Ticomaya wrote:DrewDad wrote:That the direct cause is the actions of the insurgents does not remove Bush & Co.'s responsibility for being the indirect cause.
What is it in law? Proximate cause and contributing factors?
In the law, the proximate cause analysis ends when there is an intervening act to break the chain. In this case, that is the action of the insurgents who decided to bomb the hospital. If Bush did something that set of a natural and continuous chain of events that culminated in the bombing of the hospital, you could legitimately claim Bush was the proximate cause of the bombing. Hoever, in this case there is an intervening action -- that of the terrorists/insurgents -- that is the proximate cause of the event.
In this Tico has provided the most cogent of arguments on this thread and yet no one has attempted to respond to it with any real vigor.
Of course the invasion of Iraq did not inexorably lead to insurgents bombing hospitals, hotels and mosques. The insurgents have, in no way, been left with violence as their only possible response to the American occupation.
The Baathist insurgents have simply substituted one means of slaughtering innocents for another.
The jihadists have simply focused their killing ways in Iraq.
A difference between today's Iraq and the Iraq of Saddam is that in today's Iraq the killings are trumpeted by the world's news media, while in Saddam's Iraq, the killings were largely ignored.
Another difference is that in today's Iraq there is a foreseeable end to the killings while in Saddam's Iraq there was not.
