In your reply to me you made reference to an earlier post of yours. You have made a terrible mistake there and in it have wrecked your premises. So I'll deal with that first. Both of your posts are copied at the end.
You write in your previous posting, Message 19166087
,
Communities make laws and live by them. Individuals live within the confines of community.
....All that applies to the individual applies to the United States in the world community.
You equate the relation of the US citizen to his government with the relation of the US nation state to a "community of states." This parallel is specious. The US individual lives in a community in which the government has the power of coercion to enforce law. Law is meaningless without the power to enforce it. Furthermore, his elected representatives are the government, and enacted the laws which are ultimately enforced by coercion. (His appointed agent, a policeman, has the legally granted power to shoot a fleeing criminal). Also, the US citizen's relation with his community is constitutional, with divisions of power and safeguards to ensure both the government and other individuals cannot take his liberty, torture him, confiscate his property, etc.
Here is where you go wrong:
There is no world government, with which the United States or any other country, or with which individual citizens, have a similar relationship.
On the contrary, relations between countries, generally, are only slightly more refined - by a history of contracts, treaties and diplomacy - than those of Afghan warlords. (Modern countries, not surprisingly, have more equable relations with each other than they have with unmodern countries, and unmodern countries have generally more hostile relations with everybody). And there is no extra-country body with citizens have a relation analogous to that US citizens have to their government.
In the absence of international "government" it falls to those of sufficient goodwill and power to intervene in situations of vast tyranny and humanitarian crime. It's capricious. You may not like this, but that's the situation.
In your present post you say,
but the United States has no moral authority to unilaterally force its will on people outside the United States -- to dispose of them as the United States sees fit.
Moral authority is derived from the justness of the action: In this case, deposing a tyrannical, genocidal regime and replacing it with something better. It's argued that motives count but I say the paycheque is the action (argue with that at your peril). It can be plausibly argued the means might affect the moral authority - "the operation was a success but the patient died" - but in this case you haven't done that in a satisfactory manner. The patient is recovering: Iraq is in far better shape than it was before the US invasion.
What you have highlighted is the poor quality of argument against putting down a horrible tyranny. Let's look again at the parallel you make between the relation of citizen to US government and national governments to...what, exactly? In the US, if a citizen sees a terrible injustice against individuals which breaks the law, even if most folk in the community condone it, he can go to court despite their opposition, and get the situation changed and the US government will enforce the change.
No such mechanism or law exists internationally. Following your parallel, what might be done in this case is like putting together a posse in the Wild West without even a federal marshall or Texas ranger or judge. What if the community doesn't want to take the murderer or rapist out of circulation? This doesn't change in the slightest the moral and practical requirement to do so.
Do you see my dissatisfaction with your assertion?
By invading Iraq, we traded international justice for the law of the gun
You are wrong. No such trade was done. There is no international law or justice which adequately deals with tyranny or genocide. In fact, there is practically no international law on the subject. The reason is straight forward: until about a hundred years ago modern countries weren't interested in doing anything about it because they were still sorting out government by people, not rulers.
Law, even enacted law, is created by activity and custom and later codified in law taking them into account. It is an iterative process. In other words, precedent matters enormously especially where there is little formal law, and there are very few precedents with regard to countries invading others for the purpose of replacing tyrannical, genocidal regimes.
Right now, the US is not breaking law; it is making it. The Vietnamese had similar problems as the US in putting down the PolPot regime: their disinterest was not pure; the Cambodians were traditional enemies; their neighbours, allies, and enemies were against it; disengagement was difficult; etc. Nonetheless, the Vietnamese managed it and added to the international law on the subject.
What the Vietnamese did, and what the US is doing, is breaking the international custom which protects tyrannical, genocidal rulers from from replacement or punishment. And, in doing so are changing that custom and contributing to the international law on the subject in a way the (eg) Belgians can never do because they could act and did act.
There is no international law as you conceive it here.
I want to go back to this point of yours:
but the United States has no moral authority to unilaterally force its will on people outside the United States -- to dispose of them as the United States sees fit
The US is not 'disposing of them as it sees fit.' It's obeying it's own laws and staying within the confines of the Geneva Conventions for the treatment of citizens of occupied countries. That is its policy and although I'm sure there are individual incidents of illegality and contravention, overall, the US is pretty good that way. This will also contribute to the international law on the subject.
I am amazed it is still acceptable in modern countries after the 20th Century wars, in which they defeated the unmodern and genocidal rulers, to say modernity, democracy and human rights are OK for us, but tyranny and genocide are OK for Ruritanians and Iraqis. I know a lot of people say it, or avoid the topic, but that is morally wrong in a way stretching beyond mere hypocrisy and is far closer to cooperating with evil, especially if they or their country benefit from the existence of such a regime.
The moral authority is all on the side of the US and its allies.
And we are paying the price for that arrogance -- not only in our blood and the blood of others, not only in dollars, but just as importantly in terms of the respect for our "values". The United States was once a large country in the eyes of the world -- a country with moral authority
The US is admired for its system of government, the freedom and prosperity of its citizens, and yes, it's power and moral authority. Many citizens of Iraq pleaded with the US to intervene in the ghastly state of affairs there - they prayed for deliverance from the terror. What the US has uncovered there for the eyes of of the world to see, especially those in the Middle East - and it has already led to greater respect in some of the commentary from there - and in its earnest efforts to replace the Hussein regime with something better, leads, and will lead, to even greater respect. Iraqis are aware the US has moral authority, not because of its power but for what it did on their behalf. This awareness will become even greater as it becomes clearer to them the US doesn't intend to steal their oil or colonize them.
Small wonder that people around the world are asking themselves if we are the greatest threat to peace on earth.
The objection seems to be that the US displaced a tyrannical, genocidal dictatorship and this is wrong because the US, the most powerful country, did it.
They'll get over it because they'll eventually see it was the right thing to do morally and other ways. Probably won't admit it though, because so many places it's a lot safer to complain about the US than your own government.
GST's previous post :
Our war on Iraq is immoral and illegal. One person -- an individual person -- applying their own morality and acting so as to take the law into their own hands and kill a man, cannot define what is right and wrong for the community and cannot act with sanction from the community. Communities make laws and live by them. Individuals live within the confines of community. In the United States, you cannot kill a man in cold blood and then claim that it was ok because the man you killed was a child molester, or a murderer, or a rapist. You could kill the man only in self-defense. Only the community has the moral authority to arrest the man, try him in a court of law and execute him if the law allows, but you, as a citizen, cannot summarily judge and kill the man on the street -- that would be illegal and immoral -- that would be murder no matter what crime the dead man committed.
All that applies to the individual applies to the United States in the world community. We are not the law. We are an individual state in a community of states, and all that applies to the individual also applies to the individual state. What we are doing in Iraq is immoral and illegal. It would have been immoral and illegal even if we found WMD.
GST's present post:
The United States can lend its support to improving the system by which international law is defined and conducted, but the United States has no moral authority to unilaterally force its will on people outside the United States -- to dispose of them as the United States sees fit. The United States today only has the power of the gun. We are not better than others, we are just better-armed. By invading Iraq, we traded international justice for the law of the gun -- whoever can kill most effectively is the ruler of this world. And we are paying the price for that arrogance -- not only in our blood and the blood of others, not only in dollars, but just as importantly in terms of the respect for our "values". The United States was once a large country in the eyes of the world -- a country with moral authority. Now the United States is a very small country, a morally weak but well-armed country. Small wonder that people around the world are asking themselves if we are the greatest threat to peace on eart |
