Tuesday, October 04, 2011
We Killed Yamamoto
This is where I live: an unlovely moral briar patch of horribly imperfect alternatives.
From cutting funding for programs for the poor to lying us into a criminal war, for as long as I can remember my government has done terrible things in my name.
If it were within my power to push a button and make my government stop doing terrible things, I would do it. In fact I push a button somewhat like at least once every two years. So do millions of my fellow citizens. Sometimes I get a little of what I want; sometimes I get the opposite of what I want. This has something to do with the fact that my choices every two years are not drawn from the ranks of saints or civil rights leaders, but from politicians who are every bit as flawed and venial and stupid as the rest of us monkeys.
And there really are people in the world who are trying to kill us. Really. No fooling. You. Me. Your family. My family. Basically any pile of dead Americans will do.
If it were within my power to rain fire on people who are trying very hard to turn my loved ones into another pile of dead Americans, I would do it without hesitation. From across the street? From 10,000 miles away? From space? I don't care. Give me that button and I'll push it. Every time.
Then you tell me that one such person who wants to turn my loved ones into piles of dead Americans used to live here. That he actually had to go way out of his way -- cut his ties with my country and cross oceans -- just to hook up with a whole network of people who work night and day to turn my loved ones into another pile of dead Americans? That after years of hard work organizing and advancing their cause, he had risen in the ranks of that network who wants to turn my loved ones into another pile of dead Americans?
And now you know exactly where he is? And have a bomb hanging over his head?
Give me that button and I'll push it. Every time.
Which is why I would make a bad President.
Because if I were given a virtual blank check to use the most powerful military in the history of the world any way I felt like, a whole lot of people -- from my tormentors in my third grade class to the clouted-up deadwood at my last full-time job -- might not live to see the sun rise.
I would be delighted to live in a world where there were no wars -- and this is a war -- no death penalty and where no one was deemed unfit to live. Where -- citizen or not -- anyone who is alleged to have done bad things against my country could be taken swiftly and humanely into custody, after which they would be tried in a duly constituted court for their alleged crimes.
Give me the button that manifests that world and I'll push it. Every time.
But I don't live there. I don't even live close to there.
Which is why, every two years I try to elect people who will not only make better decisions than the other people running for the same offices, but will also make slightly better decisions than I would if I were give the chance to push a button and kill a bad guy halfway around the world.
I usually fail.
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To date, this is how the very few interactions I've had with Never Trumpers have gone, because I want to talk about the Befor...
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14 comments:
I agree. If someone is actively calling for the death of a people, and are taking substantial steps in accomplishing that goal, shoot them in the fucking face.
I don't think someone should be given any sort of "extra" rights just because they happened to be born on a certain location on the earth.
There is always a line, and a lot of people are worried that we're about to cross, or have crossed it. I worry too. But in this case, the asshole had no qualms about calling for the death of Americans, and acting on it. Spare me the outrage. He wasn't innocent, and he didn't deserve "due process".
Since the ST: TOS metaphors seem to be apprecIated here, all I can say is:
You've got your Tantalus Field, and much joy may you have of it. Let's hope it's always in Mirror Spock's hands ...
that old "pile of dead Americans" argument. I think IOZ has already crunched the numbers on that one, concluding:
I would not combat lightning by whacking at the sky with a three-iron
http://whoisioz.blogspot.com/2011/10/everything-that-acts-is-actuarial.html
also, what charlie davis said about "the rules of rape:"
http://original.antiwar.com/charles-davis/2011/10/03/when-it-comes-to-state-sanctioned-murder-morality-matters-most/
Since we're talking in abstractions, and no one on this thread will ever have such a button or need to make that choice, I say whatever gets you through the night. I'm against the death penalty, period. My president disagrees. I don't believe he is making 23 million dollars a year profit from his decision making, and I do not believe he looks to his party or the Left to applaud his decisions, unlike his potential election opponents. We can fight the death penalty and work toward a more peaceful world without the help of anyone with political power. We've been doing so for a long time.
One other thing, I used to be a virulent moral absolutist, believing in a black and white world with little or no gray. Once I had good sex and raised kids and suffered poverty and fought a bunch of other personal stuff (not in that order), I just kind of calmed down about shit in general. Serenity prayer and all that. xo
I can remember on 9/11 hoping against hope that the people in charge would ask themselves one question: How would the Israelis handle this?
Would they use their full military might to go in and invade country after country causing thousands of collateral civilian deaths and untold billions in damage?...Or would they quietly, surgically take out everyone who planned or participated in these attacks no matter how long it took? (As they did after Munich and with Entebe)
Of course, we went with option one.
I have no moral issue with taking out these people with drone strikes or special forces in the night, it is what we should have done in the first place....and we have seen far too much how horrible an option number one can be.
"Virulent moral absolutists."
Let's forget that you even went there.
"Terrorism" is not America's problem, but rather America's "solution" to its real problems having to do with oil, money, and the military. Stirling Newberry has great piece up today explaining the clusterf***.
Whatever anyone does, don't try to paint Americans as "victims" of world violence. That's not only irritating and wrong, it completely misses the point, which is what the war on terror is designed to do: make everyone obtuse to facts.
One would naively think that adamant, well-educated anti-wingnut factions would have cottoned on by now.
Was it Kant..or Mao...no it was Eastwood: "Deserves got nothing to do with it...."
Ideally, I would live in a world where we only attacked as a response to being attacked. Before that ideal ,I would like to live in a world where we were never attacked, because we hadn't spent the last 100 years or so imposing our will, directly or by proxy across the globe.
Neither of those worlds exist, so our response to being attacked should be: "Oh well...paybacks a bitch?" I don't think so.
Nihilists don't "cotton" to that.
I'm still not quite sure what your argument is. It seems to be that since the US has done bad things in the past, we should turn a blind eye to the bad things it does right now. Because politicians are imperfect, or something, and they're just trying to do the best as they see it.
You can make that argument, of course. But then I don't see where you get off criticizing Republicans. At. All.
Unless I missed the AQ surrender ceremony, tom allen is actually making the argument that there is no difference at all between killing a US citizen who volunteered for senior active duty with a hostile force which declared war on the United States -- and lying us into an illegal war of occupation against the wrong country.
At. All.
Wow.
I know you have a better grasp of history than this, Drifty. The man we assassinated was some two-bit lackey fantasizing he was bigger than he was. What popularity he had we gave him by paying him attention. Treason is a law, and it requires a trial. End of story. We do 100s of special forces operations illegally in those countries, just tack on another if you want to push a button.
But besides all that, this goes to the heart of the flaw in American strategy going back decades, since at least Operation Phoenix: kill the leaders! Pity it doesn't work.
When discussing guerilla movements, that doesn't work. In fact, it only HELPS by killing off the dumb leaders. Much stronger meritocratic systems are employed when nepotism/cronyism is punished by a predator drone rather than a golden parachute.
Also, Al Qaeda is what, 100 people now? And the Taliban is still around from our own inept fantasies about really sticking it to the Soviets, realpolitik style, and forgetting that arming a group doesn't ensure loyalty of said group.
Who wrote that lovely ode to neoconservative principles, Charlie Wilson's War? That one where the CIA guys were, dare I say, some of the best and brightest, as was that delightful character Julia Roberts played.
I forget his name. I think it was same guy who used his popular TV show to gloss over the crazy brewing in the Right since Goldwater. Alan Alda was so winning! But he threw in all these great liberal speeches (which his characters then voted against, with a tragic sigh - or wholeheartedly for neoliberalism), thus ensuring Broderian balance and the continuation of the status quo.
Anyway, the US government is obsessed with killing leaders. Assange is the real case-in-point. Did wikileaks die? I think the real reason the Establishment hates the 'leaderless' Occupy Wall Streeters is that they have no one to neutralize/brutalize/imprison and have done with it. So now, with such brilliant button-pushing thinking, they're truly radicalizing the not-really-radical Occupiers - their demands are, if anything, the real 'center' of American politics, which is that wealth inequality's bad for everyone and we should jail the banksters. Sending in the Pinkertons to lure them into beatings/arrests will only backfire by showing the mailed fist inside the velvet glove over what should've been common sense.
DupinTM
"nihilists don't cotton to..."
I forgot: We're not dealing with homo sapiens, after all, AND not even the laws of nature apply. We're dealing with nihilists, Dude!
p.s.
Not being arbitrarily killed by your king is perhaps the central plank of modern liberalism,without which other freedoms are kinda moot. Check it out some time.
We generally subscribe to the basic notion that being an American citizen entitles you to certain rights by birth, among these being a speedy trial by a jury of your peers. There are no particularly valid exceptions by which a dear leader may simply do an end-run on this because he knows better, or because the American in question is really bad guy, or because we are afraid. There is a serious moral difference between a leader rendering absolute judgement on a citizen in effective isolation from this process, and acts of self-defense or war which may involve the deaths of American citizens as a result.
Even in war, we have historically tried to refrain from targeting civilian leaders. Yamamoto was considered fair game, Hirohito was not. The value of this is arguable, but it has a lengthy history in the realm of how nations conduct themselves.
Even with crime, we do not generally applaud the police acting as judge and jury. If Dillinger was killed in a gun battle, that's not the same as shooting him in the head unarmed, even if he was a murdering bastard. If not, then we only have left the solace in having the most guns and the biggest army and the strongest fist; we have eradicated the idea that we are trying to act better, do better, think better, from one age to the next.
I'm sure it seems comforting to have someone like Obama be willing to do this dirty work for us. But giving that power to the President is a disaster in the making. It will seem orders of magnitude less wonderful when the next President Bush, or President Cheney, or President Perry, wields it to eliminate Americans by his own twisted standard of justice.
I'll see your fictional Bartlett et al., and raise you a real (and eventually beheaded) Sir Thomas More.
WILLIAM ROPER: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
SIR THOMAS MORE: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
ROPER: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
MORE: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
I thought you as more Thomas More and less William Roper. Guess I was wrong.
And, no, it is NOT a "war", no matter who says it or how many times they say it. It is just another excuse to kill more brown people (conveniently, in this case, non-Christian), and prepare for the coming police state.
When someone is eventually defined as a "leader" of the Occupy Wall Street movement, and is targeted by President CareBear (or a less subtle successor) for assassination because of the "threat" they pose to the nation, and they, too, are murdered in cold blood without charge, trial, or conviction, will you be cheering just as loudly and lustily?
I am very disappointed, sir.
Fuck that guy. He needed dead. Period. Masterfully written piece, as always. Couldn't agree more.
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