Please consider the following hypothetical:
You are a powerful CEO in a dystopic society. Pressured by your shareholders and seeing a huge opportunity to make money, you travel to a remote rainforest and begin a mining operation of dubious legality.
You bring a few dozen workers with you, lots of industrial equipment, and a small company of mercenaries to act as security.
The indigenous tribes scout out your destruction of the forest from a distance; they realize you plan to raze their ancestral lands for profit. They then send a bunch of raiders led by an elite boy warrior calling himself Jungle Boy to dismantle and sabotage your operation.
Despite having technological advantage and more people on your side, Jungle Boy and his company use guerrilla warfare tactics and strategic raids to pick you off. Your mercenaries are eventually baited into a trap and defeated. You then find yourself surrounded by the returning angry tribesmen and their spears.
…
The tribal chief forces your people to rebuild and replant the forest without the use of modern equipment. You are horrified as you witness your people being forced to move fallen trunks around, digging out roots, and kneeling down in mud to reseed the earth amidst the horrors of the forest (bees, snakes, and other horrific things) and the rainstorms.
Your accountant attempts to start a revolution but it is quickly crushed by the tribesmen.
You are relieved that as the leader, you don’t have to do the horrific manual labor. However, Jungle Boy sits atop your shoulders and makes you carry him from place to place as he bosses your people around, basically using you as a living transport and making you witness the depths to which your people have fallen. There are tribal guards around at all the time but that’s not necessarily the point… you have become so traumatized, mentally subjugated and horrified that you don’t really dare to try and escape nor throw the little monster off.
After the entire forest is properly seeded, you and what’s left of your people are allowed to return to the Empire.
Some of your cohorts try to petition the Empire to avenge this great insult but the Emperor says he can’t be involved, though he’s “hands off.” The Emperor warns you very strictly that he doesn’t want any more Imperial citizens setting foot on that cursed soil.
At a business meeting, a business advisor suggest to you that you purchase a few Imperial bombers and use them to level specific targets on the rainforest. He tells you that he’s confirmed with the Empire and they don’t care so long as there are no “boots on the ground.”
However, other people tell you you should move on. Your business is in bad shape now and buying a few bombers and carrying out this op? It makes no economic sense. However, you haven’t necessarily gotten over what the tribe has done (even though technically speaking, you were the aggressor first).
Do you buy the bombers and try to take revenge?
Or do you let it go?
Please explain your reasoning.
While it would be tempting to use the bombers, I think overall I’m more of a practical person and I don’t see much utility in wasting money to do this sort of thing. Furthermore, I’m able to come to terms with what happened because technically, I was the aggressor in the first place. While there’s a human response to want to call the air strike, I think morally and legally it just doesn’t hold up.
