Icebound wrote:

The damage done to a society, by the death of 20 at the hands of
terrorists, will be far less than the damage done to the same
society, by the death of a single innocent person at the hands of the
"law".

Just posing a different point of view:

What's the damage to society if law enforcement is too reluctant to
prosecute suspicious individuals in the interest of protecting every single
innocent life?

I tend to agree with your sentiment, just not to the degree you seem to want
to take it. Firm checks must be maintained on state power (primarily, IMO,
to protect individual rights), but probably *the* most important role of
government is to protect and defend society.

A balance must be struck between protecting society from those who wish it
harm and protecting individual rights within that society. Unfortunately,
there will be times law enforcement will stray to either side of that
equilibrium.

A democracy without trust in its
infrastructure is doomed to become something considerably less than a
civil democracy...fighting its own citizens, fighting its own
authorities, fighting outsiders, a state of perpetual paranoia.

Interesting. What happens when that democracy no longer trusts its
governmental institutions to protect them from valid threats?

Even if our Brazilian electrician was, in fact, a bomb-carrier, there
is no guarantee that his death would have "saved lives". There is no
way to know what forces would be set in motion amongst his allies,
friends, family, or even complete strangers... who may have viewed
this as his "martyrdom" and a call to even more militancy... there
is just no way to know whether the 20 lives saved here, may or may
not have turned into 120 otherwise-safe lives somewhere down the road.

Your point is valid. Now look at the other side of that. If law
enforcement now becomes more reluctant to pull the trigger on suspects, what
happens when they hesitate on the wrong suspect and they release another
chemical attack like the ones in Japan several years back? Or continue to
set off explosive attacks? How many innocent lives would be lost because of
the goal of law enforcement protecting every single innocent life?

Killing people on mere suspicion, however, makes our
democracy a sham.

I wouldn't go quite so far as to call it a "sham", but I agree with the
general sentiment. It's a judgement call to decide when the suspicion is
about to be confirmed in the most obvious way. "Do we shoot the suspicious
person before he's in position to do harm? Or do we wait until he pulls the
trigger to confirm our suspicions and clean up the mess?"

How to you prosecute a war where the enemy wears no uniform? Where he is
willing to sacrifice his life to achieve his tactical goal? Where he has no
apparent desire to discern miltary from civilian targets? Where there is
state sponsorship, but no state control?

I don't have the answers, but I'm working on them.

--
John T
http://tknowlogy.com/TknoFlyer
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