I've always liked Eisenhower's statement that "the problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without," which accords with what you said about ends and means. The ends are the means. The ends are always the means, and if it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it, then you did it wrong.
As far as World Peaceways goes, though there's fairly compelling evidence that the peace movement between the wars, and the huge rush to disarm after the "War to end all Wars" was extremely beneficial to Germany, because they were ignoring the Treaty of Versailles, and arming up while everyone else was arming down. Working for world peace only really works if everyone wants to play the game - and the trouble is, you're always going to have someone who doesn't want to play...
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2013-05-07 05:12 am (UTC)I've always liked Eisenhower's statement that "the problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without," which accords with what you said about ends and means. The ends are the means. The ends are always the means, and if it was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it, then you did it wrong.
As far as World Peaceways goes, though there's fairly compelling evidence that the peace movement between the wars, and the huge rush to disarm after the "War to end all Wars" was extremely beneficial to Germany, because they were ignoring the Treaty of Versailles, and arming up while everyone else was arming down. Working for world peace only really works if everyone wants to play the game - and the trouble is, you're always going to have someone who doesn't want to play...