crackerjack
Well-known member
Well I'm sure if there'd been a candidate... this logic reminds me of people planning to vote Tory cos of the Iraq war.
No Future for the GOP?
- Thread starter vimothy
- Start date
Well I'm sure if there'd been a candidate... this logic reminds me of people planning to vote Tory cos of the Iraq war.
scottdisco
rip this joint please
i must say just IMO (and i'm not moralising in the following post in the bit where i mention drones, just observing very baldly) this development for me does not place Obama below Dubya in any sort of ethical league table at all.
of course as we all know Obama uses drones etc.
as Dubya did.
i suspect one's gut reaction to it may clearly in some cases be determined at least partly by if you are, or are not, American.
to be blunt.
i can't believe almost i'm about to say this, as it's virtually Godwins Law, and i am of course not exactly saying the totalising WWII struggle is the WoT, admittedly, but London happily executed William Joyce after WWII hostilities had ceased, for treason.
of course as we all know Obama uses drones etc.
as Dubya did.
i suspect one's gut reaction to it may clearly in some cases be determined at least partly by if you are, or are not, American.
to be blunt.
i can't believe almost i'm about to say this, as it's virtually Godwins Law, and i am of course not exactly saying the totalising WWII struggle is the WoT, admittedly, but London happily executed William Joyce after WWII hostilities had ceased, for treason.
oh don't get me wrong, I'm in no way endorsing voting for the Republicans because Barack Obama has (quite incredibly) been able to make them the lesser of two evils on this issue. I have no doubt that, if returned to power, they will easily be able to regain the lead in evilness.
I'm what they call a "naderite" aka a sane person who has principles and a basic understanding of high school level civics.
I'm what they call a "naderite" aka a sane person who has principles and a basic understanding of high school level civics.
scottdisco
rip this joint please
do you get grief off Dems for 'costing us 2000'? i here assume you vote Nader, clearly.
(which i believe may be a myth, tbf, re the vote in 2000, but you'll permit me to ask you nonetheless
)crackerjack
Well-known member
sorry, didn't mean to imply you were - i was just drawing parallels between saying x is worse than y for doing something both would've done had they been in the chair at the time
IMO there were 2 causes of 2000:
1) The DLC/New Democrats completely destroying the Democratic base (this is the most important)
2) Bush v. Gore, the worst Supreme Court decision ever. I guess I should also lump in the voting irregularities as well
I actually loathe Nader on a personal level and think that he is a pretty terrible candidate, but you can't blame him for 2000. People only voted for Nader as a last resort because they were driven out of the Democratic Party by the DLC. The problem wasn't Nader it was the Democratic Party. The proof is that they managed to lose 2004 as well.
IMO, the reversal in the Dems fortunes in the last few years is almost entirely due to Howard Dean. The problem is that the DLC and Rahm hate him, so they had him smeared while Rahm took credit for Dean's hard work. Dean laid the foundation for 2006 and 2008 but then got stabbed in the back by the corporate DLCers.
To me, the biggest villains in Washington are Al From, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.
edit: just realized that's mostly off-topic. to get back to your question: No I haven't really got much stress for being a "naderite" as most of my friends are either apolitical or somewhere similar on the spectrum, and I'm not that overtly political in real life. Even online it's only really poorly informed people that I would tend to avoid who blame 2000 on Nader supporters. Anyone who was actually paying attention to politics in the 1990s should realize how silly that is.
1) The DLC/New Democrats completely destroying the Democratic base (this is the most important)
2) Bush v. Gore, the worst Supreme Court decision ever. I guess I should also lump in the voting irregularities as well
I actually loathe Nader on a personal level and think that he is a pretty terrible candidate, but you can't blame him for 2000. People only voted for Nader as a last resort because they were driven out of the Democratic Party by the DLC. The problem wasn't Nader it was the Democratic Party. The proof is that they managed to lose 2004 as well.
IMO, the reversal in the Dems fortunes in the last few years is almost entirely due to Howard Dean. The problem is that the DLC and Rahm hate him, so they had him smeared while Rahm took credit for Dean's hard work. Dean laid the foundation for 2006 and 2008 but then got stabbed in the back by the corporate DLCers.
To me, the biggest villains in Washington are Al From, Rahm Emanuel, Bill Clinton, Robert Rubin and Larry Summers.
edit: just realized that's mostly off-topic. to get back to your question: No I haven't really got much stress for being a "naderite" as most of my friends are either apolitical or somewhere similar on the spectrum, and I'm not that overtly political in real life. Even online it's only really poorly informed people that I would tend to avoid who blame 2000 on Nader supporters. Anyone who was actually paying attention to politics in the 1990s should realize how silly that is.
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vimothy
yurp
More stuff at Opinio Juris: http://opiniojuris.org/2010/02/06/are-obamas-assassinations-of-us-citizens-constitutional/
Howard Gilbert makes a good point in the comments, that targeted killing / assassination is in some sense and maybe perversely the utopian culmination of the act of war--I mean in contradistinction to, say, strategic bombing.
Howard Gilbert makes a good point in the comments, that targeted killing / assassination is in some sense and maybe perversely the utopian culmination of the act of war--I mean in contradistinction to, say, strategic bombing.
vimothy
yurp
One more from Ku on what Jack Goldsmith calls the "Cheney fallacy":
http://opiniojuris.org/2010/03/27/if-koh-says-it-it-must-be-true-the-us-is-at-war-with-al-qaeda/
Comments also good.
The full text of U.S. State Department Legal Adviser Harold Koh’s speech at ASIL can be found here. Ken has already praised it, Kevin (along with Marko Milanovic) have rejected it, and others are staying neutral or reserving judgment.
Here is what I took away from the speech: The Obama Administration has now embraced the Bush Administration’s position that the U.S. is engaged in an armed conflict with “a nonstate actor, Al Qaeda (as well as the Taliban forces that harbored al Qaeda).” The rest of the legal analysis flows from this basic commitment. Hence, military detention during the conflict is permitted (it turns out, Guantanamo, and even Bagram, are perfectly legal). Targeted killings outside of Afghanistan and Iraq are also legal. Military commissions are an option for Al Qaeda detainees (but not required, of course).
In other words, the basic legal framework of the Bush Administration’s “war on terrorism” has been adopted and maintained by the Obama Administration. Of course, we all knew that, but it is nice to hear someone like Koh confirm this publicly. Ed Whelan and Liz Cheney, you can stop worrying now!
Here is what I took away from the speech: The Obama Administration has now embraced the Bush Administration’s position that the U.S. is engaged in an armed conflict with “a nonstate actor, Al Qaeda (as well as the Taliban forces that harbored al Qaeda).” The rest of the legal analysis flows from this basic commitment. Hence, military detention during the conflict is permitted (it turns out, Guantanamo, and even Bagram, are perfectly legal). Targeted killings outside of Afghanistan and Iraq are also legal. Military commissions are an option for Al Qaeda detainees (but not required, of course).
In other words, the basic legal framework of the Bush Administration’s “war on terrorism” has been adopted and maintained by the Obama Administration. Of course, we all knew that, but it is nice to hear someone like Koh confirm this publicly. Ed Whelan and Liz Cheney, you can stop worrying now!
http://opiniojuris.org/2010/03/27/if-koh-says-it-it-must-be-true-the-us-is-at-war-with-al-qaeda/
Comments also good.
vimothy
yurp
Yet more from OJ, this time Heller weighs in: http://opiniojuris.org/2010/04/08/lets-call-killing-al-awlaki-what-it-is-murder/
yep.
The really crazy thing about this is how flimsy the evidence is. You'd think that they would at least pick someone who is clearly guilty of say shooting an American soldier or something like that if they were trying to ram this through. Even that wouldn't make it right or less of an affront to the rule of law, the constitution and basically everything that liberalism stands for.
Who cares about the rule of law or due process? It's not like they are cherished American values or anything. Forget Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Today the hero would be in the mob trying to kill the black man before his trial. Welcome to Jack Bauer America.
I'm just amazed that this isn't on the front page of every paper. So much for the "liberal" media. It's pretty amazing that the members of Obama's cult of personality are willing to accept this. It gives me a new understanding of how monarchy was able to persist for so long.
The really crazy thing about this is how flimsy the evidence is. You'd think that they would at least pick someone who is clearly guilty of say shooting an American soldier or something like that if they were trying to ram this through. Even that wouldn't make it right or less of an affront to the rule of law, the constitution and basically everything that liberalism stands for.
Who cares about the rule of law or due process? It's not like they are cherished American values or anything. Forget Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Today the hero would be in the mob trying to kill the black man before his trial. Welcome to Jack Bauer America.
I'm just amazed that this isn't on the front page of every paper. So much for the "liberal" media. It's pretty amazing that the members of Obama's cult of personality are willing to accept this. It gives me a new understanding of how monarchy was able to persist for so long.
vimothy
yurp
We agree about the double standards. And I agree that you can argue any point in law, but there are obviously some points which are unsupportable. I mean, to be a bit ridiculous (Godwin's law!), you just can't go around commtting genocide and declaring it legal. I've just not got a good handle on this yet. Probably no surprise given that I'm neither a practioner nor a scholar of international or constitutional law, but there we go...
well, they actually do even argue about that in the context of natural law vs. positive law theory. The classic example is of someone who collaborated with the Nazis in Germany in a way that was legal according to German law at the time. Can you convict them of crimes after the fact, even though they were obeying all of the laws in their country?
I tend to side with the strict positivists like Kelsen or HLA Hart and say "no" and acknowledge that it is the price we pay for the rule of law, which on balance, as a policy, is more desirable than leaving things up to after-the-fact moral judgements. Natural law is tempting in such situations, but it can just as easily turn into cover for people like Carl Schmitt.
I tend to side with the strict positivists like Kelsen or HLA Hart and say "no" and acknowledge that it is the price we pay for the rule of law, which on balance, as a policy, is more desirable than leaving things up to after-the-fact moral judgements. Natural law is tempting in such situations, but it can just as easily turn into cover for people like Carl Schmitt.
vimothy
yurp
Ha, yeah, well I'm not totally down with natural law either. Not that I sleep on William Blackstone but I think that the law needs to evolve. It's a means to an end not an end in itself.
So this is a complicated issue. Strategic, moral and political judgements should inform legal opinions.
So this is a complicated issue. Strategic, moral and political judgements should inform legal opinions.
Are you referring to a Robert Cover sort of approach?
I'm against any form of political decision-making from the bench. I guess there's always going to be interpretive issues, but the interpretive scope should be as narrow as possible, with judges kept on a short leash. If there's a problem with a law, then legislate a change to it, don't obfuscate it.
I think the problem is that the legal profession wants it both ways, they want to be some sort of self-styled 'guardians of justice' but also have a rule based system. I think that they should be narrowly concerned with applying rules, and should shelve their sub-par undergrad philosophy when they get on the bench. Some of these decisions are just embarrassing (Scalia I'm looking at you). The language is never as unclear as they try to make it out to be. It's just willful obfuscation in the service of political agendas.
Everyone loves it when it's their side that gets the benefit of a bad legal decision (Roe v. Wade) but when the tables are turned they start screaming bloody murder (Obama calling out the Supreme Court during his address). You can't have it both ways. Both of those decisions were bad and should not have been made by the courts. They should have been legislated.
I'm against any form of political decision-making from the bench. I guess there's always going to be interpretive issues, but the interpretive scope should be as narrow as possible, with judges kept on a short leash. If there's a problem with a law, then legislate a change to it, don't obfuscate it.
I think the problem is that the legal profession wants it both ways, they want to be some sort of self-styled 'guardians of justice' but also have a rule based system. I think that they should be narrowly concerned with applying rules, and should shelve their sub-par undergrad philosophy when they get on the bench. Some of these decisions are just embarrassing (Scalia I'm looking at you). The language is never as unclear as they try to make it out to be. It's just willful obfuscation in the service of political agendas.
Everyone loves it when it's their side that gets the benefit of a bad legal decision (Roe v. Wade) but when the tables are turned they start screaming bloody murder (Obama calling out the Supreme Court during his address). You can't have it both ways. Both of those decisions were bad and should not have been made by the courts. They should have been legislated.
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
I'm certainly not an advocate of freewheeling assassination by the state, but the issue does get murky remarkably quickly. are things like the Phoenix Program, McChrystal's JSOC command, the drone campaign, legitimate or quasi-legitimate outgrowths of war (leaving aside the question of whether those wars were a good idea in the first place - which, in the cited cases, no)? I'm inclined to say no, tho I think there's an argument to be made, as someone did, that targeted assassination is preferable to, say, bombing (Reagan's of Gaddafi, missing the man himself but killing 60-odd other people, comes to mind). the thing is, how are assassinations different/worse from non-targeted killings? I understand your larger point about the rule of law, but it seems that nations & individuals tend to follow or ignore the IHL as is most convenient. and when have Americans ever really cared about the rule of law or due process when it did was an obstacle to their goals? like many things, they are "cherished [nationality] values" mostly when it is expedient.
to clarify, before I get jumped on - I'm not saying this isn't an outrage. but really, is it so much more outrageous b/c this dude's an American citizen, or b/c Jose Padilla was, & so on?
to clarify, before I get jumped on - I'm not saying this isn't an outrage. but really, is it so much more outrageous b/c this dude's an American citizen, or b/c Jose Padilla was, & so on?
padraig (u.s.)
a monkey that will go ape
the problem is, the IHL & related systems don't really have power over anyone. or, they have power in the usual pattern - powerful nations (the usual suspects, mostly) can get away whatever they want, while those w/less power can be called to account. Not that this should be used as an argument, against, for example, prosecuting genocidaires or whatever. but, I mean, let's not pretend otherwise.