{"id":766,"date":"2026-09-11T00:13:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T07:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/?p=766"},"modified":"2026-09-11T00:13:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T07:13:16","slug":"any-price-a-backwards-justification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/?p=766","title":{"rendered":"Any Price: A Backwards Justification"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This was an old conversation from several months ago, when Trump’s department of war crimes in collaboration with another war criminal, Netanyahu, suddenly decided that after totally “obliterating” the entire nuclear capability of Iran a few months earlier, somehow it was only two weeks away from making a nuclear bomb, and that the only way to stop it was to, supposedly targeted, bombing of the country. The subject came up again recently in another conversation, and I thought it might be a good idea to write down a summary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conversation started when a colleague of mine complained and criticized me for not expressing enough joy and excitement about the killing of the then supreme leader of Iran. My response was rather long, but revolves around the following three points:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. I had no doubt that he was directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths and sufferings of many many people, and looking through the eyes of any of the victims I would most likely say that he deserved to be killed.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. But I also believe that anyone, even the worst of the worst criminals deserve to be tried and heard in court of law, and if convicted, to be dealt with according to a sentence handed down by a judge.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Even if we assume and accept that there was no other option for the people of Iran, and that the random decision of narcissistic egomaniac, whatever his true motive, was the only possible salvation, one should ask “at what price.” <\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    At this point looked at me with an expression of disbelief, and said: “what do you mean at what price? This needed to be done at any price.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    I wasn’t surprised to hear this as I had heard it many times before. So I told him, what if, hypothetically, it would require blowing up the entire region and killing hundreds of millions just so that he and possibly a few thousand of his key statesmen were also killed among them. He responded saying that it was an absurd question and it’s not what happened. But I had to tell him that, yes it was an absurd scenario, but I had bring up something like that to show the absurdity of the statement that “he had to be killed at any price.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    At this point I had to mention what really happened, and whether that price was higher than the lives of over 160 innocent people, most of them schoolgirls. He looked at me with an expression of condescension, and said: “those were casualties of war.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

    i still have a difficult time understanding how people can convince themselves that simply naming an event can justify the actions causing it. Yes, everybody knows they are called casualties of war. That’s just a name. As if I asked him what those innocent victims would be called. My question was that given what had happened, including at least those over 160 “casualties of war” on the first day, was the price right for the killing of the supreme leader.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    There is a famous quote from 18th century British judge, Sir William Blackstone, that it’s better that ten criminals escape than one innocent person suffers. It was later revised by Benjamin Franklin to up the ratio to 100-to-1. Note that we are talking about 250 years ago! Some had slaves at that time. Yet the farmers were enlightened enough to value the suffering of a single innocent at more than escape of 100 criminals from punishment. What my colleague was talking about now was the exact opposite: let hundred innocent lose their lives so that that one criminal gets punished. This is how authoritarian regimes have operated in the past, and even now, including the theocracy in iran governed by that very same individual that was the main target of the bombings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    i wasn’t done. I had to ask him this final question: “if you were told that killing that person would require sacrificing 160 people, and that you, yes you, personally, needed to be among those 160 people, would you still say that any price was the right price?” He gave me a puzzled look, then looked the other way, as he wanted to avoid eye contact with me. But before he said anything, told him that I don’t want him to answer me right then and there. I wanted him to really think about the scenario, hypothetical as it may be, and then picture one of those schoolgirls or one of the parents who had lost their daughter, when trying to articulate his answer. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This was an old conversation from several months ago, when Trump’s department of war crimes in collaboration with another war criminal, Netanyahu, suddenly decided that after totally “obliterating” the entire nuclear capability of Iran a few months earlier, somehow it was only two weeks away from making a nuclear bomb, and that the only way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"{title}\n\n{excerpt}\n\n{url}","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13,56,11],"tags":[306,307,102],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-common-sense","category-legal-system","category-logic-and-reasoning","tag-casualties-of-war","tag-crime-and-punishment","tag-justice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":767,"href":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jaberborran.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}