OSAMA BIN LADEN DEAD

[Metahive]

Metahive, your entire argument is prefaced on the assumption that the US did not utilize Interpol or other legal resources to arrest bin Laden.

Wrong. I advise you to read my posts before replying since I never accused the US of not trying this but actually I asked if they tried it. I also don't know why you still keep the Interpol tangent up since I explicitely conceded everything but a few points pertaining to the status of international laws and customs in my last reply to Simon.

Give me the courtesy of reading my posts in total before replying so I don't have to waste my time and repeat myself.

This is UTTER BULLSHIT.

Your schizophrenia about when international law should be respected is just astounding. We can't go into another country to try and capture or kill someone, but it's unconscionable that we didn't "extend the search to" that same country in an effort to... CAPTURE OR KILL THAT SAME PERSON!?!?!

This is tied to your failure to read my posts in total and carefully above, but would you please let things stay in context? I said this as answer for why the hunt for Bin Laden took as long as it did. It's also funny that you talk about shizophrenic attitudes when I long and drawn-out explained that I am OK with Bin Laden's death but just want people to acknowledge that this operation represented an extreme measure not to be replicated lightly. Really, spending at least five minutes to read what I actually wrote before replying can't be that much of an effort, right?

[Metahive]

Damn, missed the editing window, but I got to add this:

Metahive was looking for some justification for declaring bin Laden to be a terrorist (or, rather, asking who had the authority to do so), and a binding UNSC resolution strikes me as being sufficient authority for that sort of a judgment.

Did you notice that Simon declared international affairs to be anarchic and lawless?

I would argue that it was no more extra-legal than anything else people do under conditions of anarchy, because anarchy reigns in international affairs. And it's ridiculous of you to condemn the non-legality of actions taken in a lawless environment, where crimes are not punished at all unless they are punished by nations taking matters into their own hands.

I ask you, are you in agreement with Simon here?

[Simon_Jester]

A note.

UNSC resolutions can provide at least a color of law to international relations, but they cannot provide the real thing because enforcement is carried out on an at-will basis by member nations. UN resolutions are as far from real law* as the UN is from a real world government, and for exactly the same reason.

If you are heavily preoccupied with the legality of international actions, then UN resolutions are the best you're going to get, and since legality seems important to you, Ossus is right to point out UN resolutions on the issues that you're worried about.

My argument is separate and independent from that- that the UN can pass whatever resolutions it pleases, but in the absence of reliable enforcement, so that individual member states are forced to go it alone when carrying out the resolutions, the international community is trapped in de facto anarchy.

Which means that UN resolutions permitting or promoting a given course of action are nice, and are a good sign that many nations have reviewed the course of action and found it just, which is good even under conditions of anarchy. But UN resolutions or lack thereof cannot in and of themselves decide whether the thing should be done. The fact that the UN hasn't sanctioned something doesn't make it a bad idea; indeed, it may even be a necessary idea, one that the UN is unwilling or unable to endorse or enforce.
___________

*(in the sense that our lives are governed by the laws of our nations)

[Metahive]

O, I wouldn't call it anarchy, the problem, and I agree with Stas here, is that the higher on the totem pole of international importance you're the more likely you are to get other nations to enforce UN rulings for you and vice versa. That's oligarchic, not anarchic. That a select few nations can unilaterally block UN resolutions underlines this fact.

[Simon_Jester]

Oligarchy implies that the laws are consistently enforceable against the weak- they aren't, not under the "international regime."

The reason anarchy is so bloody in real life is that some people are stronger and more charismatic than others. Even in a fair competition they tend to win, and their strength and charisma make it easier for them to organize bystanders to hurt their enemies.

Sometimes this is done under 'color' of law: there is the pretense that a law has been broken and that the person is being punished for breaking it, even though in practice the law is not uniformly enforced: the best hunter in the village may be "allowed" to sleep with the worst hunter's wife and get away with it, but the reverse is not true.

But this is still anarchy- anarchy includes, by default, the biggest and most powerful people in the area imposing their will on others, to the limit of their ability to compel or convince people to obey. Anarchy only ends when the community forms dedicated decision-making and judiciary structures that can secure obedience to the institution: when the temples or the courts or the Imperial bureaucracy have the power to punish people according to consistent laws.

Even absolute dictatorships have institutions like this- their loyalty and obedience might flow to a single ruler at the top, but in practice there is a binding law for the citizens even if there isn't one for the dictator. And the dictator does not need to personally enforce those laws, either. The courts continue to obey him, even when he does not specifically do or say anything about the issue.

Anarchy is not entirely without leadership, or people exerting power over others, not in real life. Anarchy is entirely without formal institutions that can lead and exert power in a uniform fashion, punishing people who harm the community or create a breach of the public peace.

The international community is likewise not entirely without leadership. But this leadership is often ignored when inconvenient (the world does not unite to destroy the Iranian government, even if the US says it should). It often suffers from a case of 'too many cooks:' no responsible decisions can be made in a group where no one can decide whether it is the British or the French policy that should be followed because Britain and France are a priori equals. The result is either a delayed compromise response, or no response at all.

In general, when the international community is led to do something important, we find one or a few powerful and charismatic nations having to do nearly all the work themselves. This is exactly what we'd expect in the "global village" if said village operates under conditions of anarchy.

There are some customs that powerful people or nations can invoke to get people to act in certain ways, but in the final analysis if you want even a simple task to get done (like apprehending a single dangerous terrorist who has killed several thousand innocent people), you've got to do it yourself.

The closest thing we have to law in this "global village" is a quasi-standing body of big nations that can usually get other people to do as they say when it's not particularly inconvenient. That's not an oligarchy, that's just some countries being big enough to push other countries around.

[Metahive]

Oligarchy implies that the laws are consistently enforceable against the weak- they aren't, not under the "international regime."

They are for sure not at all enforceable against the strong, which would be the five permanent members of the UNSC who can just effortlessly veto any UN resolution issued against them which means they're only as bound to international law as they feel like. The only nations that have to fear UN resolutions are those that lack the patronage of one of the big five and which have insufficient means to protect themselves otherwise, which means that it are indeed just the weak that the law can even be enforced against. That the Big Five often squabble amongst themselves and through this often manage to obstruct each other doesn't really take away from that, an oligarchy doesn't require its members to be always of one mind, only to hold an un-affable monopoly on violence.

[Simon_Jester]

Thing is, even among the Big Five, if you want anything difficult done you've got to do it yourself. That is not the hallmark of an oligarchy- an oligarch can issue orders and expect them to be obeyed, without having to directly go out and do what they think needs to be done.

If an oligarch's rule extends only to the area within reach of his sword, and he is ignored wherever he does not have the direct power to cause bad things to happen to those who displease him, he is not much of an oligarch. He is, at most, the biggest man in the anarchy.

[Metahive]

Thing is, even among the Big Five, if you want anything difficult done you've got to do it yourself. That is not the hallmark of an oligarchy- an oligarch can issue orders and expect them to be obeyed, without having to directly go out and do what they think needs to be done

I disagree with this definition of oligarchy, for me every organisation that is effectively controlled by just a select few members bears the trappings of an oligarchy. The interests of the Big Five are only in so far limited as they clash with those of another member of the Big Five. If they have put their mind behind unanimously supporting an action they have enough combined clout to browbeat/bully/bribe/whatever the rest of the UN into following.

That they lack an explicit third party to enforce their rule and therefore supposedly aren't oligarchs is for me just splitting hairs, all five together already concentrate most of the world's military resources within their hands. For a hypothetical "UN Army" to be effective it would have to be stronger than each army of the BIg Five combined and that's just not possible without them willingly reducing their militaries which is never going to happen.

[Zed]

Chomsky's reaction to the assassination: http://www.guernicamag.com/blog/2652/no ... ion_to_os/

It’s increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition—except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress “suspects.” In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it “believed” that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn’t know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence—which, as we soon learned, Washington didn’t have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

There is also much media discussion of Washington’s anger that Pakistan didn’t turn over bin Laden, though surely elements of the military and security forces were aware of his presence in Abbottabad. Less is said about Pakistani anger that the U.S. invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor is already very high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it. The decision to dump the body at sea is already, predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.


We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden’s, and he is not a “suspect” but uncontroversially the “decider” who gave the orders to commit the “supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole” (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There’s more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the “Bush doctrine” that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the U.S. and murder of its criminal president.

Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.

[K. A. Pital]

It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

Damn I just love the guy's use of words. This is an excellent quote, I am stealing it for ages.

[Serafina]

"But the Apaches were fierce warriors and the Tomahawk was weapon of war - surely it's appropriate to name weapons after them?"
I'm sure that would be a common response. Incidentally, such focus on the native americans "warrior culture" serves to distract from the fact that the Native Americans were victims of any crimes. I'd be like germans focussing on jewish resistance fighters during WW II while ignoring the holocaust.

[Simon_Jester]

In the case of the Native Americans, Serafina, I think there' s a very real danger that if the handful of moderately glorious moments they managed in the process of being pressed and squeezed out of a continent are forgotten, if they aren't remembered for that, they won't be remembered for anything at all.

It would be far too easy for the average American to forget that anyone ever lived in North America before the white man arrived- there's so little left of their presence, especially if you don't know where to look for it. There are very few monuments to what happened, and to whom, and the surviving native populations are miniscule and remote compared to the descendants of the men who scoured them from the landscape.

A mythicized version of Native American history in which the times the natives fought back are remembered more vividly than the times their women and children were massacred by cavalry patrols and settlers trying to terrorize them off the land... that at least can be sustained as a memory.

[Serafina]

By your logic, we would only remember those few Jews that accomplished something heroic during WW II.

You are quite right that the Native Americans would be forgotten if not for various racist movies and other portrayals. But that is clearly because no one wants to remember them, and what happened to them in the past. I'd also argue that the way they are currently "remembered" does them no favor, because it is stereotypical, racist and removed from any actual history.
Now you are right, the remaining Native Americans have no political means of changing that. But such a proper remembrance can not be achieved via pressure anyway, it must stem from a public conscience that it should be remembered.

Such a remembrance would happen in a variety of ways, ideally under the supervision of the Native Americans. Proper inclusion of the topic into history classes, days of remembrance that are publicly acknowledged and historical monuments are all ways to maintain a public conscience that "we did bad shit in the past and we must ensure that it never happens again".
Right now, America lacks any such conscience for it's past misdeeds.

[Thanas]

I'd argue that an overly-clicheé portrait of Native Americans is dangerous as well. After all, how many typically go to "plains warrior" when they hear about "Native Americans"? How many remember the Pueblo cultures that fought against the Spanish? How many remember the tribes of the Northeast?


But with the state of the education system....

[PeZook]

Yeah, almost nobody knows the Iroquois had a thriving, large-scale settled culture. There were tribes that could work metal, the Pueblo built cities and had developed agriculture.

In fact, the "plains horseback warrior" was a result of the white man's arrival. Not only did t bring the key component (the horse) to America, it displaced many tribes from their native land and made them adopt the lifestyle.

The most famous of those misplaced tribes were the Dakota, who used to live IIRC in the Midwest before being pushed into the plains, acquiring horses and shifting their lifestyle to a nomadic existence following buffalo herds around. In a way, their golden age was way before that, yet their usual portrayal is as nomads.

[Broomstick]

"But the Apaches were fierce warriors and the Tomahawk was weapon of war - surely it's appropriate to name weapons after them?"
I'm sure that would be a common response. Incidentally, such focus on the native americans "warrior culture" serves to distract from the fact that the Native Americans were victims of any crimes. I'd be like germans focussing on jewish resistance fighters during WW II while ignoring the holocaust.

It also loses sight of the fact that there was a lot more to Natives than being just warriors, and quite a few groups were largely peaceful, the main use of warriors being defense against others. It's rather like glorifying the German army while ignoring everything else that Germans have ever done. But then, it was a lot easier to justify killing Natives when you portrayed them all as warriors on the offense rather than mentioning killing farmers and old men and women and children.

[PeZook]

They were savage in war. In many tribes, man = warrior, and while smaller tribes treated war more like a summer sport, there was total war and conquest and abuse in North America, too.

[Broomstick]

Well, sure, but that's my point - how important the warrior culture was to every other aspect of culture varied enormously. You had one group over here intent on actual conquest, another over there displaced trying to carve out a new niche, this group treating it, as you say, a "summer sport", and yet another using lacrosse as a stand in for armed conflict at times.

Having a military of some sort has always been important to a group, but come cultures we remember as much, if not more, for their other contributions to humanity. Pity we don't revere the Natives a bit more for things like the crops they gave us, for example. Why shouldn't the Three Sisters be as iconic as the Plains Warrior? Shame, really, as the Three Sisters was much more widespread over the continent than the Plains Warrior.

[Hawkwings]

I honestly can't take that article seriously.

OK, first off, this quote:

Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that “we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda.”

He means Bush, right? Obama wasn't even in office yet.

Next, this:

There is much talk of bin Laden’s “confession,” but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

I've been looking for this confession video... could someone link me to it please?
Anyways, assuming it's even close to what I think it is, yeah, great comparison there. Who cares what tone of voice he uses? Of course he would be happy about it, it was a great achievement for him. It's not so much "confession" as it is "gloating" (and apologies if I'm actually wrong on this).

Moving on...

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush’s compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

I like the part where he explains how 9/11 attacks = Invasion of Iraq. And the "dumping the body into the Atlantic" was a sign of respect and humanity, and far better than most of the alternatives, but whatever, make it sound like another tally mark for "America so evil hurf durf".

Finally,

Same with the name, Operation Geronimo.

He needs to do some research. Though apparently going by how many news outlets have improperly reported this, I can give him a pass.

The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders.

More likely this name was assigned because, oh I dunno, Geronimo was kind of hard to find? But sure, imperialism is the sole driving motivator for everything that Americans do in life. Whoop, I gotta go make a sandwich. How can I make a sandwich the imperialist way?

It’s like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk… It’s as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes “Jew” and “Gypsy.”

What a supremely loaded statement. Not only is the comparison again wrong but this is simply flamebaiting. These names probably were chosen because they were very American, very martial, and in recognition of the fighting ability of the Apaches. In other words, respect. Not mustache-twirling evil imperialism hurf durf.

In summary, he's trolling.

As for the "recognition of native Americans" tangent, I can say that growing up in the Northwest there is certainly far more recognition and education about the way that the natives in our area lived and worked and changed as settlers came in. In fact conflict and war is hardly touched on at all.

[K. A. Pital]

How can I make a sandwich the imperialist way?

Sandwich was invented by the British. It is the epitome of imperialism. On a more serious note...

He needs to do some research.

Isn't he making a point by quoting Obama that Geronimo was, indeed, the codeword for OBL? Or is he misquoting?

These names probably were chosen because they were very American, very martial, and in recognition of the fighting ability of the Apaches.

The point is still vaild, I'm seeing some documentaries about the conquest of America and the way they treated the natives... uh... I don't think the current U.S. government can claim that American Indians are "very American" in the sense that they're part of modern America. In this instance Chomsky is right. Recognizing someone's fighting ability doesn't mean he's not a victim. Some victims stood up and fought.

[Hawkwings]

Isn't he making a point by quoting Obama that Geronimo was, indeed, the codeword for OBL? Or is he misquoting?

It wasn't "Operation Geronimo", it was "Operation Neptune's Spear". "Geronimo" was the codename for Bin Laden, yes.

The point is still vaild, I'm seeing some documentaries about the conquest of America and the way they treated the natives... uh... I don't think the current U.S. government can claim that American Indians are "very American" in the sense that they're part of modern America. In this instance Chomsky is right. Recognizing someone's fighting ability doesn't mean he's not a victim. Some victims stood up and fought.

They are "American" in the sense that we recognize them as being an important part of American history and culture. Yes, the Native Americans were treated horribly by the US Government and settlers. Yes, they were victims, but nobody is debating this point. We didn't name an attack helicopter after the Apaches because they were victims though, we named it after them because they fought fiercely. The naming has nothing to do with the fact that they were victims, save that they became known as fierce fighters after the victimizing started.

[Thanas]

Isn't he making a point by quoting Obama that Geronimo was, indeed, the codeword for OBL? Or is he misquoting?

It wasn't "Operation Geronimo", it was "Operation Neptune's Spear". "Geronimo" was the codename for Bin Laden, yes.

That seems like a nitpick then, as Chomsky's point still stands.

[Hawkwings]

And I did address the rest of his argument there and say that it is very possible he may have been misinformed because of all the media reports calling this "Operation Geronimo".

[Serafina]

The point is that there is basically no portrayal of Native Americans as victims. Their main (and almost sole) portrayal in media and public culture is that of a "proud warrior race". That is a deliberate distortion of the truth, a lie by omission.
Instead of naming your weapons after a minority of martial* Native Americans, you should name your agricultural programs and areas after Native American farmers, and educational programs after their sages and so on. (Not all of them at any rate, but i bet there isn't anything of that with anything close to the prominence of the Apache Helicopter).
And as i said earlier, there are a great many things that could be done in order to raise and maintain public awareness and memory about the genocides committed in americas past. Instead, you have a romanticized version that mostly omits the fact that the Native Americans were victims.

That's like having lot's of stories about Jews during Imperial Germany and the Weimar Republic, where they fight Germans in various ways (politically, economically, criminally) but having next-to-no stories about the events once the Holocaust started (other than a few documentaries). No matter how much you would portray the Jews as good guys, focus on their positive sides etc., you would still distort history. Even portraying the start of their persecution would not change that if you do not portray the mass-genocide and almost never mention it.
Yes, that's pretty much the way Native Americans are portrayed, if you swap them with "Jew" and the white Settlers with "Germans".

*Note that "has some dedicated warriors for defense" does not make a martial culture. By that logic, every culture ever would be one.

[Hawkwings]

So your issue is that they are portrayed as one-dimensional and simplistic? Guess what, Americans portray other Americans as one-dimensional and simplistic. Ask a New Yorker what he thinks about Californians. Or Georgians. Or Wyoming-ians? Err, people from Wyoming. Ask a Texan what he thinks of people from Washington. Ask a Californian what he thinks of New Yorkers. Heck, ask someone from Southern California what they think of people from Northern California. You will get simplistic caricatures and stereotypes. If we can't even accurately describe the other modern Americans inhabiting our country, how the hell do you think we're going to be able to accurately describe Native Americans? The best you're realistically going to get is "They used to live here, we drove them out, now they run casinos."

And there are plenty of depictions of them as victims. Every American history textbook is going to talk about how the settlers drove them out, the Trail of Tears, the setting up of reservations, etc. It's just that we don't go around putting up billboards and TV commercials to say "We Americans are so awful, look at what we did to these poor Native Americans." Simply naming stuff after them is an empty and cheapening gesture. If you've got some grad educational campaign in mind to inform the masses of the terrible things the US did to the natives, then excuse me while I laugh. This is not an issue of willfully omitting native cultures from our collective consciousness, this is an issue of ignorance and apathy.