More on Gandhi and a strange providence

[Zeno]

Today I received two books, a set really - New Fowler's Modern English Usage and Oxford Dictionary of Thematic Quotations. John Cole is no doubt envious but that is a side issue. By chance, perhaps, I opened the Quotations book for the first time and it fell to, on page 403, and the first quotation I read leaped off the page, so to speak. A strange coincidence given the recent thread about Gandhi. Here is the quote:

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? " Mahatma Gandhi: Non-Violence in Peace and War (1942)

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[Arnfinn Madsen]

A very good quote. Who has the right to put himself as judge to whom he can kill for a higher purpose? Does GWB carry any such moral mandate that also is valid outside US territory? Is he and his nation not driven by irrational fear and/or power hunger that makes his and his nation's judgement about these questions lousy? Should he and his nation maybe stop to pause a bit and listen to people/nations facing the same dilemma but with the courage to not fall into the moral decline driven by fear/power hunger?