From: Lee Daniel Crocker (lee@piclab.com)
Date: Wed Nov 21 2001 - 10:28:07 MST
> > Sovereign _individuals_ are more important than sovereign states.
> > A state that tramples the rights of its people has no right to exist.
>
> In international relations, states predominate. This might be
> unfortunate (I think it is) but it is the focus of international
> law and diplomacy today. If you say that we are charged with
> the job of protecting/securing individual rights globally or at
> least have every right to do so then this is tantamount to a
> declaration of nearly global war. I don't think that is your
> intention so I am curious as to how and where you draw the line.
We are not charged with protecting the rights of individuals
everywhere, but we /are/ charged with protecting the rights and
physical safety of Americans. If doing that requires interfering
with a state that doesn't have any right to exist in the first place,
I can live with that. If a state threatens our people, we have the
moral duty to defend our people against it.
Yes, international relations occur between states, but their
/purpose/ is about protecting people. If states have to die to
keep people alive, then that's what has to happen.
> But I brought up Russia to show that it is not pragmatic to work
> from such principles as you seem to espouse when it comes to
> other sovereign governments generally.
Nobody ever said it was easy. but it's a lot better to work from
principles than to work without them, as we seem to have done in
the past far too often. It's also important that we not let
overreaction to our past of unjustified aggression stop us from
using justified aggression when we need to.
> > I've never argued otherwise. Indeed, I've prety consistently
> > argued that the US government is a criminal organization, and that
> > our foreign policy is stupid and inconsistent. But let's not go
> > from there to say that we must correct it by completely pulling
> > out of all foreign relations. We correct it by enforcing policies
> > that are more sensible and consistent, and some of those policies
> > can and will call for intervention in foreign governments, so long
> > as we do it sparingly and for the right reasons.
>
> Ah. Here we largely have some agreement. I don't suggest we
> pull out of all foreign relations by any means. I do suggest we
> start acting on the basis of our much touted principles with
> regard to other nations instead of effectively assuming that any
> and all means are justified by our hoped for ends, even when the
> means effectively deny and destroy the stated ends.
Agreed, but respect for foreign states (or even my own state for
that matter) is /not/ one of my principles. Respect for the lives
of human beings is. Nothing in Somalia threatened American lives;
we should have kept our noses out of their business (except for
allowing private aid). Nothing in Kosovo threatened American lives;
we shouldn't be there. But the Taliban government of Afghanistan
threatens American lives by protecting perpetrators of evil against
us, and by indoctrinating its people in a culture of hatred toward
our values and our nation. We cannot allow this to continue.
-- Lee Daniel Crocker <lee@piclab.com> <http://www.piclab.com/lee/> "All inventions or works of authorship original to me, herein and past, are placed irrevocably in the public domain, and may be used or modified for any purpose, without permission, attribution, or notification."--LDC
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