I think that's a bit too easy. I don't think that Wiggin is wrong if you're talking aobut a normal functioning society with all that comes with such a society. Such a country you can hold to those universal standards, as you can hold the members of such a society to higher standards. But I repeat, I don't see Libya is such a society.Originally Posted by Flixy
The right to a fair trial for example?You even realise how silly that sounds in a situation where non of the premises of something like that exist? It's a bit too Platonic to have any meaning on this level of existence.
The right to a fair trial has worked pretty well for other dictators - Saddam, Milosevic, Mubarak, etc. We fortunately have international options in the event that domestic courts don't exist or are corrupt.
My bigger issue, though, isn't directly related to his lack of a trial (though it follows as a corollary). My issue is that the use of deadly force in a society should be strictly regulated by that society, and it specifically should exclude spontaneous mob violence. Obviously you need a court system to make justice happen, then, but it's not a right to a fair trial per se that's at issue here.
Saddam, a statelet under the tutelage of the US, Milosevic, only after the Serbian state started to function, and Egypt never really ceased to function at all. Nothing in those examples compares to what happened in Libya at the time they caught the old dictator.
I already addressed the issue of the monopoly of force with the state in one of my earlier posts; in Libya that monopoly had collapsed, rules that depend on it can't survive if the foundation isn't there.
You can always make every situation seem unique, but fundamentally all of the examples I gave were of states in a great deal of political (and legal) flux, yet somehow they still managed one way or another. The guys from the DRC are another example, and there's still a nasty war going on there. While Libya is certainly disorganized, it's hardly like there's a gigantic power vacuum; the NTC has received ample time (and funds) to establish some level of control, and I have no doubt that they could have put together a decent trial or handed him off to the ICC.
Hazir: Your argument has gone from it being ok because he deserved worse. Yet denying the revenge angle, despite the circumstances of the who/when/why, and your own wording....to it being ok because there was no one there with a large enough sense of humanity/society/culture, despite that being one of the first comments made on this tangent, the need for someone to stand up and say: "this behavior isn't what we want to be".
No wonder MSN was running a front page article about Libya becoming the next Somalia
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 10-26-2011 at 09:26 PM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Are there objective rules by which people are actually treated in those situations?
Hope is the denial of reality
I don't say what happened is ok, I say that what happened was not necessarily inappropriate (that is a double negative and it is there for a reason) given the circumstances. There may have been some element of revenge, but I believe it wasn't very predominant given how little he was abused before getting a bullet in his head.
What Libya will become has got very little to do with what transpired during the killing of its previous dictator.
I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but something like a third of dictators who are deposed during a civil war get killed. Most of the rest flee the country in time.
Hope is the denial of reality
I do happen to think that, more or less, at least with some issues and behaviors
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Interestingly enough there's supposedly going to be a trial over the 'murder' of Ghadaffi. Seems like we're getting a taste of what kind of a country Libya really wants to be.
Congratulations America
Well, then every culture in the history of humanity has been and/or is "wrong."
Not that this is a reason to discard your position, but your feelings on murder might be, given that every scoiety and government that's ever existed has sanctioned and condoned "murder." (And strangely, this is most clear in modern, "liberal" "advanced" Western societies.)
As they say, covert operations are illegal by definition - if they weren't illegal, they wouldn't need to be covert. Yet, these same people who are, by definition, "murderers," are praised for their murders when they end their tours and come home and mingle with the civies or march in the Veteran's Day parades, etc. Not only do we sanction murderers, we celebrate [some of] them.
Probably because you've never been in a position to need or to deliver "rough justice" against a deserving soul like Ghadaffi. You should probably consider yourself fortunate to never have witnessed or exerienced harm that might justify sodomizing someone with a knife in retaliation.
The world's a far uglier place than a privledged American life would otherwise lead one to believe.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
Er, this is a bit more of a tangent, so I'll leave you with this: I draw a distinction between murder and killing. Killing, when done for appropriate reasons and with an appropriate structure in place, can be eminently reasonable by any number of universal codes. Murder is, to some extent, by definition unacceptable killing. I know this is a bit of a 'no true Scotsman' fallacy, but I would distinguish between legitimate killing and illegitimate murder.
(For those Hebrew linguists out there, the Ten Commandments is famously mis-translated on this issue. The root of the word often translated as "Do not kill" is actually ratzach, which is distinct from harag. The former means murder; the latter simply means kill. The distinction is an obvious one, but it fundamentally points to the fact that not all killing is inherently wrong.)
I'm well aware of the fact that the world is a nasty place, and I don't blame the lynchers for their response; I just agree with OG that it's not an ideal situation, but rather an unfortunate event that is all-too-understandable.Probably because you've never been in a position to need or to deliver "rough justice" against a deserving soul like Ghadaffi. You should probably consider yourself fortunate to never have witnessed or exerienced harm that might justify sodomizing someone with a knife in retaliation.
The world's a far uglier place than a privledged American life would otherwise lead one to believe.
Well, of course you do.
But the point is that no matter where you draw that line, you'll find celebrated "war heroes" [and/or unidentified, but revered, operators] who perform "illegitimate murder" as a necessary function of their service to the state [which is often conflated into service to society].
Makes me curious as to how you reconcile the contradiction.
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
Why should this be the case? I don't think it is, or if people do lionize murderers, then I think they're wrong.
Well, give me a definition of an "illegitimate murder," so I can prove you wrong.
So you routinely admonish returning soldiers and abhor the practice of saying ~"Thanks for your service" or "this round's on me?"
Especially in this stupendously stupid atmosphere of "I support our troops!" as a knee-jerk response to almost anything, it's really hard to come to any conclusion other than our society celebrates and reveres [some of] our murderers (even leaving the whole American fascination with serial killers and mass murderers aside).
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
Say, unacceptable collateral damage (use of force disproportionate to the goals of an operation). Intentional targeting of civilians. Killing enemies not currently engaged in combat when it is possible to capture them safely. Etc.
I don't think soldiers by and large murder people. They may kill plenty of people, but we're generally not in the business of murder. Those who do carry out murders should not receive our support and in fact should be prosecuted assiduously.So you routinely admonish returning soldiers and abhor the practice of saying ~"Thanks for your service" or "this round's on me?"
So how many incidentally killed civilians does it take to meet your definition of murder? 1? 2? 10? 457? I'm sure the average Joe would like to know where this elusive line between war heroe and war criminal lies, before he pulls the trigger.
Congratulations America
*Shrugs* Proportionality is always a bit of an art. In general, IMO as long as the person doing the killing does not intentionally target civilians and makes a good faith effort to limit collateral damage as much as possible in the confines of the mission parameters (and its importance thereof), I wouldn't call it murder. Unfortunate, yes, but not murder. Striking the appropriate balance is a significant challenge - limit your ROE too much, and you're stuck completely missing your objectives and often losing more troops. Go overboard, and it doesn't matter what objectives you met, the action was illegal and counterproductive. Determining the appropriate ROE for a given situation is the job of politicians and commanders. In general, assuming they are fairly reasonable, I would not fault anyone who killed someone while following those ROEs.
This is goodInterestingly enough there's supposedly going to be a trial over the 'murder' of Ghadaffi. Seems like we're getting a taste of what kind of a country Libya really wants to be.
Libyans know as well as anyone else that it's not ideal to kill a prisoner, even if every single Libyan understands/sympathises and is willing to make many exceptions in the case of Gaddaffi vs. The Rebel. You can't reliably run an entire country through the People's Court. I wonder if they'll go so far as to punish him for it. He did rob them of a spectacle.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
The fun thing is that judges and prosecutors don't answer to politicians or commanders. So that makes the question a lot less hypothetical if you're in the armed forces with your finger on the trigger.
Also, intention is a two edged sword; if you shoot at a suspected suicide bomber in the middle of a crowd on a busy market, take him out but also kill a child what then? Did you choose to kill the child? Most likely not, but intent can also be assumed if you consiously took the risk of killing the bystander and still went ahead and pulled the trigger(sort of how you are still responsable for acts committed under the influence of illegal drugs). Gets even better if you misjudged the situation and the suspected suicide bomber was simply dressed in a thick sweater because he felt a bit under the weather.
Congratulations America
The guy deserved it 10,000 times over. You can feel sympathy for another human's fear/pain, that's a natural emotion. If you look at it logically this was the least he deserved to have happen to him.
you're a long way from understanding how to use this word
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Well, by your criteria they do.
Must not be common knowledge or something, but the whole objective is to catch the enemy when they're not currently engaged and ideally are incapable of defending themselves. Then, generally speaking, you kill them as quickly and forcefully as possible.
Honestly, I was getting more at the special ops and commando units, who routinely engage in explicitly illegal operations and kills/assassinations for which they could be prosecuted by their home countries... but your stance seems to make that completely unnecessary, as by your definition, most combat actions amount to murder.
Good luck with that, but be careful where you voice that opinion. The contention that we ought to prosecute the commando units and special forces guys doing cross border "anti-terror" incursions into Pakistan and Syria (etc) is bound to be an immensely unpopular one, perhaps violently so in some places.
More to the point, the foundation on which your general position (societal acceptance) is based in an extremely perilous and contradictory one, particularly with modern societies. The difference between any number of crimes and "legitimate" government action is nothing more than a mandate from a government official (murder and assassination, theft and tax collection, kidnapping and prison, and so on and so on). And even that... unsatisfying... distinction isn't always present when, for example, that mandate is secret or implied, or the society in question is overthrowing its government and sodomizing their former ruler with a knife, for example.
As you admit, it's something of a True Scotsman fallacy, but then you go and throw it out the window completely when all the True Scotsmen get together and agree on a position contrary to your own. (Or so it appears to me, at least.)
I find it to be a rather confusing tangle of cognitive dissonances from someone who's usually extremely rational and consistent...
you're a long way from understanding how to use this word
...Said the pot to the kettle. Or do you not see that you're Lewkowski's progressive/liberal counterpart?
"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."
-- Thomas Jefferson: American Founding Father, clairvoyant and seditious traitor.
Sorry for the late response. I do think there are some universal values, like killing innocent people - but he was hardly innocent. I more meant to stress that countries like Libya are more particularist in nature, so even if the rules are there, they'd be more liable to make exceptions to the rule in their culture/society, and be okay with that. Killing a bloodthirsty dictator when you have the chance seems like it would be an acceptable exception to the rule. Think about it, you say murder is an applicable rule everywhere, but what constitutes murder is not universal. Take honor killings, terrorism (considered okay by a lot of people in the world), or the fact that in some places in the USA you're allowed to shoot unarmed burglars in the back while they run away fron you - it's not a stretch that killing a person like Ghadaffi wouldn't be considered murder.
I hope this response gets you a little less flabbergasted (and how awesome is that word!?).
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Libyan society may be particularist, but basic morality isn't. Universal rules don't have exceptions; that's why they are universal. I have no doubt that Libyan society makes exceptions in these cases, but I have doubts whether those exceptions are acceptable.
I think honor killings are wrong, terrorism is wrong, and that some aspects of home invasion laws are wrong. I think they are objectively wrong, and the societies that tolerate such things are also wrong, at least on those points.Think about it, you say murder is an applicable rule everywhere, but what constitutes murder is not universal. Take honor killings, terrorism (considered okay by a lot of people in the world), or the fact that in some places in the USA you're allowed to shoot unarmed burglars in the back while they run away fron you - it's not a stretch that killing a person like Ghadaffi wouldn't be considered murder.
Oh, I think that I sorta get where people are coming from, but I think we're talking about fundamentally different things. I have no doubt that given the particular circumstances of this dictator's life and capture, his death is hardly to be lamented, even if it was brought about through less than ideal ways. But to me, it's still very valid to be uncomfortable with the fact that his death was not brought about through the measured application of force by the state, but rather by mob justice.I hope this response gets you a little less flabbergasted (and how awesome is that word!?).
Put another way: let's stop viewing this through the lens of Gaddhafi's rights or what he deserved. Let's think about this from the perspective of our responsibilities as a society. Our responsibility is to ensure that justice is not meted out by populist outbursts; that's how a civil society functions. To see a breakdown in such civil society is something to be lamented irrespective of who it was done to.
How is it objectively wrong if societies (or at least substantial parts of them) disagree, quite strongly, with that?
Don't get me wrong, I do not approve of the way this went down. I agree that it would have been preferable to have him captured, and tried. Even besides the basic morality of it, at a trial be preferable because for a trial the facts would need to be established properly. Him being dead makes that less relevant, which is pretty convenient for some people with shady pasts in his regime.Oh, I think that I sorta get where people are coming from, but I think we're talking about fundamentally different things. I have no doubt that given the particular circumstances of this dictator's life and capture, his death is hardly to be lamented, even if it was brought about through less than ideal ways. But to me, it's still very valid to be uncomfortable with the fact that his death was not brought about through the measured application of force by the state, but rather by mob justice.
Put another way: let's stop viewing this through the lens of Gaddhafi's rights or what he deserved. Let's think about this from the perspective of our responsibilities as a society. Our responsibility is to ensure that justice is not meted out by populist outbursts; that's how a civil society functions. To see a breakdown in such civil society is something to be lamented irrespective of who it was done to.
But while it makes me uncomfortable, we are also talking about a country without much real structure, and not much of a history of fair and unbiased justice, in a state of war, and about a bloody dictator. I do not approve, but I do understand.
On the bright side, there will be an investigation into his death. Though to be honest, I don't have the highest hopes for that, but hey, it's a start.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
Societies can be wrong. They often are. So what if a majority of X society approves of a specific action or societal rule? That just means that a majority of society is also wrong.
See, we agree! I suspect most people in this thread do as well. In fact, this bit here almost exactly matches what I said earlier.Don't get me wrong, I do not approve of the way this went down. I agree that it would have been preferable to have him captured, and tried. Even besides the basic morality of it, at a trial be preferable because for a trial the facts would need to be established properly. Him being dead makes that less relevant, which is pretty convenient for some people with shady pasts in his regime.
But while it makes me uncomfortable, we are also talking about a country without much real structure, and not much of a history of fair and unbiased justice, in a state of war, and about a bloody dictator. I do not approve, but I do understand.
On the bright side, there will be an investigation into his death. Though to be honest, I don't have the highest hopes for that, but hey, it's a start.
All I wanted to say with this whole digression was that OG was right, and it wasn't fair to be ganging up on him; it is not justified to suspend rules of how we should treat others just because Gaddhafi was a bad guy. Understandable, yes, but not right, and certainly not ideal.
And I think your standards for what is right presupposes you having been brought up in the kind of society that would never have someone like Qaddafi as its ruler for 40+ years.
Hope is the denial of reality
Wiggin is arguing that there are standards for right and wrong that transcend societal values.
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