From LGF, an interesting theory regarding yesterday’s attack on Gitmo guard:
The earlier report that Guantanamo guards were attacked by inmates while trying to stop a detainee from committing suicide was inaccurate.
The guards were lured into a cell by a staged suicide attempt, then ambushed by the prisoners.
[…]
The timeframe on this incident is unclear, but it seems to have coincided with the release of 16 prisoners. Is it possible these jihadis were trying to make a last-ditch break for it and hijack the Saudi 747 waiting to take freed prisoners back to the Royal Kingdom?
Story here.
As one of the commenters at LGF notes:
This riot sums up in miniature the entire battle between the West and the Jihadis. They use all of their might, every dirty trick imaginable, to inflict maximum damage and massacre everyone in sight. We, in contrast, use an absurd amount of restraint, and withhold even the hint of using real force. They tried to saw off guards’ heads with fan blades, we fire rubber pellets. And then, of course, the Left will step in and decry us for “oppressing” them.
Well, I’m not sure it’s the “Left” in the sense it’s being used here, necessarily, but the UN Committee Against Torture certainly has impeccable timing for the situationally ironic, doesn’t it?
****
update: in the comments, Whats4Lunch links to a pair of stories suggesting that the plane left before the riots began. Verc counters that it’s fair to say the prisoners aren’t necessarily privy to the Gitmo flight logs, so the mistake could be on their end.
How come there is a concerted effort to brand the left for things it isn’t actually worried about? I’ve never heard the left say that terrorists aren’t dangerous or that they should not be met with force once identified.
The real issue, and it is unrelated to this story entirely, is whether or not we actually do stand for what is right. Are we against torture and inhumane treatment or not? The degree of evil that our foe is willing to stoop to is not a factor in our own beliefs and actions, is it?
Do we throw away all of our lofty ideals because someone else doesn’t measure up to them?
No.
Why would you assume we would (or have)?
Grokodile,
Your second paragraph answers the question in your first paragraph. Nice that you can supply your own answers.
I’ve never been a prison gaurd, never even been to a prison, but I would imagine, while engaged in hand to hand combat with several men, in a prison cell, I would be glad any “non-lethal” friendly fire didn’t blow MY head off.
Not to distract from the point about using an absurd amount of restraint, which is, well, absurd
The Miami Herald reports that the Saudi 747 arrived in Gitmo just before midnight Wednesday and took off again before dawn Thursday morning.
According to AP, two detainees attempted suicide on Thursday – one in the morning, one in the afternoon – but the riot did not break out until Thursday evening.
LGF’s theory may be “interesting,” but it seems unlikely that the detainees were attempting to hijack a plane that had already left.
It’s a “you’re either with us or with the terrorists” type thing. When a leftist says that he supports due process and opposes torture, the right uses this to attack a strawman of the leftist that opposes all anti-terror measures.
Same thing with the wiretapping: leftist says he opposes warrantless wiretapping, right assumes that he opposes all wiretapping.
“How come there is a concerted effort to brand the left for things it isn’t actually worried about? I’ve never heard the left say that terrorists aren’t dangerous…”
Michael Moore: “There is no terrorist threat, there is no terrorist threat”
You should run and tell Charles, W4L. As he noted, the time frame is unclear from earlier reports.
But I will link you comment in the body of the post.
AJB —
I love the way you make generalizations about the right as a way to assert the right makes generalizations about the left.
Because I’m big into irony.
It is fair to say that the inmates at Gitmo do not get the Tower flight logs. That they rioted on the same day (after some pacific 4+ years) is significant. Speculation attains and holds.
Well, Grokodile, first you’re going to have to show me somebody the Left will “identify” as a “terrorist”.
Of course, the Ba’athist/al-Qaeda alliance in Iraq doesn’t qualify. Those are patriotic insurgents, graciously and selflessly blowing up school buses, murdering shopkeepers, beheading journalists, crucifying contractors, and horsewhipping women for exposing their wrists, in a desperate attempt to dislodge their Imperialist Crusader occupiers, right?
Hamas? Naah. Righteously and duly elected representatives of the Palestinian people, who blow up farmers with rockets and shopping malls with plastique purely as a playful expression of their cultural heritage. Besides, they’re only killing Jews, which is practically a requirement for being considered civilized these days. Not terrorists at all, no, sir.
Of course the guys who blew up the WTC were simply acting out their repressed reactions to being brought up in broken homes with childhood abuse. We should understand and be sympathetic and tolerant toward such unfortunates, not label them with such repressive and insulting characterizations as “terrorist”. It’s unkind
In fact, about the only people you’re willing to identify as “terrorists” is the USMC, who vilely and viciously shoot back when assaulted, instead of prostrating themselves and humbly inquiring how they might have offended and what they might do to make amends. But you support the troops, yes sirree bob.
Regards,
Ric
Raise the roof!!! Whoop whoop whoop!
Verc,
AFP reports that:
You can speculate all you want, but what do you know that Harris doesn’t?
That’s why its called speculation. Now, as one does not ambush without an objective in mind–and killing Americans is not good enough, not even for jihadis–you must expect them to have some goal; escape, hostages in trade for escape, etc. etc. etc.
The inmates might have expected to have their little insurrection put down but…what did they expect to do immediately after taking that cell?
So Adm. Harris can state the obvious effect–because it happened, they did get attention for themselves–but his comment does not necessarily explain the inmates intent. As it stands, his comment is mostly a non sequitar; a comment on what happened in fact, and not the designs of the inmates.
Of course, all of this leaves out whether I believe it or not; I do not. You simply must try harder than you have in order to discredit the thought.
whats4lunch cites the AFP:
While LGF states:
THE MOST EPIC BATTLE IN ALL THE INTERNETS
SPECULATION VS. SPECULATION
*Cue Star Trek battle music* DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN
Before I get called on this… from w4l’s AP post…
Like any good Bush Kultist, simply having the AP SAY it happened and then provide a tangential quote is not proof enough for me. Especially when the best we get to shoot down idle speculation is a quote of more idle speculation.
Of course, do I believe the jihadis played their little game because the plane was there? Flip a coin. Could go either way.
Verc and OHNOES,
None of us are mind-readers. None of us can perfectly know the detainees’ intentions.
On the other hand, I have no doubt that Harris knows more about the specifics and context of the events in question.
Perhaps when detainees are allowed to broadcast public statements or when one of us learns the Vulcan mind-meld, Harris will be proved wrong.
Until then, however, I’m content to accept his interpretation of Thursday’s events.
And OHNOES, Harris’ “speculation” comes from AFP, not AP. But then, I guess that makes it even more unreliable…
OHNOES,
Apologies. I see now that you got it right the first time. The second must’ve been a typo.
Disregard snark.
Totally. And they were going to crash it into Los Angeles.
Actus, what is it about a keyboard that just positively compels you to smash your retarded telephone cables into the keys in just the appropriate manner to make you the most stupidest person in the room?
Is there a Rovian mind-ray which commands absolute fuckheadery whenever DOS boots up your Amiga-64 at the Men’s shelter for Mentally-Impaired Telecommunications Masts? Or is it that whenever a hard-right Bushkultist walks into the room, you remember your oh-so-brave twilight-struggle against Cheney-ChimpHitler and how you’ve been manhandled like whenever Uncle Chester spends the night. So you assume the position of being draped over a chair and expect us homophobic Southern cousin-fuckers to hold our noses and make you take it like a man.
Well, I for one, believe that it is the latter that compells you. I believe you want me to say that you have the smallest man-gina ever recorded, including newborns and fetii, with balls comparable to chickpeas. But I won’t say it. Instead I will leave the ‘ignore actus’ sign out so other posters will be aware of your droppings.
IGNORE ACTUS.
I don’t hold that against you, but I won’t exclude all possibilities down to Harris’s interpretation unless I see something with more confidence. That he may not even be sure himself is something that wouldn’t surprise me, especially given the context of the report.
But, of course, the plane theory isn’t something I’d sing as gospel. The data supporting it is just circumstantial enough to make it an interesting “hmmm” for all us armchair colonels who know enough to take it with a grain of salt.
Actually, AFP makes it slightly less untrustworthy.
Then again, I hold all journalists in fairly low regard these days.
Everyone is assuming that these guys want to leave GITMO. I think this is a false assumption. These guys are going to get far worse treatment back in the Kingdom of Saud than ever had at GITMO.
If I were them, I wouldn’t be trying to escape, just piss the American’s off enough not to send me home.
Shorter Verc:
*Addresses Actus directly for three paragraphs*
“IGNORE ACTUS”
What Ric Locke said, then rinse and repeat.
My hat is off, sir.
Shut the fuck up Actus, you’re out of your element!!
Is it just my imagination or are conservatives near unanimous in their support for torture? I hate the polarisation just as much as the next person, but it’s hard not to notice that every torture apologist is a “conservative”.
Well, elendil, first we need a definition of “torture”. “We know it when we see it” is only good if your real name is Gabler.[1]
If there is any questioning technique likely to yield information from defiantly uncooperative subjects that you and the rest of the moonbats won’t label “torture”, we are anxious to hear about it. Since, at least up to now, anything other than the Joe Friday system—“just the facts, ma’am,” with hat in hand—seems to be defined as “torture”, yeah, we’re good with some of it.
Similarly, if there is any form of detention that you won’t piercingly decry as “inhumane treatment!” please trot it out. Is an ordinary suite sufficient, or must it be the penthouse? Is closing room service at 11 PM “inhumane”? If so I greatly fear that I and many others are right behind being “inhumane”.
Regards,
Ric
[1]I really do hope you’re old enough to know how insulting that is.
The constant misapplication of the word “torture” to policies and procedures that no sane person would characterize as torture is … well, tortuous.
But also torturous.
So will all the lefties who claim to oppose torture please stop torturing us all with your willful misdefinition of “torture”???
It seems to me that having ones head cut off with a dull blade, on video tape, and having it replayed on CNN so your family can watch, would be tortue.
Last I checked GITMO wasn’t doing that.
It seems we have gone out of our way to be humane and to respect the human rights of those people who would not show the same to us.
Does this make me a “torture apologist”, I don’t think so. I just refuse to be an “apologist” for that which (in my opinion) isn’t happening.
Is it just my imagination or are liberals near unanimous in their support for al-Qaeda? I hate the polarisation just as much as the next person, but it’s hard not to notice that every al-Qaeda apologist is a “liberalâ€Â.
tw: Aid and comfort to the enemy.
None of the Google Image maps of Gitmo give any information on where the ‘detainees’ are located, but the entire base is only 45 square miles, so it’s likely that they are living within 5 miles or so of the airfield. There is therefore a fair chance that they would be able to see and hear airplanes taking off and landing from their cells, which makes it less likely that they would have thought they could hijack an airplane that had already taken off.
Are you saying somewhere other than LA? Maybe san antonio?
did they really make DOS for the Amiga, or are you just BS’ing me?
Maybe it was miami they were aiming to hit? everyone knows gitmo only has al-qaeda terrorists in it, and they’re out to homocide bomb us to death.
Load the entire sorry lot of them into a C-130, take ‘em up to 50,000 ft and then “drop them off.”
Freeze, choke, then a hard flop into the drink… too good for ANY of them.
Shark chum for allah.
What are you the Argentinian military junta from the late 1970s-early 1980s?
Sorry we don’t play that way. I wouldn’t want to serve with anyone that would. Yeah, I know 3 halal hots and a cot, arrows aiming toward Mecca, imams popping in for a howdy, and all the abuse the ACLU, AI, and the UN can dish out to us ain’t exactly what I want for these scum, but I’ll take it over acting like a tip-pot junta.
or even a tin-pot junta.
BTW – assume at least one typo per comment of mine. You’ll strain yourself less that way.
I’m really glad you feel that way, Major, but in the dark of the night I wonder how long you and the people who think like you can continue to exist.
There is no accusation against you so vile, no propaganda ploy so scurrilous, that the Left will not instantly credit it as absolute TRVTH and begin trumpeting it from the housetops. (But they support the troops, reely reeeely truly they do. Faugh.) They would do no more if you did want to act like an Argentine junta, because there isn’t any more to do. There is nothing viler or more scurrilous than what they implicitly assume about you already. (But they support the troops!)
Which means that the marginal cost of actually becoming an Argentine junta is zero. My worry is that sooner or later one of the people who notice that will actually decide to go that route instead of becoming a Democratic Party politician.
We have, for all practical purposes, no safeguards whatever against a Peron or a Sandino. What we have is a citizen military who feel that they have a stake in society, and therefore have no impulses in that direction and a motive to oppose those who do. A moonbat like Grokodile, who doesn’t believe that you and your fellows held any investigations or did any diligence before tossing people in the slammer is already assuming, as a matter of things-fall-down routine, that there’s no difference between you and the typical jingle-chested Generalissimo. He not only doesn’t concede your stake in society, he’ll deny that it exists if you ask. You have to feel it daily; I know my son does.
Can that really go on forever without some son-of-a-Wesley deciding he might as well be hung for a sheep?
I was in the military while the draft was still on, and opposed (mildly) the all-volunteer army on just those grounds. For all its faults, the draft made sure that familiarity with the military cut across all parts of society—and that there were people in the military who didn’t consider themselves of it and questioned its assumptions. Now we have a full generation of people who consider themselves the elite and know nothing about the military except for an insulting stereotype that hasn’t been remotely valid for twenty years, and are ready to believe the worst at any or no provocation. I think—fear, and hope I’m wrong—that I’m already beginning to see military people circling the wagons. “Us” and “Them” is commutative…
Dark thoughts at midnight.
Regards,
Ric
Quite a bit. You really think that throwing people from planes is necessary? I’d say its from bloodlust and vegeance, not necessity.
Can I still run for dog catcher?
No. I do consider the fact that you think that (a) credible and (b) routine is a near-perfect example of what I was talking about.
Regards,
Ric
[no, you can’t run for dogcatcher. if you’re very quiet and cooperative you may be permitted to run for dog]
Thats a weakass junta. The argentineans let dogs rape female prisoners. Now that’s a junta. You want to do that too? Zero marginal cost to become that?
Maybe, Ric, in the morning we can debate Gibbon’s thesis on the decline and fall of Rome with the institution of a civilian, volunteer military. I believe that a small expeditionary military in the traditional American style is very desirable and oppose–grudgingly–a massive 40 division Army/Marine Corps. And if we are going for a lighter, more agile and much smaller force, we might as well make it volunteer and just draft the worthless hippies if we need to kickstart China’s Third Era of Warring States.
And–while actus can fuck off, kindly–I must disagree with Major John’s sensitivity in regards to the Gitmo kids. I think that [unscheduled, unassisted prisoner high altitude drag-testing] was hyperbole, and so I disagree with it mightily.
On the other hand, we ARE doing great violence to a civil society’s sanctions against taking innocent life by treating members, even tangential ones, of terrorist organizations as anything but. Summary execution at the end of interrogations; THAT is the civilized method of dealing with people that car bomb nurseries; strap suicide-belts to Down-syndrome kids and have them wade into Mosques; pull teachers from the classroom and shoot them in the head; and drill holes through the bodies of reporters, aid workers, poll workers and saw off their heads.
Every other palliative sounds nice on paper but will lead to more innocents being butchered, murdered, and tortured, and more families enraged and brutalized when another Beslan happens in Samarra or Vicennes or Dubuque. We know that because we’ve already seen ex-Gitmo turn back to violence.
Ric:
Actus:
Yeah. . . I guess you were right, Ric.
Verc sez:
It’s so perfectly sensible. Now, if we could just commit to conducting the war without tremendous concern for whether our kindergarten teacher corps and their charges will find unpleasant…
Vercingetorix,
So far I’ve started a reply four times. It always winds up as the introduction to a four-volume tome explaining What Went Wrong with America that I have neither the energy nor the scholarship to finish.
Did you know that the Coast Redwoods were dead? Fact. One of the places I spent time in mah (misspent?) youf was at a company whose main business was forestry; they were instrumental in placing a value on what is now Redwood National Park, so as to compensate the then-owners for the taking. The redwoods are dead. It’s just that it takes a long time for them to keel over and expire, more than a human lifetime. The guys took fiendish delight in having screwed over the short-sighted preservationists, who paid top dollar for a stately, impressive copse of vegetable zombies.
I find myself in sneaking sympathy with the preservationists these days. One of the problems I have with dealing with the Left is that I mostly tend to agree with their positions—it’s just that I’m not willing to take the notions to the sophomoric, absolutist reductio ad absurdum they put forward as the Only True Way. Of course we shouldn’t be cruel to prisoners. But if the only possible definition of “not cruel” ends up as a life of ease and comfort for people who are notionally being “punished”, there is no justice for victims—and the whole basis of the Enlightenment State is destroyed.
Actus, Grokodile, and MJB are pinebark beetles in the climax society, busily burrowing through the cambium that nourishes the State-ly giant. It’s entirely possible that the tipping point is past, that far above the dense canopy the tops are bare snags inhabited by scavengers that live by picking off the more adventurous parasites, and it’s only a matter of time before the giants begin to fall.
But dammit, I’m comfortable and want to continue to be comfortable, and there is no going back. The 40-division military is simply one of the ramifications of the policies decided on long ago, Roundup for the invasive species waiting impatiently along the eaves of the forest for the light and air that will be available alongside the rotting trunks of the fallen institutions. Unfortunately the beetles overgeneralize—they can’t tell the difference between that and the spray that keeps them somewhat in check, and scream that all chemicals are Evil, too shortsighted to see that their comfort is the death of its support, and their absolutism amounts to go weeds! Me, I’d prefer to spray for both of them. It may be futile in the end, but I’m as guilty as they are of wanting as much of the present conditions to continue as possible.
Regards,
Ric
Shame on anyone for questioning the commitment of Liberals to the protection of the downtrodden!
See you not how they rise to the defense of oppressed Americans like Mr. Kennedy when he is abused by the jack-booted police in the wee hours of the morning and they pulled him from his car and attempted to deprive him of his liberties merely because he was suffering from multiple addiction to some pharmaceutical which is after all foisted off on the public as harmless by profiteering drug and alcohol manufacturers?
(We applaud the police for their restraint, by the way, in refusing to drag the nearby waterways for the mortal remains of any females who might have been in the car with Mr. Kennedy that night.)
And do you not see how vigorously the Left defended the right of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to be returned to the loving arms of his father in democracy-loving Cuba, even to the extent of applauding President Clinton’s use of black-suited and masked INS agents armed with submachine guns gently persuading his Florida-state-court-appointed legal guardian to yield him up in a compassionate surprise visit scheduled between midnight and sunrise. (You should read Michael Moore’s empassioned open letter to young Gonzalez, apologizing for the high-handed way right-wing cowards in America attempted to abet and complete his kidnapping by his deranged mother, who was willing to risk his life to abduct him from his happy life in Cuba.)
Wonderful how Clinton was able to reverse decades of Department of Justice policy which had previously held that matters involving child-custody disputes, regardless of parental claims, were exclusively the jurisdiction of state courts.
As for the patient defense of the rights of the oppressed, consider how the Liberals ceaselessly labor to extend the rights and privileges of United States citizenship to residents of foreign nations (except Iraq), most especially those who have shown enough gumption to risk all by violating our borders and laws and taking the lives of current citizens. Indeed, the people whom the Left champions most zealously are those who most boldly act out their dissatisfaction with the bourgeois and suffocating culture of Amerikkka, even when doing so is clearly not in their own interest.
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary government has hung tens of thousands of dissidents, homosexuals, errant wives and insufficiently modest virgins from handy construction cranes, and righteously amputated the offending hands of thieves. By the pedestrian logic of the uncouth conservatives, such behavior violates the principles of freedom of speech and tolerance for behavior outside stifling norms. But the Left gallantly defend the Islamic fundamentalists’ right to butcher their own people and enlarge their influence everywhere.
Possibly they anticipate the berserk violence of the Islamic fascists will balance and so eliminate the oppression of Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals, who voice such mean-spirited opposition to the expansion of the secular hedonism the Left embraces. For my part I applaud the Left for its ability to accommodate such seeming contradictions.
I will for the moment lay aside my seething questions about how the Jihadis when they come to power in the West will dispose of homosexuals, Catholics, dissidents, Methodists, adulterers, Baptists, Zoroastrians, Hindus, followers of Bahu-ul’lah, Episcopalians, Union organizers, Election volunteers, adult video producers, and anyone associated with Pork products.
When Shariah comes, as the Left seems so determined to make straight the way, the Imams will surely remember who their friends were, right? They’ll only saw off the heads of people who opposed’em, right?
In the larger picture, justice will be done. When Islam is victorious, the piddling questions of whether it constitutes torture to force a prisoner in Guantanamo to listen to Brittany Spears music at 4am will be overwhelmed by the Glory of the new Caliphate, whose motto appears to be “Kill’em all! Let Allah sort it out!â€Â
Respectfully, Ric, I decline to see it [decline of centralized institutions] with quite the same fear. Now I have my reasons but first let us take Janus as we first glimpsed him and go from military means to civil.
The nearest analog to our current war is not World War II, but the Indian Wars (which Libruls will contend didn’t exist–it was all Trail of Tears and slaughter–and bad if it did, both one and the same time). In which case we had best emulate our traditional warpower disposition.
As America was less a country than a continent, we set up small bases of professional forces all throughout the West at trading posts etc and allowed American trade to bring the barbarians into the fold (Injuns called them Loafers, those too dependant on Whitey’s goods and trade). We did not and could not secure the West with the Army of the Potomac or Patton’s 3rd. Our offensive forces then used repeating rifles and were, by and large, mounted cavalry, in which case we had highly mobile forces with tremendous firepower. This is the direction we are trending right now in fielding our forces, with everything from HIMARS and local computer networks.
Very few citizens ever served. Many were Scots-Irish immigrants off who settled the West. The Republic survived and thrived.
I do not contend whether our current pathologies are potentially lethal; they are. And of all people, no one enjoys doing rhetorical crowbar-rhinoplasty better than I on our specially-challenged left-wing friends. On the other hand, the pathology that we were founded with was as bad as the socialism/communism with which we must contend today; chattel slavery.
While our welfare state makes an underclass of–ironically–the same racial group and has destroyed the black family in a way even slavery never did, an amazing accomplishment in itself, it may be more survivable. The apathy of our dung-beetles (actus and the girls) does not compare to the danger of slavers and our pseudo-Doric warrior caste; for one thing, Southerners could and would and did fight. Our Frenchified ‘betters’ are tripping over themselves to find someone to surrender too; they will not have the courage of their convictions, as they have no convictions and thus lack courage.
But again, to civil society, the collapse of the welfare state comes with several mitigating factors. One is the progression away from the cities AND country into the suburbs; this is a normative and sectionalizing process. It means your pathology goes with you, and I take my pathology with me. And we compete. And as we know that is the great sorting of the American experiment, competition.
Towns compete, townships compete, cities compete, counties compete, states compete, regions compete and all of this to the competition of the rest of the world. The old welfare stuff is effectively over. Speaking as a Michigander and Flintstone, I can say so with some authority. Places which do not get the message will suffer. And we do not all have to march to penury together. God Bless America.
Your ball
Hmmmm.
Actually the US Army used single-shot Spencers. It was the *Indians* who used repeating rifles like the Henry. C.f. Little Big Horn.
But otherwise your point is dead-on.
Hmmm.
The US won the West by actively turning various Indian tribes on one another by using their ancient feuds as cause for participation in Army raids on enemy tribes. In addition the US won the West largely by decimating the food supplies and food gathering abilities of the Indian tribes.
Basically we made the Indians fight each other, and then starved and slaughtered the survivors.
*shrug* it worked.
No, you are right, ed, about the single-shot rifles. It was the settlers who used the repeating rifles (Winchesters, I believe). And settler encroachment exacerbated the conflict in the Indian world…and there is room for friendly quibbles, but I’ll let it drop.
Vercingetorix,
Don’t get me wrong: I have no anticipation that the United States will self-destruct overnight. The redwoods will be there for a long time yet, providing a place where the wealthy and politically connected can go to experience the glories of Nature; naturally the hoi polloi must be kept out, lest they strew beer cans amongst the Holies.
But if the Twentieth Century gives us any overarching lessons, the primary one is this: strong central control doesn’t work over the long term, regardless of venue. James J. Ling and Josip Dzugashvili both came up against the same problem, which is that the efficiency of centralization is an illusion that cannot be maintained very long. Devolution will occur, de jure or de facto. If nothing else the whole thing will die and the parts spring up as independent entities.
It’s lots of fun to come up with pseudoanthropological reasons why that should be so, and if we’re ever in the same dimly-lit space with alcoholic beverages to hand we can discuss them at length. Here I’m concerned only with the effect. As you say, we’re rapidly reaching the limit of the centripetal forces, but the beneficiaries thereof will not yield easily or quickly. There’s a lot of really messy politics to get through and over, and you can’t put Humpty Dumpty back together.
Our ancestors envisioned a system in which the sovereignty rested in the individual. This has large implications, among them the fact that in such a system the individuals must trust one another to use power wisely. Those who could not and cannot extend that trust—for whatever reasons, some of which seemed good at the time—became fearful and sought to restrict the power of other individuals. That process continues today, but it didn’t start with FDR or even my own little bugaboo, the establishment of Peel-style civil police. Arguably, the logic of the American Revolution should have resulted in an independent Confederacy. It is much too large to argue that there is a direct line from the Emancipation Proclamation to hate-speech laws, but the connection is there, though we have to recognize that both are the result of something more subtle, not that one is the result of the other.
Your example is mistaken. The West was not won by military force, at least not formal military force, and the Army of that period was less a useful military than it was a dumping-ground for undesirably violence-prone individuals remnant of the Late Unpleasantness. Individuals were the driving force; yes, they gathered in groups to amplify their capabilities, which human beings have to do. The Cowboy and Lone Gunman were romantic exaggerations, but the society they exemplified was real.
We will not, cannot, go back to that time. The chain of trust has been broken, and I fear it is unrepairable. Those polities that can maintain their little sections of it will survive; the others will not, unless the survivors are willing to be unnaturally generous. The process will not be either gentle or comfortable.
What is being called into question is the very existence, the philosophical basis, of the liberal or Enlightenment State. One of the absolute requirements of any coherent polity is something definable as “justice”, comprising at the very minimum a rough parity amongst individuals of equivalent status. In pre-Enlightenment societies this function is performed by the “feud” or “revenge” system; one of the “aha!” moments of the past was the discovery that handing it off to the State actually works better, making it more uniform and less prone to atrocity that multiplies offenses. But that will only work as long as the individuals to whom justice is due feel that justice has been served—that offenders are punished in proportion to their offenses. If the people who make up the society feel that that system has failed, it is not a question of whether they will revert to something more personal; it is a question of “when” and “how quickly”.
For the people I live and work among, the notion that the Government dispenses Justice has totally disappeared. So far as they are concerned, going to court is much like going to a casino—the ultimate outcome is not really in doubt, but some people will win at others’ expense, and the more they cheat the bigger the payoff. This comes from a continual barrage of ever-more-intrusive and ever-more-contradictory “laws”, coupled with the near-universal conviction that those who have taken charge of the “justice” system have completely lost sight of the concept of “victim”.
For the present this is uncomfortable but tolerable, at least partly because they can take comfort in the fact that they’re ultimately the ones with the guns, both privately and as members of the military. Unfortunately this is the other side of the force that produces actuses. actus and his ilk [!] cannot be comfortable with the situation, and indeed they are not, and continue to raise the ghosts of long-dead compromises to try to convince the Other to assuage their fears. The problem is that among my neighbors and friends the conviction that the compromises are in fact dead and need to be buried is rising. If actus doesn’t trust me, what possible motive have I for trusting actus? And if I don’t trust actus—which I don’t, not for a microsecond—what motive has he for trusting me?
Whatever the result of that conflict, it won’t look much like the U.S. of 1900, and it won’t be anything our Founding Fathers would have anticipated. All we can really do is strive to keep the conflicts manageable and guide them toward a resolution that’s liveable. At the moment I’m feeling rather pessimistic that either aim is realizable.
Regards,
Ric
Hmmm. Lets see: we have the enemy at a p.o.w. camp, and they attempt to kill guards. Why haven’t we shot them? The failure to do so illustrates our inability to understand that we are at war, and to act accordingly. Otherwise, this war would be over. Good God, we won WWII in less than four years, and we’re still screwing around with Syria and Iran. We need to get serious; quick, fast, and in a hurry.
alex,
We might have “won” WWII in less than four years, but we are still dealing with the after effects of that conflict. Realize please, how long we have had troops in Germany. Winning and pacifying are two different things.
Progress is being madein Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Lebanon, Asia and others in the GWOT. But this war is being fought on two fronts – here against the Left and the rest of the world against the Left and the Jihadists.
Patience.
How do you deal with the ones you mistakenly imprison?
Didn’t it start in 1939?
“We” didn’t get involved until 1941.
I know.
Doubt it. You had to be told.
Absolutely.
And the jaw-dropping stupidity just goes on and on.
McGeHee – Hard to keep your jaw in the upright position when it has to support the weight of both feet. (or the bottom end of a Telephone pole).
Sure, stay away for a few days and all hell breaks loose.
I think pretty much everyone agreed that Afghanistan was a good place to go invade and kill people. Is that a reasonable identification of what “a terrorist” is?
I’d suggest that anyone planting IED’s, kidnapping people, roaming around in death squads and so on qualifies as a terrorist.
Are you guys on crack or what?
You don’t have to be a leftist moonbat to recognize that things have been done wrong or that mistakes have been made here and there.
Oh, yeah, Michael Moore is a fat ass clown. If he doesn’t speak for me does that mean that I can’t be a moonbat anymore? Please say it isn’t so.