Let's look at an unstated major premise here: That it's imperative to achieve the result in question.
Given that the result is, among other things, to escalate the situation and increase civil unrest, it's hard for me to see your argument even that far. This is, at best, a smart way to achieve a stupid result.
That's assuming that that's what the government was looking to achieve in the first place. If they were hoping to calm things down and restore order, then it's just stupid through and through.
>> but lets for a moment think that we have a moment were we need to chase away a crowd of evil persons riotong and threatening to kill perfectly innocent children.
> Let's look at an unstated major premise here: That it's imperative to achieve the result in question.
I tried really hard to create the perfect hypothetical situation to discuss the correct use of force instead of discussing if the use of force is correct.
I failed pretty badly it seems and this time jnlike a number of other times I can't see why.
I think the problem there is that, in the process of trying to create a hypothetical that is unambiguous, you ended up accidentally creating one that is a straw man.
A better one that I can think of: Imagine a violent clash between protesters and counter-protesters. To me, that is potentially an appropriate use of tear gas, because things have escalated to the point where people are being harmed.
I think, though, that, what's interesting with both my and your hypothetical, and markedly distinct with what's been happening in the news lately, is that we are not talking about a simple face-off between protestors and police. Perhaps that's cultural DNA? I would guess that virtually every natural born citizen of the USA studied the Boston Massacre in history class, and is consequently at least somewhat aware that violent retaliation against civilians - even an angry mob - doesn't have a great track record of actually making things better.
Given that the result is, among other things, to escalate the situation and increase civil unrest, it's hard for me to see your argument even that far. This is, at best, a smart way to achieve a stupid result.
That's assuming that that's what the government was looking to achieve in the first place. If they were hoping to calm things down and restore order, then it's just stupid through and through.