Black comedy

In fairness, if I was to listen to this debate in a foreign language, I wouldn't have said that Jack Spencer (surely a Tom Clancy name) was the one that lost t'rag. Louise sounded more likely to jump in over Jack's arguments.

Of course, since it was in English, I know that was partly because calling them arguments would be exaggerating. But I don't think he lost it.

Copy up here should anyone want to listen to it after tomorrow.

But there's also a structural element to it, which is that being on the right involves putting certain claims of morality -- usually couched as "common sense" -- beyond claims of fairness and equal treatment. That's what you hear in this clip, basically: the guy is making a moral appeal, an appeal for the suspension of international law to accommodate what the U.S. administration happens to feel is right. The lawyer's appeal is a relativistic one -- that in the absence of a divine power to judge these things, we must have a system of international law that affords equal treatment to different claims of right and wrong. This is, on some level, a left/right split.

I guess you're right. It's helpful to have it confirmed at a level as fundamental as this what makes me 'left wing'.

There was a Newsweek online poll that accompanied the headlined "The Arrogant Empire" story (and may now have slipped back into the pay section of the website) which asked, among other things, "Should America's role on the world stage be bound by the same considerations as other countries and bodies, or does it have a moral right that makes such considerations unnecesary?". Which I thought was needlessly tipping the scales; except that the poll results were in favour of the second option by 70-30.

Now, I'm curious: is there anyone here that doesn't terrify?

In this case it's the following problem:

1. according to the Gen Con, POWs must be allowed to only answer with name rank serial number and unit, and that is all. Whether any of this information is true or not is not for the captor to decide.

2. While this works in a 'symmetrical' conflict EG one between two or more similarly-outfitted military forces, where "all is fair" and one assumes that the other party is obeying the same Gen Con rules,

3. It is demonstrably ineffective and in fact dangerously naive to assume such a stance in the face of an 'asymmetrical' opponent, eg terrorists who are completely unafraid to commit helter-skelter suicide attacks against civilian and/or military targets across the board.

Therefore in such an argument one might imagine some frustration from the 'right' while the left continues to argue things like 'well if we interrogate detainees under duress we're no better than they are' while conveniently ignoring the fact that while THEY are perfectly willing to fly civilian airliners into office buildings full of innocent people WE are doing everything we can to avoid 'unnecessary' civilian casualties while conducting an extensive air and ground campaign (this goes for both the current campaign as well as Afghanistan).

To those who imagine that there are other means available to us for rooting out and ending the threat of terrorism, I offer the following tired cliché: "Use what you've got" (interpreted as: we spent trillions of dollars building a highly effective regular army, what would you suggest, sending in robot ninja I suppose)

Yeah, but given that there are plenty of people who have yet to be convinced that Hussein had anything to do with 9/11, this comparison falls apart a bit.

And Ned needn't apologize for sounding stupid, because you've just stretched a bit beyond reason: none of the prisoners at Gauntanamo Bay have ever flown a plane into a building, and the only asymmetry in evidence in Afghanistan was an asymmetry in military might. Beyond which is the real point I was making, which is that you're still bringing a moral element into the discussion: you are introducing the assumption that we have the right to decide when international law is applicable and when some perceived "asymmetry" completely negates it. The cornerstone of "law," as it turns out, is that no one party can arbitrarily decide when it is or is not applicable: there is no such thing as "not guilty by moral fiat." The galling hypocrisy in this case has nothing to do with the details and everything to do with the reasons given: the US cannot, at this point, afford to make appeals to international law when its made a habit of casually flaunting it.

As I've said time and again; the best way to coonvince the world of our moral position is to put people before a fair and impartial court and the best chance we have of that is the ICC. Denying people their fundamental rights just drives more people into the hands of the terrorists.