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Originally Posted by cookie_365
What does 'sub-human' mean?
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The man wanted to kill as many random humans as possible. He then went berserk and killed a police officer, also injuring several others. He clearly has a complete disregard for human life.
Does that clarify my meaning of "sub-human" for you? Similarly, I would describe Saddam and Hitler as being "sub-human".
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Originally Posted by cookie_365
If the only way of stopping him from murdering others would be to kill him, then I could accept the neccessity in that. But it clearly wasn't neccessary in this case.
Where it becomes tricky is what you might call 'non-defensive' but morally right wars.
E.g. : second world war; Hitler admired the British and would have settled for occupying Europe, and just leaving Britain be. So were we right to join the war to protect the millions facing genocide in mainland Europe? I'm pretty sure we were.
E.g.: Iraq; much less clear cut. There's little doubt that thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people will now not be murdered by Saddam as a result of the war. I think it was the right thing to do to protect them, even though 'we' weren't directly threatened by Saddam. Many people obviously disagree, but none of the people who I've spoken to who opposed the war seem to have had any alternative, other than to leg Saddam get on with doing what he was doing and presumably leave the people of Iraq to whatever fate he was going to hand out.
But back to Ricin man - it's plain as day that murdering him would be wrong.
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What does 'sub-human' mean?
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Cookie,
I agree with you on WWII and Iraq. However the two basic differences between Saddam and Hitler and ricin man were scale and success. He would have done exactly what they did, and more, given time and the right level of success (for want of a better word).