the high number of civilian deaths because they have been purposely stationing military equipment and personnel in populated areas (Washington Post). The Taliban troops have also taken over private homes and charities in the cities, making it harder for the United States to pick out civilians from Taliban forces (Boston Globe). This also will lead to a higher accidental civilian death rate, but this as well is justified.

This is not to say that the United States should try and kill as many civilians as possible. It is only okay to kill civilians if and only if the deaths come as a by-product of the destruction of something that will aide in the success of the war. Killing as many Afghan citizens as possible would not have a positive effect on our campaign. For this reason, the United States should not use nuclear weapons unless something very unexpected happens. The only reason nuclear weapons should be used is to stop an event that would be worse than the consequences of using these weapons. But, hopefully things won’t get bad enough to justify the use of nuclear weapons.

Bibliography

www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2001.htm