ArabianDrums
Junior Member
To give the most nauseatingly fence-sitting answer I can muster: they're just different. Serial killing is generally a selfish act, certainly, and rarely will a serial killer believe good comes of their actions.
Meanwhile, a politicians motives are far harder to quantify. The kind of crass utilitarian calculation that makes people say 'politicians are worse' is nonsense. If your only criterion is that a politician caused more deaths, there are serious issues. Especially, for instance, with those who'll call someone like Bush a murderer while we have absolutely no idea how many might have died under Saddam Hussein in the last ten years, and also it's almost impossible to know what Bush believed the outcome of an invasion of Iraq would be. The consequences of a serial killers' actions are easy to calculate; it's virtually impossible for a politician, certainly beforehand, usually afterwards too...
Maybe that means the only logical policy is cynical realpolitik, as that way you at least hope to create at least some benefit for your own people, while assuming bad shit would happen to others whatever you do...
Perhaps the issue is that there must be a distinction between 'political killers' who authorise out-and-out murder (Hitler) and those who initiate wars, in which the variables are so great that they cannot be fully judged on the consequences either way, and to some extent intention must be considered in greater depth...
The whole matter is mind-bogglingly complex. To compare 'ordinary' murderers to political ones muddies the waters even further, when already comparing two politicians responsible for killings is nigh-on impossible, with people killing for so many different reasons: resources, or racial purity, or just to maintain power, or to prevent greater killing, etc...