It would be amusing to see conventionally-minded people, these New York Times kind of people, explain what is ethically wrong with the mafia. What is wrong with what they are doing? They are acting in the service of their own interests, regardless of who gets killed along the way. Is this not the credo of all civilization? To pursue the interests of the state for the benefit of the powerful people within that state? So what’s wrong with the mafia?
‘They break the law!’ by doing the same exact thing that the government is praised for. Calculating interests, then doing whatever needs to be done. Is there something intrinsically moral about when the state does it?
Either way, the mafia just does what we do. We should praise their victories and condemn their errors. Vietnams, Iraqs, those kinds of ‘failures’ that result in the deaths of millions of people and yet are nothing more than failures of strategy, not morality. Then we go cry about how immoral Vladimir Putin is.
In the mafia, we can condemn a botched murder job and praise a successful one.
When power serves us, it’s good. When it doesn’t, it’s bad. When we win, it was justified. When we lose, the problem is that we lost. The strategy of cold calculation, of evil, and of victory!