Whose morals?

Mine of course! If you’d like to borrow them for a while, I’m sure we could arrange something . . .

Seriously though, I don’t think there’s anything wrong my stating “The U.S. would have been morally justified”. It is a statement of my moral position, and that is surely something to which I’m entitled. In fact, I can even enforce my moral code onto other people if enough of the population agrees with me; that’s where we get laws in the first place. Certainly you’d probably agree with the statement: “The police are morally justified in arresting those people who rape five year old girls,” even though this is just your “subjective” moral opinion.

Morals is the ultimate subjective term

A statement with which I disagree profoundly, but as this is the way society has come to view morals I must at least agree to it for the sake of argument. Still, as I mentioned above, when a group of people in a democracy (or a strong single person in a less democratic society) feel a particular way about some moral issue, they generally get what they want. Generally this works well, but sometimes things don’t end up well for the minority. And after all, the minority isn’t “wrong”, just different- even those who feel there is nothing immoral about rape or murder.

if we say that our personal moral beliefs supercede laws, any society degenerates into anarchy.

Except that it is our personal moral beliefs that create the laws. Laws are ultimately the mixing and mashing of our morals together to some up with something we can all live with. The only problem is that sometimes there aren’t reasonable compromises, and that’s when things get ugly.

I value my moral code over the law and will obey it if the two are ever in conflict. What’s more is that I’m certain you probably feel the same way. If somehow a law got passed that all of our wives belonged to the president to do with as he pleased, I’ll bet more than a few would stand up against the “law” and fight back- violently if necessary. Yes that would be anarchy, but it’d also be the “right” thing to do.

To some zealots, their personal moral code says that flying into buildings or shooting abortion doctors is moral. I wonder how many dictators and despots were absolutely sure of the moralness of their cause?

Probably lots. But I believe some people’s moral codes are superior to others, so this doesn’t pose a large problem to me. This is where I throw up my hands and say "I can't argue the moral relative viewpoint in this case".