By Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
I should have a right to destroy that which threatens me with destruction: for, by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred: and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the commonlaw of reason, have no other rule, but that of force and violence, and so may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures, that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.
~John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, Ch. III, (kudos to Bron)
On the night of February 13th, 773 RAF Avro Lancaster bombers swept in low and fast on the Saxony railway town of Dresden. It was early 1945, The Third Reich was collapsing and some 600,000 people had taken refuge in the city to avoid the Allied onslaught. The presumed target was the military complex on the outskirts of town known as the Albertstadt. Dresden, itself, was riddled with military garrisons intermingled among the civilian population. In two waves, the RAF dropped 650,000 incendiaries and 8,000 lbs of high explosives and hundreds of 4,000 pounds bombs on the city center, all with little to no resistance. The entire city was ablaze. RAF crews reported smoke rising to a height of 15,000 ft. Fires were seen 500 miles away from the target.
The next day, February 14, 1945, as Dresden was trying to cope with the crisis, 450 U.S. B-17 Flying Fortress long-range bombers assigned to the 1st Bombardment Division of the United States VIII Bomber Command arrived at 1230 local time. Guided by the fires, they discharged 771 tons of bombs.
The results on the ground were horrific with an estimated 25,000 killed. Survivor Lothar Metzger recalled:
We saw terrible things: cremated adults shrunk to the size of small children, pieces of arms and legs, dead people, whole families burnt to death, burning people ran to and fro, burnt coaches filled with civilian refugees, dead rescuers and soldiers, many were calling and looking for their children and families, and fire everywhere, everywhere fire, and all the time the hot wind of the firestorm threw people back into the burning houses they were trying to escape from.
I cannot forget these terrible details. I can never forget them.
Some estimates bring the number of those killed to 100,000. Nazi propagandists took the figure to 200,000. RAF recon noted that ” 23 percent of the industrial buildings, and 56 percent of the non-industrial buildings, not counting residential buildings, had been seriously damaged. Around 78,000 dwellings had been completely destroyed; 27,700 were uninhabitable, and 64,500 damaged, but readily repairable.”
The raid, ordered by Churchill, rendered such a blow to Western psyche that he distanced himself from the raid saying, “It seems to me that the moment has come when the question of the so-called ‘area-bombing’ of German cities should be reviewed from the point of view of our own interests. If we come into control of an entirely ruined land, there will be a great shortage of accommodation for ourselves and our allies… We must see to it that our attacks do no more harm to ourselves in the long run than they do to the enemy’s war effort.” Of mention, is no sense of the human cost to the enemy of the raid. Th emphasis seems to be purely egocentric: What kind of country will we have when this is all over?
However British Air Chief Marshal Arthur Harris was not so circumspect:
“Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier. The feeling, such as there is, over Dresden, could be easily explained by any psychiatrist. It is connected with German bands and Dresden shepherdesses. Actually Dresden was a mass of munitions works, an intact government centre, and a key transportation point to the East. It is now none of these things.”
“War is hell” seems to claim the Air Marshall, and strategic concerns take precedence over humanitarian ones in a war zone. Is he right, or are both he and Churchill “war criminals” to quote some of the more animated commentary on the blog? Neither were prosecuted or charged with war crimes for the Dresden raid.
Which brings us to David Drumm’s fine posting yesterday about a claim of double-tapping Drone strikes in Pakistan and elsewhere in support of the war against the terrorists. The evidence published by the 18-month-old Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) claims that 6 instances of double-tapping have occurred with rescuers being targeted with second strikes. A review of 5 of those sources (ABC’s article was not easily retrievable) reveals that one arguably involved an attack on civilians, one was unclear on the status of the rescuers, and three reported second attacks on militants and extremists.
In response to my query on this point, David correctly pointed out that the Obama Administration does consider fighting age men in the strike zone “militants.” That fact was disclosed in a long New York Times article:
It is also because Mr. Obama embraced a disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in. It in effect counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants, according to several administration officials, unless there is explicit intelligence posthumously proving them innocent.
Counterterrorism officials insist this approach is one of simple logic: people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good. “Al Qaeda is an insular, paranoid organization — innocent neighbors don’t hitchhike rides in the back of trucks headed for the border with guns and bombs,” said one official, who requested anonymity to speak about what is still a classified program.
But does six instances of secondary attacks obscured by the fog of war prove that the US has a policy of targeting innocent rescuers? Can it even be said that we are indifferent to the humanitarian concerns of rescuers even as we attack our enemies on their home turf?
From a legal perspective, targeting killing of persons who present an imminent threat to a country is permissible. Obama himself has insisted on such evidence before authorizing the strikes though there are trade-offs, according to the New York Times. The CIA’s man in the White House, John Brennan, a crusty Irishman who has spoken in defense of civil liberties and to close Guantanamo but who has faced withering criticism for his role in post 9/11 interrogations, explains Obama’s analysis:
The purpose of these actions is to mitigate threats to U.S. persons’ lives. It is the option of last recourse. So the president, and I think all of us here, don’t like the fact that people have to die. And so he wants to make sure that we go through a rigorous checklist: The infeasibility of capture, the certainty of the intelligence base, the imminence of the threat, all of these things.
Assassination of persons is generally regarded as murder although, by executive order, the US President may order the killing of foreign leaders who represent an imminent threat to the US.
Former U.S. District Judge (S.D. NY) Abraham Sofaer explains the difference:
When people call a targeted killing an “assassination,” they are attempting to preclude debate on the merits of the action. Assassination is widely defined as murder, and is for that reason prohibited in the United States…. U.S. officials may not kill people merely because their policies are seen as detrimental to our interests…. But killings in self-defense are no more “assassinations” in international affairs than they are murders when undertaken by our police forces against domestic killers. Targeted killings in self-defense have been authoritatively determined by the federal government to fall outside the assassination prohibition.
Likewise, Harold Hongju Koh, Legal Adviser US Department of State, defends the use of drones as ” part of “responsibility of US to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks.”
But what then about rescuers killed trying to aid militants?
Georgetown Law Professor Gary Solis, author The Law of Armed Conflict: International Humanitarian Law in War, and no friend of the US drone policy concedes that “Legal guilt does not always accompany innocent death.” In an example, published by Harper’s Magazine, Solis comments on a US helicopter attack on civilians rendering aid to combatants. “Can a van picking up wounded victims be fired upon? If the helicopter personnel reasonably associated the unmarked van with the presumed enemy personnel, yes. An “enemy” vehicle without red cross, red crescent, or white flag receives no special protection, even if wounded personnel are on board.”
Thus, even critics of the drone program conclude that trying to render humanitarian aid to injured militants affords no protection unless they are clearly visible as such. There is nothing in any of the articles cited by the BIJ indicating that rescuers were so denominated.
What then to make of the double-tap policy and the humanitarian toll. I see no proof that US drone masters are “targeting civilians.” Targeting implies intention and given the Administration’s definition of militants in a strike area it is unlikely that there is the intention to harm civilians rescuers where proof of such status exists. The Administration argues that its definition is based on its decade long experience with al-Qaeda. One certainly can argue with the definition of “militant” given its breadth, but does this definition make us any more culpable that acknowledged WWII heroes Winston Churchill or Air Chief Marshall Harris in arguing that our prime responsibility in war is to deny the enemy the ability to wage war against us even as civilians are maimed or killed?
What do you think?
Sources: linked throughout
~Mark Esposito, Guest Blogger
“Certainly al-Qaeda’s civil liberties are directly affected by the drone strikes, and it is true our civil liberties have been eroded, but I fail to see a cause and effect between the two topics.”
Erosion is an incremental process.
What can I say, MM?
I’m an egalitarian. When it comes to bullshit? I call it whenever and wherever I see it. From friend, from foe, big lies, little lies, the lies we tell each other, the lies we tell ourselves. All lies are based in fear, either yours or the fears of another. When you have disposed of fear, there is no power or purpose in lies. “The man who fears no truth has nothing to fear from lies.” – Thomas Jefferson. There is no freedom quite like the freedom from fear. It liberates in myriad ways. “I seek only the truth, by which no man was ever harmed.” – Marcus Aurelius. The truth sets you free. “Fear is the mindkiller.” – Frank Herbert. I prefer a life of free and critical thought. All else seems like a dreadful waste of time.
Nal:
“Shall we handicap ourselves with our civil liberties in the fight even as they recognize no such constraints?”
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I wonder how our civil liberties are affected by a second drone strike on a rescuer of militants who may or may not be a militant himself? Certainly al-Qaeda’s civil liberties are directly affected by the drone strikes, and it is true our civil liberties have been eroded, but I fail to see a cause and effect between the two topics. We’re not talking about depriving ourselves of civil liberties by the strikes but those of our enemies. I have no problem with that, at all.
I once had the great good fortune of attending a lecture given by the late Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. at the University of California, Irvine. The lecture coincided with recent news reports of the blitzkrieg devastation of the over-matched Iraqi Army by the United States (and a few attendant camp followers) during the First Gulf Battle in 1991. Mr Vonnegut told us of seeing television photographs of dirty, shell-shocked Iraqi conscript soldiers surrendering in droves with their hands placed dutifully on their own heads.
Then he put his own hands on his own head and remarked: “I looked just like those bedraggled Iraqi soldiers when the Germans overran us at the Battle of the Bulge.”
Mr Vonnegut told us of how he and his unit had arrived in Europe as hastily conscripted, barely trained replacements who suddenly found themselves battered senseless by an overwhelming military force against which they had no defenses. Military historians have called this one of America’s greatest military defeats, with somewhere on the order of 35,000 Americans killed and thousands more missing or taken prisoner. The American prisoners, including Private Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. soon found themselves marched to the city of Dresden where the Germans put them to world as labor on various city projects. When the British and American air forces fire-bombed Dresden, Private Vonnegut and a few of his fellow prisoners only survived because the Germans had placed them down into a slaughterhouse below ground. The experience later formed the basis of his novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
After relating all this to us, Mr Vonnegut made a few observations about the public cheering and gloating that he saw all around him as the nation celebrated our grand victory over a rather pathetic “enemy” who had not actually attacked or threatened the mighty United States. Then he stepped out from behind the podium, took a few steps forward, and silently placed his two hands on his own head.
One of the most memorable evenings of my life.
I always associate that lecture with the memory of Vietnamese peasants bringing their little kids to our remote river ATSB because we had a doctor who would remove the shrapnel from their faces, arms, legs, and bellies: shrapnel wounds that they had received from the random shelling of the
neighborhoodfree-fire-zone that we did every night because we considered anyone “moving around out there” in “a designated area” as “up to no good,” or something like that. So we just shot at an area in the night and if we actually hit anything, then that anything had it coming.Somehow, I can’t get the image of those bleeding Vietnamese peasant kids out of my mind any more than Kurt Vonnegut could get the images of capture and Dresden out of his. The experience of real war colors everything that survivors of it see, think, or feel for the rest of their lives.
And so it goes …
purport* Don’t know what purprot means 😉
I think what I object to most is the concept of saying that anyone associated with the targets of the drone strikes are automatically guilty by association. That’s simply not true. Many people don’t have the choice of who they support, unless they are willing to bite a bullet. Even fleeing into refugee camps is not always an option. Most people in rural areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan are so dependant on their lands to provide crops and livestock that mobility is simply beyond comprehension. They don’t have a choice of which particular group of nut jobs happen to be in charge. All military age men? To continue the Mexico comparison: A Mexican helicopter, following a group of human traffickers and drug smugglers, crosses into US territory in hot pursuit. They finally get a clear shot at the vehicle, and because they believe they won’t be captured on that side of the border, they open fire and destroy the vehicle, the criminals, the drugs, and the sex slaves they were transporting. Then a US border patrol agent happens on the scene and calls in support. Ambulances are in short supply in this remote area, so they call in aid from a nearby town, where generous civilians come to the aide of the disaster. The Mexican police see these people coming in, and because they must be guilty simply by rendering humanitarian aid to an enemy (by say, removing the traffickers human cargo from a burning vehicle) they open fire on the rescuers as well. The logic doesn’t add up that what we do is in any way moral. So you try and take away morality as a rational excuse for acting, but that simply can’t be done.
Saying that because we did something in WWII we can do it again is a horrible series of assumptions. We are, in essence, making moral arguments. Hobbes, in my opinion, was a great thinker and a horrible person. The problem with factoring out morals in war is that morals do exist independantly of pure rationale, be they the morals of a people in a democratic system, the morals of a dictator, or the morals of an enemy, the morals are there, and they have to be factored in to any equation regarding efficacy of any given policy. Simply saying that morals shouldn’t be factor in decision making is simply a self serving rationale from people who can’t square policy decisions with their own ethics code, or the ethics code they purprot to represent.
mespo727272, What has AlQaeda done to you or to U.S. lately? What is the cause of war that grants the right to “kill AlQaeda?” Who is on whose sovereign land?
Further, are you comfortable with Ehud Barak having declared a ‘war on terror’ before the U.S. president had finished reading My Pet Goat? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAueLjdKh1s
Are you comfortable with U.S. acting out the terror script that Benj. Netanyahu wrote in 1982? http://www.amazon.com/International-Terrorism-Challenge-Benjamin-Netanyahu/dp/0878558942/ref=sr_1_56?ie=UTF8&qid=1339382290&sr=8-56&keywords=netanyahu
M.M. But the ludicrous substitution of “war” for “law enforcement” only pours gasoline on a burning match and turns it into a conflagration.”
But law ‘enforcement’ and ‘investigation’ are difficult, complicated and lengthy processes.
So much easier to cheer a bomb dropping & exploding.
Shall we handicap ourselves with our civil liberties in the fight even as they recognize no such constraints?
Morality is not a handicap, it is a strength. We fight to preserve our sense of morality.
Mespo, I am waiting for someone to compare our drone strikes with what happened in Oradour-sur-Glaneon on June 10, 1944.
Otteray: It’s unfathomable what a sycophant to the amoralism of the jack boots of right wing militarism you’ve hereby proven to be.
What a disgusting parasite masquerading as a progressive intellectual.
It’s not for nothing you first cried for “proof” at the outset of this post and then when it was provided in spades you remained silent until you could find the courage to suck up the most repulsive right wing troll on this blog.
Your name is drenched in sewage forevermore on this blog and guys like Spindell & Esposito, guest bloggers who have blessed you with compliments in the past, drift further & further to the right of the honorable professor Turley, who I suspect will soon be dropping some guest bloggers over this crucial Constitutional issue.
One thing you regulars here can all bank on: no ethical Constitutional Lawyer whose written OP Eds in every publication he can, declaring that Obama is BY FAR THE WORST UNDERMINER OF CONSTITUTONAL LAW IN THE HISTORY OF THIS REBUBLIC would ever stoop so low as to cast a vote of confidence for such a scoundrel come this November.
No, no — he, like me & 80 million others will be abstaining, we WON’T vote, out of principle, come what may, because voting for “the lesser of two evils” is still voting for evil.
Fact is Turley’s personal politics are about 99% the same as Glenn Greenwald’s personal politics (if not 100%).
Greenwald is also a contitutional lawyer but being a Gay ex-pat living in Brazil doesn’t have the same constraints as a Professor of Constitutional law living in the belly of the beast.
Let me reiterate to the naive — Turley, if you asked him, would disagree with Greenwald about 1% of the time.
Now if you think that Greenwald wouldn’t rip to shreds in a debate the idiotic drivel backing Obama’s KIll Policy that Spindell & Esposito have so far proferred then you folks don’t know shit from from fat meat.
Heads Will Roll!
@Malisha – “The logical fallacy of the “Jews caused the Holocaust and then screamed about it” argument is this: How come Germany attacked all those OTHER European countries just because the Jews had attacked Germany? I don’t get it. Doesn’t seem fair.”
Before we talk about logical fallacies, get the words right: TalkingBacktoCSpan did not write “Jews caused the Holocaust and then screamed about it” but “Jews provoked a war.” That is a matter of fact. In 1933, zionist Palestine was nearing bankruptcy; only German Jews had wealth but German Jews did not wish to migrate to Palestine. In about mid-February 1933 Justice Louis Brandeis made it clear that “Jews must leave Germany;” by Mar 24, 1933 the first of a series of provocations of Germany was published, followed by numerous radio broadcasts, protest rallies, mock trials and other means of poisoning the diplomatic climate between U.S. and Germany, making a nonviolent resolution of situation unlikely.
But the main objective was achieved: German Jews and their wealth migrated to Palestine. By 1934, Erich Mendelsohn was designing hospitals, Hebrew University; by 1936 Mendelsohn was building Chaim Weizmann’s residence in Rehovoth and the Weizmann Institute nearby.
In 1938, while Mendelsohn was still on his building spree in Palestine and, in the midst of worldwide depression zionist Palestine was the most prosperous region in the world, Herbert Hoover spoke with Hitler and Goering. Hoover concluded that Germany’s government had three goals:
1. Ensure that Germans never starve again as they had 1915-1919, by controlling agricultural land in East Europe — out of range of British & US navies;
2. Redress the injustices of Versailles;
3. Destroy Russian Bolshevism.
Hoover as well as Chamberlain, were firmly convinced that Germany had no designs whatsoever on Western Europe or Gr. Britain; they thought it highly inadvisable for those nations to provoke war w/ Germany, and also believed Germany and Russia shd be left to duke it out — “annihilate each other” — resolving their conflicts, sparing W. Europe bloodshed & bankruptcy; guaranteeing a century of peace. Instead, Churchill & FDR ensured the demise of the British empire and 3/4 of a century and counting of hot war/cold war/’terror war.’
OS:
Thanks for seeing my point. Many here believe anything we do in our defense is simply wrong because death will occur. There is no equivalency in magnitude or otherwise between 250 civilian drone deaths and the unimaginable suffering in Dresden, yet many here are ready to paint us as the bad actor both then and now. The contrast is that so few Americans held any such similar views after Dresden.Granted we’ve been through plenty since then to damage our image of our leaders, but must we conclude that in any dispute that we are wrong and that we have to prove our innocence. Talk about self-loathing.
There have been too damn many false equivalence arguments in this thread. When we compare acts of US and Allied troops in WW-II, does anyone actually think they compared to these acts? Really?
http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/massacres_pacific.html
Anyone online here ever visit Oradour-sur-Glane?
Michael Murry:
“when he tried comparing a bungled quagmire misadventure like Afghanistan with World War II instead of Vietnam, clearly missing the relevant analogies by so far as to invite — let us charitably say — incredulity.”
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Though I do enjoy correcting your many factual errors, I’m getting tired of all the fun. We were talking about Pakistan and WW2 not Afghanistan, but please continue I enjoy hearing how my country is a “rogue and outlaw” nation from an off-shore “patriot” with an ax to grind.
Bob,Esq:
“Like I said before Mark, there’s a medical definition for the type of person you sound like.”
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Don’t know about that, but I’m proud to be your obsession.
DonS:
i suppose I’m having quite a bit of trouble according anything approaching sympathy to Al-Qaeda and if the drones destroy them, you’ll hear no criticism from me. I subscribe to the classic view that terrorists are the common enemy of mankind and are due no considerations. That goes for their duped aiders and abettors who detest our country. Michael Murry above seems to fill that bill as he calls us a “failed, rogue, and outlaw nation.” Really? For defending ourselves from a common enemy?
I think the classic thinkers had it right. As Cicero put it in the context of the terrorists of his day (pirates)::
Even belligerents have rights, and an oath is often to be kept sacred with an enemy. For what was so sworn that the mind of him who took the oath at the time confessed the obligation, ought to be fulfilled; what was not so sworn may be left unfulfilled without perjury.Thus you would not pay pirates a price that you had agreed to pay for your life; it is no wrong if you fail to do this after having promised with an oath. For a pirate is not included in the list of belligerents, but is the common enemy of all. Between him and other men there ought to be neither mutual confidence nor binding oath.
So perhaps I am a “fledgling” as our America-bashing Mr. Murry might say but I have pretty good mentors from the past.
Mesposer: “Whose morality? Ours or theirs? They feel quite certain they are following the express will of Allah and that they will be handsomely rewarded for it. Since there is no recognized authority to settle the question (i.e. no law) we fight. Shall we handicap ourselves with our morality in the fight even as they recognize no such constraints? See Hobbes, above.”
Mark,
“Whose morality?” How about “Whose law” while your at it? After all, how do you predicate that which you’ve argued doesn’t exist?
Let’s review just how far you’ve ventured off the reservation:
In furtherance of your authoritarian agenda, under the guise of some sort of liberal, you have argued for the complete disregard for law and morals in support of tyrannical policies and what’s more, with your grandiose sense of self assuring others you know what’s right for them, you demand it be admired as a form of patriotism.
You claim that American citizens merely accused of treason are not entitled to due process and may be summarily assassinated.
You claim that the constitutional doctrine of specifically enumerated powers is meaningless in light of your ‘ends justifying the means’ logic supporting the exercise of tyrannical power by the executive.
You claim that the survival of the nation is perpetually in question and have no shame in comparing your war on terror to actual declared wars of the past; e.g. quoting Lincoln in the context of the Civil War to justify dismantling the constitution.
You shamelessly justify the exercise of power beyond right which no one has a right to by appealing to fear and exploiting tragedy; e.g. invoking 9/11 as your bottomless justification bucket for decimating civil liberties.
When you’re not completely disregarding law you’re arguing that morality shall be disregarded as well by appealing to the philosophy of Machiavelli etc.
That you have no shame in questioning the patriotism of those who disagree with you is truly disturbing since in your unfettered support of policies that attack our constitution, our civil liberties and morality itself have consistently demonstrated that you do not believe in freedom, morality or the rule of law. The only unifying principle you exhibit is a desire for total control.
Like I said before Mark, there’s a medical definition for the type of person you sound like.
. . . thing is, even giving all latitude to a Hobbesian approach to waging this “war on terror”, our drone policy does not, on several fronts, seem to be our best way to ‘survival’, if he fears about blowback and worldwide alienation of affections towards US behavior is even moderately correct.
First off, I wish to extend my congratulations to Gene H for not swallowing the phony “war” premise that makes any conversation about America’s often enunciated foreign policy — i.e., Full Spectrum Dominance — moot from the beginning. No state of war exists between the United States and any other nation and therefore we can dismiss out of hand any claims that a “state of war” justifies this or that military tactic — especially since the American government has not announced an identifiable political goal that the use of such tactics might conceivably advance or achieve in any time frame which America could possibly underwrite: financially, politically, socially, or otherwise.
Second, Gene deserves Kudos for taking a bogus pseudo-argument and demonstrating its absurdity by substituting into it equivalent terms — like “Mexico” for “the United States” and “Arizona” for “Afghanistan.” That the logical conclusion outrages American nationalists who wish to consider themselves and America “exceptional” clearly demonstrates the speciousness of their pseudo-argument, since when turned upon themselves they refuse to accept the same train of “reasoning” that they the expect others to swallow when applied to nations other than the United States. The very notion of Law connotes universal applicability. The United States maintains that Law applies to every other nation but not to itself. Other sovereign nations will simply not accept this.
America has therefore, prima facie, become — through its own arrogant choices and not necessity — a failed, rogue, and outlaw nation, not for the first time. We came to our senses forty years ago and snapped out of the messianic megalomania that had nearly destroyed our country. Whether we can snap out of it again remains very much an open question. Crime prevention and prosecution will go on as long as people commit crimes — as Timothy McVeigh and nineteen suicidal Saudi Arabians did, each in their turn. But the ludicrous substitution of “war” for “law enforcement” only pours gasoline on a burning match and turns it into a conflagration.
Others have contested Gene’s two principle points, but not successfully in my view. I’ll address some of this attempted opposition when time permits. Here I only wanted to add my bit of support to what Gene has written. In doing this, however, I do not wish to cast aspersions upon Mark Esposito and his thread-opening essay. He seems to me like a fledgling lawyer in the Department of Justice who has drawn Devil’s Advocate duty and has to advance and defend his employers’ bankrupt policy — one disintegrating daily around him. One simply cannot do a wrong thing the right way, and Mark failed utterly, from the very start, when he tried comparing a bungled quagmire misadventure like Afghanistan with World War II instead of Vietnam, clearly missing the relevant analogies by so far as to invite — let us charitably say — incredulity.
Otherwise, a pretty good discussion about who should have more effectively arranged — and who should go on arranging indefinitely — the scattered deck chairs on the sloping deck of the sinking Titanic.
@mespo: “They feel quite certain they are following the express will of Allah and that they will be handsomely rewarded for it. Since there is no recognized authority to settle the question (i.e. no law) we fight. Shall we handicap ourselves with our morality in the fight even as they recognize no such constraints? See Hobbes, above.”
I’m flabbergasted. A more thoroughly “we’re right – they’re wrong” statement would be hard to imagine. It’s at times like this I feel like I’m on a different planet. And it’s without specific criticism of mespo, but, it’s also hard to imagine a more stark philosophical/practical dichotomy.
Tell me we are dealing in a realm of forms and disembodied ideas, because this sort of simplistic reductionism doesn’t seem to bear much relation to a world where gray is the most prevalent color. Except within, definitely, the “American exceptionalism” framework.