Friday November 22 2007
Law
modern warfare: Counterinsurgency is different
- there is a built in incentive to make the preferences of civilians irrelevant
- this can be accomplished through terror, detention or execution
- death, detention and execution is hierarchical
- persuasion is the least sure method of support
- because the consequences of terror are so extreme there is a better chance of obedience
- there is no time for due process or adherence to the rule of law
why illegality is so prevelant in coin
- in COIN it is necessary to violate human rights
- battling for minds requires terror, detention, or execution
on the grounds of human rights
- human rights is a sacred cow
- human rights is the only grounds on which you can organize demonstrations about the internal affairs of other countries
- You cannot do this if you take issue with other issues such as issue areas such as taxation
- human rights are a sacred we hold most dear in society
- our devotion to it assumes that individual rights are the greatest good that must be respected in society
- this is cultural specific and discursive rather than an empirical sacred.
ANGLO MODEL - reform = legitimacy= support
- this model is culturally specific and not applicable
- it is not the norm yet that international law trumps domestic law
- state sovereignty dominates most of the legal system
why follow the Law?
- allows the COIN units to maintain the facade of legitimacy (a legitimacy the insurgents may not have)
- this is also cultural specific - this assumes that the courts and laws are recognized as legitimate
why do cops in belgium carry automatic weapons?
- countries originated in different ways
- many countries in continental europe started out as police states
- the attempt to make a police state in England failed
- there is a royal navy and air force but there is no royal army because cromwell lost and the monarch never won back the right to have an army again
- the bobby's authority is derived from parliment
- on the continent police derive their authority from the monarch
- is the purpose of the Canadian police to investigate crime? - this is a cultural specifice assumption
- no one in the USSR would dream of calling the police if a crime was committed
- the primary purpose of the police in the USSR is the detection and suppression of political dissent
- these police forces may be modern investigators now but they originated as something else and can go back to that origion in a heart beat
why the law is ineffective
- time
- capacity (The justice system would collapse under its own weight in peace time if not for plea bargains)
- control (you can't risk an insurgent getting off on a technicality)
- if a conventional killer goes free even a serial killer, the killer may kill again (20-30 people max)
- however, the numbers of casualties are minimal compared to the capacity to kill that terrorists have
- in addition, any acts done by terrorists have a political dimension that necessarily weakens the state
- whereas with criminal activity state capacity is not always necessary implicated
Quote of the Week
- Why isn't public health powers used to combat terrorism more often?
- It is awe inspiring what the public health official in New York City have the power to do
- They can shut the city down, they rarely exercise these powers, however, they remain the most powerful people in modern government
- When a public hazard is in play we error on the side of caution
- innocence and guilt are theoretical constructs
- in war time the balance slides toward erroring on the side of caution
- this is not a peace time mentality or a criminal law mentality
- this is national security logic - the standards of proof are lower
Quote of the Week (part II)
- we are not sure we are at war but we are sure we are not at peace
peru
- shining path
- a parallel justice system was set up that was as sophisticated as the regular justice system
- basic rights were suspended
- the net effect was arrest, trial, and conviction all in one go (this is pretty good considering the alternative is execution aurresseares style)
- 26, 000 were channeled through these courts
- when the head of the shinning path was caught people were released
- in one option prisoners survive in the other they die - both are egregious violations of human rights
- does this force us to reconsider the blood curtailing torture in the kenyan piipeline, is this humanitarian warfare?
it is possible that kangaroo courts and sham justices is a lesser of two evils when execution is the alternative
there is no such thing as an innocent civiian
- both sides must kill insurgents
- you can never be sure who is guilty or innocent
- regardless you will kill the innocent
- you can try to mitigate harm but it doesn't make you cleaner
- in a away this will make you more of a monster because the deed can't speak but survivors can
the most horrifying thing about Kenya is that the British efforts there is what a clean version of a counterinsurgency looks like… we can't even imagine what the dirty version looks like
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Quote of the Week (part III)
- The greatest luxury we have as westerns is that we will always have the ability to run away
page revision: 11, last edited: 30 Nov 2007 15:20