4 ms·

I have been following this along with a couple of related stories. I am trying not to go into rant mode, but there is a disturbing trend of late that folks shou

I have been following this along with a couple of related stories. I am trying not to go into rant mode, but there is a disturbing trend of late that folks should note. States have always hidden, tortured, and killed their citizens. Good states do it very, very rarely, in secret, and as an extraordinary exception to normal rule. Bad states do it whenever they like and in response to any discomfort at all. I think it was Saddam (or Stalin?) that said something like "You have a man. You have a problem. No more man. No more problem." When the U.S. started droning its own citizens a decade ago, we libertarians said that this was a very bad, no good, horrible idea. You can't treat your own citizens this way. Looking back, that statement was too idealistic. What happened next was a discussion about ticking bombs, people planning to use WMD, and so on. Nothing much happened. The droning continued. Next the Russians decided to use nerve gas in London (!) to kill somebody they didn't like. This past week, the Saudis decided to lure somebody into their Turkish embassy where it looks like he was tortured, killed, and chopped up into little pieces. Now we have the president of Interpol vanishing. One hopes the Chinese are at least polite enough about it not to be so braggadocious. What we're learning from this sorry series of events is that if a leading nation does it systematically and publicly, the rest will too. There are no special "The U.S. gets to do it but nobody else can" cards to hand out. It is quite disturbing. I expect the trend to continue.

scoggs 8y ago
It's scary as shit. It seems to be sending a message of, "Your government not only can't protect you, they won't.", when journalists, politicians, key figures in ongoing trials, and famous people are being rounded up and/or offed. Lots of respect for anyone still willing to speak out but I fear for them and wish them all the best and hope they are able to get their truths out.
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago
  Yeah. It's like we've lost our grip on common sense. When the U.S. courts decided, back in the Bush days, that the U.S. Constitution applied not just to its own citizens, but to everybody we interacted with? Nobody thought through the consequences. If it applies to everybody, it applies to nobody. That is, whatever rules you can make about killing non-combatants in a foreign land, you can make about your own folks right here at home. And that is where we're headed. It's like we're having to re-learn the rules of nation-states again: why they exist, why they have embassies, why they're polite to one another even when they do bad things, why they keep certain things secret, and so on. In the constitution issue, it's the rules of the way the country operates, as understood by its citizens, that make them give a crap about it. (Not the rules as applied. The rules as understood by the common person.) You start publicly saying that it's a sucky deal? Soon enough people will believe you. In the U.S. domestic arena, if you treat all of your citizens as if they all might be violent at any time and deserve close watching? They'll live up to that expectation. I don't like any of it, any violence at all. I understand it exists whether I like it or not, and I understand that international politics is a messy affair. But there are supposed to be some grown-ups involved that keep it all heading in a good direction. Those people have left the room. Decades ago. (Note: my comment was about trends, not current politicians. I don't argue about current politicians and try not to mention any of them if I can. Trends are much more important.)
  - jimworm 8y ago
    The grown-ups are the voters where they could vote, and the angry mobs where they could not. It seems increasingly evident that the Nash equilibrium of that game might not be a place comfortable to philosophers.
  - yesenadam 8y ago
    That is, whatever rules you can make about killing non-combatants in a foreign land, you can make about your own folks right here at home. And that is where we're headed. So the thought that the USA may soon treat its own citizens the way it's treated the citizens of the world in the last 130 years whenever it's wanted to - e.g. invasion, mass slaughter, carpet bombing, coups etc (assassination hardly rates a place in that list) - is terrifying to you. Fair enough, I guess. But why (I get the feeling from your tone) has it been perfectly OK that the US treat the rest of the world like that?
    - DanielBMarkham 8y ago
      Apologies. I should have been more clear. I don't like any of it. But the interplay back and forth of nations doing horrible things like this to the other citizens is what has created all of these international norms in the first place. We don't want the Iranians grabbing people off the streets of DC and killing them in their embassy. We shouldn't do it to other countries. I agree with you. Once we started doing it, then it's okay for everybody and there's no clear delimiter of what's okay and what's not. It's not okay. This is the reason we're supposed to declare war before we use force overseas. You can't continue to do this semi-war thing for very long. My only point was that in reality things aren't perfect. That's fine. If the Soviets kidnapped some person from Nevada and tortured and killed them in 1960 it was a horrible thing. But the international order continued. It continued because we had established norms. Countries knew that if they had to do things like this, it should be hidden. What happened after 9-11 is that we've systematize a lot of things that should be done by exception-only. And now we gotta go back and re-learn why all of those norms were there in the first place.
      - scoggs 8y ago

scoggs 8y ago

It's scary as shit. It seems to be sending a message of, "Your government not only can't protect you, they won't.", when journalists, politicians, key figures in ongoing trials, and famous people are being rounded up and/or offed. Lots of respect for anyone still willing to speak out but I fear for them and wish them all the best and hope they are able to get their truths out.

DanielBMarkham 8y ago
Yeah. It's like we've lost our grip on common sense. When the U.S. courts decided, back in the Bush days, that the U.S. Constitution applied not just to its own citizens, but to everybody we interacted with? Nobody thought through the consequences. If it applies to everybody, it applies to nobody. That is, whatever rules you can make about killing non-combatants in a foreign land, you can make about your own folks right here at home. And that is where we're headed. It's like we're having to re-learn the rules of nation-states again: why they exist, why they have embassies, why they're polite to one another even when they do bad things, why they keep certain things secret, and so on. In the constitution issue, it's the rules of the way the country operates, as understood by its citizens, that make them give a crap about it. (Not the rules as applied. The rules as understood by the common person.) You start publicly saying that it's a sucky deal? Soon enough people will believe you. In the U.S. domestic arena, if you treat all of your citizens as if they all might be violent at any time and deserve close watching? They'll live up to that expectation. I don't like any of it, any violence at all. I understand it exists whether I like it or not, and I understand that international politics is a messy affair. But there are supposed to be some grown-ups involved that keep it all heading in a good direction. Those people have left the room. Decades ago. (Note: my comment was about trends, not current politicians. I don't argue about current politicians and try not to mention any of them if I can. Trends are much more important.)
- jimworm 8y ago
  The grown-ups are the voters where they could vote, and the angry mobs where they could not. It seems increasingly evident that the Nash equilibrium of that game might not be a place comfortable to philosophers.
- yesenadam 8y ago
  That is, whatever rules you can make about killing non-combatants in a foreign land, you can make about your own folks right here at home. And that is where we're headed. So the thought that the USA may soon treat its own citizens the way it's treated the citizens of the world in the last 130 years whenever it's wanted to - e.g. invasion, mass slaughter, carpet bombing, coups etc (assassination hardly rates a place in that list) - is terrifying to you. Fair enough, I guess. But why (I get the feeling from your tone) has it been perfectly OK that the US treat the rest of the world like that?
  - DanielBMarkham 8y ago
    Apologies. I should have been more clear. I don't like any of it. But the interplay back and forth of nations doing horrible things like this to the other citizens is what has created all of these international norms in the first place. We don't want the Iranians grabbing people off the streets of DC and killing them in their embassy. We shouldn't do it to other countries. I agree with you. Once we started doing it, then it's okay for everybody and there's no clear delimiter of what's okay and what's not. It's not okay. This is the reason we're supposed to declare war before we use force overseas. You can't continue to do this semi-war thing for very long. My only point was that in reality things aren't perfect. That's fine. If the Soviets kidnapped some person from Nevada and tortured and killed them in 1960 it was a horrible thing. But the international order continued. It continued because we had established norms. Countries knew that if they had to do things like this, it should be hidden. What happened after 9-11 is that we've systematize a lot of things that should be done by exception-only. And now we gotta go back and re-learn why all of those norms were there in the first place.
    - scoggs 8y ago