Christian Democrats in the United States
Global Issues - DefenseWe propose a defensive shift away from brute force military strategies, to diplomatic efforts with deals for resources and training by American expertise in civil policing. No human being can live under martial law for long, before such a system would self-destruct. We should not allow free trade to mean weapons sales or construction of military-industrial factories in hostile countries. We also advocate more publicity and openness in the intelligence community. At some point, if U.S. intelligence services do not fulfill core principles of empowering Americans and their spirits with truth, then the country will sink so far into the web of lies, it will fall.
Strategically, putting men and women on the ground with effective body armor, armored vehicles, non-lethal weapons and knowledge is a much more important goal than spending trillions on high-tech mass-murder systems that are never used. If we believe in the values of our American servicemen and women, we should enable them to do the job on the front lines.
We advocate bans on all non-precision explosives such as cluster bombs, and attest that no aerial bombs of any kind can be used in an honorable manner in urban combat. Defensive systems against mass-murder systems ought to be used as diplomatic chips to reduce all stocks world-wide of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons with the goal of eliminating all weapons of mass destruction.
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Monday, August 24, 2009
5:16 PM
If it is true, as the Wall St. Journal Editor asserts, that a nearby gunshot, a power drill threat and cigarette smoke are "all that the uproar over 'torture' is about," then the CIA has nothing to worry about. If we think in terms of the twisted inquisitorial logic they want the power to use against any and all suspects, then after all, if the CIA has done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about by being investigated.
Water-boarding is certainly more harsh than those three things, and we know that happened under direction of the justice department, so we already know that the WSJ Editor is spinning the details to hide worse offenses from the public mind. That is a crying shame, that the Wall St. Journal panders to the lowest common denominator (of its market).
Our system of justice is not inquisitorial, and that is the point. The fifth amendment is not only the right not to incriminate one's self on the stand, it is the right not to be insulted by accusatory prosecutors with no evidence and not a leg to stand on. That kind of justice system is exactly the kind the terrorists claim they want to impose on the world, clothed in religious garments. That kind of justice system is what we are supposed to be fighting, because when instituted with industry, it destroys freedom and runs rampant, thirsting for blood on a massive scale. Then the ideals exploited for its construction are abandoned, and even the noblest people involved in its origins are obliterated.
To avoid the terror of an inquisitorial state, we create checks and balances against the tendency of human institutions to favor that method of operation. That means that no agency or officer of government can be given special treatment under the law. As far as secrecy, in any interrogation scenario, a hardened terrorist will be a good judge of how much someone is bluffing. Or, they simply will not care if they are killed anyway, because they have deluded themselves with visions of martyrdom.
Most human storytelling is about the hero struggle against unbelievable odds - but it turns out most people want to do good works for God in their lives anyway, so in the long run I hope we'll be okay. If you can imagine yourself a terrorist for a moment, however someone gets into that, they would have to believe themselves to be a hero struggling against the forces of evil. Let's imagine that Hitler won world war two, and now the conflict is between nazi-fascist America and islamic-fascist Asia. (How does that scenario avoid global nuclear war?) Certainly, the United Nazis would be torturing islamic terrorists with acid, electricity, family killings, vivisection, any number of unimaginable horrors.
Yet, because humans are tenacious creatures, people would resist. There is simply no point to torturing people's senses, and if there is no point, then there is no threat in the long run from either bluffing or actually carrying out the threats. The only way to "win" this conflict is a "mutual win." The other alternative is "mutual kill." The way to win is to convince the intellect of human beings, Muslim or not, that the United States is better than that. We must convince terrorists, and people the terrorists appeal to, to examine themselves, to ask if they may be deluded by people who imprint and mis-use that hero complex on them for their own gain. Many people on both sides are deluded by that hero complex into committing senseless violence. The mutual win is when we both step down from our bloody altars, sit down together in the ashes, let go of our sorrow and cry. It would be over.
In the Muslim ethos, one might say Mohammed was a revolutionary, he changed that part of the world, he forced people out of the sterile darkness they lived in at the time, and that change was like a birth pang for society and culture, which flourished in variety, novelty and intellect for a brief time. I daresay many cultures purporting to be "more Islamist" than each other, men like flamboyant apes puffing for mates and subjugating their women and opponents with force, have taken their minds a step back to a time far before Mohammed, before Jesus, and before Moses. We have been given so much more to work with, so much potential for beauty, and people who set up governments like that squander their potential in blood. Any successful government in the modern world must provide a stable platform for constant change. Public, open, democratic government is the only way to accomplish that.
When Atty. Gen. Holder said it would be "unfair to prosecute... for conduct that was sanctioned in advance," he was wrong. That argument says a soldier "just following orders" is always right, even when those orders are illegal. Due to our essential need for checks and balances in government, under the Bush administration, the CIA should have known better, the CIA should have pushed back against orders from the Justice Department and the White House that were obviously morally wrong and illegal by violating core principles of common law jurisprudence.
The soldier counter-argument, that jarheads can't be legal scholars, does not apply, because these aren't GIs, they are educated, trained CIA interrogators. Besides, Army regulations for proper conduct of field soldiers under command are extremely clear. Mỹ Lai must never happen again. In cases of abuse, when command has deviated from the psyche of civilized, peace-loving people, when the actions are not tactical and disciplined but are offensive against all civilization, soldiers are obligated to mutiny, preferably relieving their command into custody but fighting if necessary. They must risk death to take the matter to higher command above their commander's head, they must risk court martial to do the right thing. If necessary they must take the matter out of the military, above the President's command, to the courts, Congress and the public. It's the right thing to do, dumb-ass, so do it. It's not hard to figure those things out.
due process about cia abuse allegations is a good thing
This WSJ Editorial is a typical response of the threatened power mongers in the industrialized murder system.If it is true, as the Wall St. Journal Editor asserts, that a nearby gunshot, a power drill threat and cigarette smoke are "all that the uproar over 'torture' is about," then the CIA has nothing to worry about. If we think in terms of the twisted inquisitorial logic they want the power to use against any and all suspects, then after all, if the CIA has done nothing wrong, they have nothing to worry about by being investigated.
Water-boarding is certainly more harsh than those three things, and we know that happened under direction of the justice department, so we already know that the WSJ Editor is spinning the details to hide worse offenses from the public mind. That is a crying shame, that the Wall St. Journal panders to the lowest common denominator (of its market).
Our system of justice is not inquisitorial, and that is the point. The fifth amendment is not only the right not to incriminate one's self on the stand, it is the right not to be insulted by accusatory prosecutors with no evidence and not a leg to stand on. That kind of justice system is exactly the kind the terrorists claim they want to impose on the world, clothed in religious garments. That kind of justice system is what we are supposed to be fighting, because when instituted with industry, it destroys freedom and runs rampant, thirsting for blood on a massive scale. Then the ideals exploited for its construction are abandoned, and even the noblest people involved in its origins are obliterated.
To avoid the terror of an inquisitorial state, we create checks and balances against the tendency of human institutions to favor that method of operation. That means that no agency or officer of government can be given special treatment under the law. As far as secrecy, in any interrogation scenario, a hardened terrorist will be a good judge of how much someone is bluffing. Or, they simply will not care if they are killed anyway, because they have deluded themselves with visions of martyrdom.
Most human storytelling is about the hero struggle against unbelievable odds - but it turns out most people want to do good works for God in their lives anyway, so in the long run I hope we'll be okay. If you can imagine yourself a terrorist for a moment, however someone gets into that, they would have to believe themselves to be a hero struggling against the forces of evil. Let's imagine that Hitler won world war two, and now the conflict is between nazi-fascist America and islamic-fascist Asia. (How does that scenario avoid global nuclear war?) Certainly, the United Nazis would be torturing islamic terrorists with acid, electricity, family killings, vivisection, any number of unimaginable horrors.
Yet, because humans are tenacious creatures, people would resist. There is simply no point to torturing people's senses, and if there is no point, then there is no threat in the long run from either bluffing or actually carrying out the threats. The only way to "win" this conflict is a "mutual win." The other alternative is "mutual kill." The way to win is to convince the intellect of human beings, Muslim or not, that the United States is better than that. We must convince terrorists, and people the terrorists appeal to, to examine themselves, to ask if they may be deluded by people who imprint and mis-use that hero complex on them for their own gain. Many people on both sides are deluded by that hero complex into committing senseless violence. The mutual win is when we both step down from our bloody altars, sit down together in the ashes, let go of our sorrow and cry. It would be over.
In the Muslim ethos, one might say Mohammed was a revolutionary, he changed that part of the world, he forced people out of the sterile darkness they lived in at the time, and that change was like a birth pang for society and culture, which flourished in variety, novelty and intellect for a brief time. I daresay many cultures purporting to be "more Islamist" than each other, men like flamboyant apes puffing for mates and subjugating their women and opponents with force, have taken their minds a step back to a time far before Mohammed, before Jesus, and before Moses. We have been given so much more to work with, so much potential for beauty, and people who set up governments like that squander their potential in blood. Any successful government in the modern world must provide a stable platform for constant change. Public, open, democratic government is the only way to accomplish that.
When Atty. Gen. Holder said it would be "unfair to prosecute... for conduct that was sanctioned in advance," he was wrong. That argument says a soldier "just following orders" is always right, even when those orders are illegal. Due to our essential need for checks and balances in government, under the Bush administration, the CIA should have known better, the CIA should have pushed back against orders from the Justice Department and the White House that were obviously morally wrong and illegal by violating core principles of common law jurisprudence.
The soldier counter-argument, that jarheads can't be legal scholars, does not apply, because these aren't GIs, they are educated, trained CIA interrogators. Besides, Army regulations for proper conduct of field soldiers under command are extremely clear. Mỹ Lai must never happen again. In cases of abuse, when command has deviated from the psyche of civilized, peace-loving people, when the actions are not tactical and disciplined but are offensive against all civilization, soldiers are obligated to mutiny, preferably relieving their command into custody but fighting if necessary. They must risk death to take the matter to higher command above their commander's head, they must risk court martial to do the right thing. If necessary they must take the matter out of the military, above the President's command, to the courts, Congress and the public. It's the right thing to do, dumb-ass, so do it. It's not hard to figure those things out.
> detail, links and comments >>
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
3:52 PM
But it's more telling that it seems controversial to a lot of people that such a debate might take place. It makes all the more remote the possibility that we could debate whether war itself is legitimate, that we could debate not only automatic killing but killing itself. And anyone who stands up and says the whole damn idea of war is an antiquated, outmoded symptom of genetic throwbacks, of a primitive or damaged mind, is framed by the self-sacrificed slaves of the machine to be a traitor, when it is they who seek not to kill anyone in particular, but to kill everyone in their path.
That kind of behavior reminds me of a story a while back that a man lost a bet on a cock fight in Jalisco Mexico and in anger tossed a hand-grenade into the crowd of spectators, killing eight people at random.
It's the stupor of a mad bomber, made drunk by killing and enflamed with a desire to see the whole world die. It's wrong, and it always will be wrong, whether the target is selected by a person or by a computer.
Meanwhile in Germany Angela Merkel is visited by a ghost from her past, a weapons dealer friend-of-friends who armed Saudi Arabia and stole from them. I don't know about you but it seems rather un-christian to sell guns and bombs and then steal from the people paying you... all that stuff is not how I choose to fill my day in any case.
But this guy Karlheinz Schreiber only went to jail for fraud. This distracts us from the larger irony of the label "Christian Democrats" used to promote the industrialization of murder from Arabia to Persia and to fill the tinderbox to the brim with bombs in the Holy Land. It makes it more palatable for the public, etc. that "Glock doesn't kill people, it's the dang A-rabs who kill people," though Schreiber plays the "ali baba" role in that drama parallel to the Iran-Contra sales of Reagan, Cheney, North etc. in the 1980's.
We get so tied up in going after their fall guys that we forget about the bigger problem, that these wars are being fought in the first place and that the bulk of the sale of arms to the third world bears the official stamp of our wealthy governments.
debate on killer robots, but not about killing?
It's an infinitesimally small glimmer of hope that someone in the US military is trying to talk about putting the brakes on automatic death machines, to communicate to the boardroom idiots that their ideas "artificial intelligence" are based on science fiction, that automatic death drones cannot distinguish good from bad, and that trying to put this decision on a robot is a psychotic, cowardly cop-out to distance one's self from the act, to deny responsibility for murder. And it forces an arms race of robots, invisible robots, robots to detect the invisible ones, robots to interfere with those robots, robots to maintain and re-arm the other robots, etc. I don't know about you but I have better things to do with the tax money that line of thinking will yoke me and the whole world into for the next five hundred years. The Dude said, his yoke is light.But it's more telling that it seems controversial to a lot of people that such a debate might take place. It makes all the more remote the possibility that we could debate whether war itself is legitimate, that we could debate not only automatic killing but killing itself. And anyone who stands up and says the whole damn idea of war is an antiquated, outmoded symptom of genetic throwbacks, of a primitive or damaged mind, is framed by the self-sacrificed slaves of the machine to be a traitor, when it is they who seek not to kill anyone in particular, but to kill everyone in their path.
Between January 2006 and April 2009, [Prof. Sharkey] estimated, 60 such "drone" attacks were carried out in Pakistan. While 14 al-Qaeda were killed, some 687 civilian deaths also occurred, he said.
That kind of behavior reminds me of a story a while back that a man lost a bet on a cock fight in Jalisco Mexico and in anger tossed a hand-grenade into the crowd of spectators, killing eight people at random.
It's the stupor of a mad bomber, made drunk by killing and enflamed with a desire to see the whole world die. It's wrong, and it always will be wrong, whether the target is selected by a person or by a computer.
Meanwhile in Germany Angela Merkel is visited by a ghost from her past, a weapons dealer friend-of-friends who armed Saudi Arabia and stole from them. I don't know about you but it seems rather un-christian to sell guns and bombs and then steal from the people paying you... all that stuff is not how I choose to fill my day in any case.
But this guy Karlheinz Schreiber only went to jail for fraud. This distracts us from the larger irony of the label "Christian Democrats" used to promote the industrialization of murder from Arabia to Persia and to fill the tinderbox to the brim with bombs in the Holy Land. It makes it more palatable for the public, etc. that "Glock doesn't kill people, it's the dang A-rabs who kill people," though Schreiber plays the "ali baba" role in that drama parallel to the Iran-Contra sales of Reagan, Cheney, North etc. in the 1980's.
We get so tied up in going after their fall guys that we forget about the bigger problem, that these wars are being fought in the first place and that the bulk of the sale of arms to the third world bears the official stamp of our wealthy governments.
> detail, links and comments >>
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