demimasque

Good Thing He Doesn’t Run the Show

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Oskar Lafontaine, a German politician of the Left, has weighed in on the definition of “terrorism”: Herr Lafontaine asserts that “terrorism is the killing of innocent people to achieve political objectives”. By this definition, certainly, the men who turned jetliners into weapons on September 11 are terrorists. Herr Lafontaine concedes this. But, by the same token, he argues that “Americans are also terrorists when they bomb cities and villages in Afghanistan (and) Iraq and kill tens-of-thousands of innocents.”

There is, of course, a consistency here, something different from blind anti-Americanism. It is a consistency born of a simple moral absolutism: All killing is wrong. Of course, it isn’t quite that simple. It is modified in that only the killing of innocents is to be considered terrorism. This means that any time collateral damage occurs, the actor who caused such damage is to be regarded a terrorist, regardless of the lengths taken to avoid it.

The refreshing thing about this, of course, is that it’s not quite moral relativism: It is moral equivalence. The only way to avoid ever becoming a terrorist, then, is for a state actor never to act at all. This is, essentially, a strict liability view of the world: It matters not what your intentions were; if some innocent somewhere dies, and the proximate cause is your action, you are automatically a terrorist.

Yes, it’s easy to ride the moral high horse when you’re not in charge. The fact that Herr Lafontaine has no real power whatsoever is a testament to the limits of such a position among even the cynical German electorate.

(Hat-tip: Davids Medienkritik)

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

The Failure of the ICC

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Some friends and I were exchanging notes, and we discused the possibility that Slobodan Milosevic’s death was part of a conspiracy. I don’t usually spring for conspiracy theories, but we did discuss that the International Criminal Court having a motive: Milosevic’s defense had made a mockery of the proceedings. My friend outlined some of the problems with the ICC:

  1. Jurisdiction/sovereignty: This is basically a question of who has power over the defendant. The Serbs insist that Milosevic was theirs to try, and even his bitterest opponents in that country are angry that he was removed to the Hague. The essence of the jurisdictional issue is that Under Yugoslav Federal law and Serbian law, which govern the person of Slobodan Milosevic, the man and the Head of State, there is no call whatsoever for the ICC to try him because the legal institutions exist inside the country to judge the former President, if and when a case is made against him, which to date has not been the case. Further, Serbia, at the time of his alleged crimes, did not recognize the ICC.

  2. Serbian Law: The ICC considers itself to be in the right, but under Serbian law, the decision to take Milosevic to the Hague for trial constitutes kidnapping, since it was not agreed upon by a majority of the Serbian cabinet ministers. Thus, even if the ICC has jurisdiction by Milosevic’s presence, it is only because he was forcibly brought before the court.

  3. Evidence: Simply put, there isn’t any. Of the over 2000 people initally slated to testify against Milosevic, all but 5 have refused, partially over the sovereignity dispute, and the testimony of those 5 is both weak and unreliable. There is no paper trail or any sort of documentation that links Milosevic to any of the alleged crimes. It’s literally Milosevic’s word against the prosecutors.

  4. Lack of a Jury: This is one of the United State’s major complaints, and Milosevic has hammered it. The ICC doesn’t have juries…it uses a three judge panel to reach decisions. This is inherently fraught with conflict of interest, because if the ICC “loses” such a high profile case it will be the laughingstock of the world, and will never approach legitimacy. But inherent in that conflict, no fair trial was really possible for Milosevic.

  5. Legality of the Court: This is a finer point of law, but was Milosevic’s main argument, which the court had no answer for. Milosevic claimed that the ICC had no legal basis to hear his (or any) international case. The judge interpreted that as a question of jurisdiction, but they are not the same thing. Jurisdiction concerns the power of the court over the defendant. I could set up the court of “plezercruz” in my back yard with Jon holding a gun as my bailiff, and, if you stumbled into my back yard, I could declare jurisdiction over you because I CAN force you to comply. But it certainly wouldn’t be “legal.” Jurisdiction is about power, not right.

    Legality concerns whether the court actually is an agent of law in the first place. Milosevic’s argument was, basically, that since the UN Security Council itself had no right or ability in law to sanction him personally, it was impossible for that same council to create a court to do that for them. Courts are agents of the sovereign, and the UN has no sovereignity by defintion. By his argument, the ICC had no more right to try him than I have of trying you in my backyard. This argument crippled the ICC. It had no answer for it.

    Milosevic asked the ICC to seek a ruling from the International Court of Justice (a non-criminal UN court which settles inter-sovereign disputes and is nonbinding) as to it’s own legality, but the ICC basically ignored his request, despite amicus briefs from all over the world urging them to do so, probably because the ICC likely has no legitimacy in law.

Overall, Slobodan Milosevich managed not only to derail his own prosecutors, but shook the basic foundation of the ICC itself. If not for Slobodan Milosevich’s glaring humiliation of the ICC, Saddam Hussein might have been sent to the ICC for judgment. Instead, the world has now seen that the ICC has deep internal legitimacy issues, and it is unlikely that any of Iraq’s ‘war criminals’ will be sent there.

From that perspective, indeed, there seems to have been a motivation to hasten Milosevic’s departure from the mortal realm.

(Hat-tip: plezercruz)

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

Ideological Warfare

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The Cold War has been over, or so we’re told, for over a dozen years now. Why then is it that our political discourse sometimes still sounds like Marx vs. Gladstone? Eric S. Raymond examines the history of ideological warfare, from its roots in the Cold War, to the modern manifestation in the seeming clash of civilizations between Islam and the West.

The essay does wax a bit … pretentious, if I may. But all the name-dropping (in terms of philosophers, writers, and memes) is exactly the sort that ivory tower types might be most excited by.

The essay also seems to adopt what Richard Hofstadter has called the “paranoid style”. Now, I’m not big on conspiracy theory or religion, which share some traits. Still, the temptation to adopt conspiracy theory is a basic human impulse, and in this vein, one could do worse than to read what Raymond has to say. You don’t have to agree with his conclusions, but what he states should be interesting, and a thought-provoking examination of the source of your beliefs.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

What Ivory Tower?

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The Ivy League has lost another one. Larry Summers has resigned.

Over his time at Harvard, Summers has brought the university back into public light, and tried to make the university more accessible. Unfortunately, he has made unfortunate comments such as this:

He offered three possible explanations, in declining order of importance, for the small number of women in high-level positions in science and engineering. The first was the reluctance or inability of women who have children to work 80-hour weeks.

The second point was that fewer girls than boys have top scores on science and math tests in late high school years. “I said no one really understands why this is, and it’s an area of ferment in social science,” Summers said in an interview Saturday. “Research in behavioral genetics is showing that things people previously attributed to socialization weren’t” due to socialization after all. This was the point that most angered some of the listeners, several of whom said Summers said that women do not have the same “innate ability” or “natural ability” as men in some fields.

Asked about this, Summers said, “It’s possible I made some reference to innate differences. . . I did say that you have to be careful in attributing things to socialization. . . That’s what we would prefer to believe, but these are things that need to be studied.”

Of course, at the bastion of liberal sensibilities that is Harvard, that comment did not go down well, as there’s no possibility that a white male could have any purpose in mind other than to degrade, denigrate, and disregard womyn. Right.

And now, the flickering light of sanity that Summers was trying to bring to the ivory towers of the Ivy League is to be extinguished. And Summers isn’t completely coy about his reasons:

Working closely with all parts of the Harvard community, and especially with our remarkable students, has been one of the great joys of my professional life. However, I have reluctantly concluded that the rifts between me and segments of the Arts and Sciences faculty make it infeasible for me to advance the agenda of renewal that I see as crucial to Harvard’s future. I believe, therefore, that it is best for the University to have new leadership.

(Hat-tip: Mad Minerva)

Look for the “liberals” now to proclaim that the hens have chased the fox out of their house. Of course, never having been out of the coop, it may be easy to mistake a guard dog for a fox.

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]

With Media Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

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Davids Medienkritik takes Der Spiegel to task for again pandering to the addiction to anti-American innuendo.

Torture in the name of freedom? Since when has America advocated torture as a means of promoting freedom? When someone is tortured or abused in a German jail in violation of established standards, does that mean the German government is torturing in the name of democracy as well? When illegal immigrants suffocate or commit suicide in German custody is that also in the name of democracy? It is as if the United States had never addressed the issue. It is as if the McCain bill torture ban had never been passed by Congress and signed by the President.

This is a dangerously cynical equation of two concepts. Particularly in a Europe where the general public is already so jaded that many no longer believe in the concept of freedom. Why? Because instead of reporting on the systematic violation of human rights in nations like North Korea and Iran the German media finds it necessary to exploit two year old photos of Abu Ghraib for profit (again and again). Never mind that Saddam’s Abu Ghraib was a thousand times worse or that hundreds of thousands are starving to death in Kim Jong Il’s gulags. There is no need for context in the world of asymmetric journalism.

I don’t doubt that torture is a blight on America’s good name, and it is a sin that needs to be rooted out. Many are of the opinion that torture is not, in fact, effective. (It must seem ironic to anti-Americans that John Yoo, who has written in support of the idea that the Constitution grants the executive expansive powers in times of war, happens to think that “answers extracted under torture might not be reliable” [answer to question 11] — but that won’t, of course, stop the demonization.) In fact, American policy appears to have gradually shifted away from reliance on torture. However, due to the slowness of the process of discovery, some of the worst abuses did not emerge until some time after they had been committed, and (hopefully) dealt with.

In the United States, one of the foremost critics of torture, who writes eloquently and usually does not fly off the handle, is Andrew Sullivan. Sadly, he is one of only a few who backs up his critiques by looking for facts to support his accusations. The rest, unfortunately, seem to regard torture less as reprehensible in itself, than as a vehicle by which to score political points against the current Administration. While Sully’s writings sometimes may seem to lean in that direction (and some have accused him of ulterior motives), they are nonetheless well thought-out, and do not get in the way of his desire to see the West triumphant. His aim primarily is to have the West win as cleanly as possible, and however idealistic, it is a worthy goal.

I regretfully observe, though, that it is far too easy for media outlets to capitalize on the market for sensationalist reporting. Not that Der Spiegel is really regarded as a font of serious writing (which does not mean that it’s never published thought-provoking material). In fact, I doubt Der Spiegel is any more highly regarded as a serious policy journal than, say, Vanity Fair or Rolling Stone.

But as Ray D. notes:

The irony of it all is that publications like SPIEGEL would not even have the freedom to print this exploitative trash had it not been for the massive sacrifice in lives, blood and toil of American soldiers to liberate Germany from Fascism and defend it from Communism.

No context. No differentiation. Shock value. Manipulation. Emotionalism. Sensationalism. And then the same publication dares lecture us on the dangers of anti-Americanism.

That’s legacy media for you right there. Well, it’s not Davids Medienkritik for nothing!

[Cross-posted at Between Worlds]