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READ COMMENTS Archive: January, 2003
February
6, 2003
On NPR last evening,
I heard some very interesting arguments from an “interventionist liberal” who
was justifying intervention in Iraq based not upon the supposed WMDs there, but
rather upon the fact that it is a fascist state which brutalizes its population. There are a number of issues raised by this
line of argument which parallel those from the WMD viewpoint. Principally, these questions revolve around
the notion of national sovereignty, and to what extent we wish to give up that
sovereignty to a world governing body.
I guess the supreme
hypocrisy of this whole issue is that the U.S. is now seeking to undermine the
notion of sovereignty, using the U.N. resolutions as justification, while at
the same time it refuses itself to abide by the U.N.’s attempts to do the same to
the U.S. The World Court has
ordered the U.S. to stay the executions of various non-U.S. citizens recently
and in the recent past. Yet the U.S.
steadfastly refuses to abide by the dictate of the World Court. I am of two minds on this subject. On the one hand, I agree with the U.N. anti-genocide
resolution, which requires sovereigns to prevent and stop genocide within their
own borders. But at the same time, by
what legal or moral authority does one state intervene in the internal actions
of another state, even where they are morally reprehensible. I believe that national sovereignty is the
legal equivalent of individual liberty, and that nations must practice
self-governance even as I believe that individuals must do the same. Moreover, even were I to accept the
authority of the U.N. to intervene in a sovereign’s internal governance, the
sheer hypocrisy of the
U.S. stance in relation to this issue is galling.
February
5, 2003
Let’s get it over
with already, folks. I am frankly sick
of this charade. We know the U.S. will
go to war with Iraq, despite the U.N. if necessary. This dance is getting tiresome.
They trot out Powell whenever they want to try to paint some type of
legitimacy on it. They are wearing us
down. We will be made to accept war
when it comes. It always plays out like
this:
We got around to the subject of war again and I said
that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very
thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction.
“Why, of course, the people don’t want war,” Goering shrugged. “Why would some
poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can
get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common
people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for
that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders
of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to
drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a
Parliament or a Communist dictatorship.”
“There is one difference,” I pointed out. “In a democracy the people have some
say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United
States only Congress can declare wars.”
“Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always
be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is
tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of
patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any
country.”
— Hermann Goering, April 18, 1946
Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe,
President of the Reichstag,
Prime Minister of Prussia,and Second in Command of the Third Reich.
This
reminds me of a story I tell my mock trial students regarding the
cross-examination of Goering during the Nuremberg trial. The Russian prosecution picked up where
Jackson failed, and went through the reams of documents linking Goering and
Nazis to atrocities, and simply asked, when each document was verified, “do you
confess now that you are a fascist beast.”
I can only pray that
some day, someone will have that opportunity to ask this question of ask Herr
Ashcroft.
February
4, 2003
Aside:(We need more
people like Hunter S. Thompson, God of Gonzo)
The present state of
affairs in the U.S. makes the case for anarchism strong. I use the term anarchism to denote the
political state whereby individuals are not governed at all, as opposed to the
term “anarchy” which tends to denote a state of disarray. Anarchism has long been disregarded as a
serious political alternative. Hobbes
decried Man’s natural state as “mean, nasty, brutish, and short” and Locke
agreed, reasoning that this is precisely why governments are instituted among
men. The reality of this assessment is
challenged by the discovery of certain rather peaceful indigenous people,
untouched by so-called civilization, who seem to live in relative peace.
In John Keenan’s
excellent book, The History of Warfare, there are a number of examples
of groups of “uncivilized” people living without warfare or significant
governmental control. One question this
obviously raises is: can a people be “civilized” without a government? I tend to think they can.
Perhaps governments
are necessary during a certain phase of the evolution of a civilization. Governments coordinate resources and action
in concerted ways. Governments with
militaries can act to protect resources and private property rights. If the world is in a state of nature as
among nations, then governments can serve a vital purpose.
The “War on Terror,”
however, indicates when this purpose cannot be fulfilled. Terrorism is unstoppable. No large military, no amount of intelligence
can prevent all terrorist acts. But the
War on Terror certainly helps to perpetuate a large publicly funded military
even while the threat of future large-scale wars between superpowers
wanes. Government is the selfish
meme. It grows to live and it lives to
grow. It is self-perpetuating for the
sake of being self-perpetuating. It
tends to grow at the expense of individual liberty. It has, in our case, joined forces with corporate wealth to
further its survival, in a sort of sick, symbiotic relationship.
I can envision the
withering away of the state in such a way that individual security is not
sacrificed. But even so, let’s suppose
that such an anarchist future means less security. Which do we prefer?
Freedom or security? I will take
the former any day.
February
3, 2003
Today I am 34. Five months after I was born, humans first
set foot on the Earth’s Moon. I recall
how proud I always was growing up, knowing that the entire history of human
exploration of other worlds will be fulfilled after my birth. Then, in 1986, I recall how I thought the end
had come for that history. It seemed
like a dream had come to an end. There
were calls for streamlining NASA and ending a human presence in space. It was safer to send robots. But we went back, and we began construction
of the International Space Station, which has also been recently scaled back.
The greatest shame
of STS-107 is that these great people died serving in a program that has lost
its way. Everything leading up to
Apollo 11 had a point. We had been challenged to go to the
moon:
“There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” JFK, 1962
This unifying, bold
challenge got us there. We lived up to
the greatest parts of our natures and abilities. We met the goal, and exceeded it, getting there early. We did this great thing in the midst of war,
and social unrest, and uncertainty. We
came together as a species for a single, amazing moment in history. And then, this purpose met, we lost sight. In 1973, Nixon went ahead with the Shuttle
program, turning our space program into a delivery service, and since then, no
great unifying goal has been set or met.
The space station was supposed to be a waypoint in the human exploration
of other, further worlds…but we have lost that vision and goal.
What happened
Saturday was tragic, by any measure.
But it happens in the midst of a greater tragedy: our loss of
vision. We should be exploring the
universe. We should have set foot on
Mars by now. We should be setting new
goals and challenges, always in an effort to better ourselves. We are not doing this. We are scaling back our greatness, and
bargaining away our future chances of singular achievements as we bankrupt this
country for the sake of the very few and very privileged.
I cannot help but mourn more than the loss of Columbia and its crew. I mourn our loss of vision.
