Saudi soldiers stormed aboard the hijacked russian aircraft at medina airport, and three civilians died. The storming aboard has been justified both by Arabia and Moscow.."with the objective to free the passengers with minimal loss of life". A russian stewardess and a turkish passenger died. I do not understand how one can say the loss of few lives is *better* than many lives. Can one quantify loss of life ? Sonehow the death of one person seems less of a loss than the death of 10 persons...what do you feel ?

-- Anonymous, March 16, 2001

Answers

I've not been following this story on the news -- was just aware of a picture of the airplane on front page the other day -- so I am not aware of the details of this particular situation. However, I would say that in general the loss of a few lives would be a better outcome than the loss of many lives... but I'd hate to have be the person who makes the explicit decision to storm the plane at a particular moment in time. (Please note that my concerns would be over the risk to the passengers and crew and to the troops storming the plane; taking the position that the deaths of all the hijackers would be preferable to any injury to an innocent person.)

-- Anonymous, March 19, 2001