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pecuniumThe most recent flap about the religious beliefs of John Kerry (and how this supposedly makes it impossible for Catholics to vote for him, and remain catholics) has been irking me.
Why is it, I rhetorically ask, that Kerry's beliefs on abortion and gay marriage make it impossible for Catholics to vote for him, but Bush's views on the death penalty and agressive war don't disqualify him?
For a more complete lowdown (and funny as all hell if one is an educated Catholic, or religious historian George Bush, Heretic at NewDonkey.
To avoid making another political post, I was having turbid dreams this morning... end of the world stuff, with Jobian interactions with God (I took him to task for His wanting to wipe us out and start over... He made us, He has to live with us... it made more sense in the dream) and I awoke, in that state of reverie, realising that the Right knows is is going against the tenets of the Nation and the meaning of the Constitution; at least the ones at the top (reading Is that Legal, and Orcinus will tend to make one less sanguine about the future of the republic, but I digress).
When someone writes a law, they know that difficulties will lead to the courts reviewing it. It's one of the checks in the system. So when someone starts writing a law which tries to exclude itself from those checks, one has to wonder why.
The Right will say it's to prevent, "activist judges" from misinterpreting the law. But that's tough. The Constitution gives them the power to do that, and the truth of the matter is that it hasn't been happening, at least not to the detriment of the causes they espouse.
With the judges appointed to the federal bench, under both Clinton and Bush, it's also going to happen less and less. Which means they can only think the laws they are proposing are so severely out of step with the Constitution that even their pet judges will balk at them.
That's a scary thought.
The laws they are proposing Pecunium are even scarier. As I've said before, Nehemiah Scudder is waiting in the wings.
Why is it, I rhetorically ask, that Kerry's beliefs on abortion and gay marriage make it impossible for Catholics to vote for him, but Bush's views on the death penalty and agressive war don't disqualify him?
For a more complete lowdown (and funny as all hell if one is an educated Catholic, or religious historian George Bush, Heretic at NewDonkey.
To avoid making another political post, I was having turbid dreams this morning... end of the world stuff, with Jobian interactions with God (I took him to task for His wanting to wipe us out and start over... He made us, He has to live with us... it made more sense in the dream) and I awoke, in that state of reverie, realising that the Right knows is is going against the tenets of the Nation and the meaning of the Constitution; at least the ones at the top (reading Is that Legal, and Orcinus will tend to make one less sanguine about the future of the republic, but I digress).
When someone writes a law, they know that difficulties will lead to the courts reviewing it. It's one of the checks in the system. So when someone starts writing a law which tries to exclude itself from those checks, one has to wonder why.
The Right will say it's to prevent, "activist judges" from misinterpreting the law. But that's tough. The Constitution gives them the power to do that, and the truth of the matter is that it hasn't been happening, at least not to the detriment of the causes they espouse.
With the judges appointed to the federal bench, under both Clinton and Bush, it's also going to happen less and less. Which means they can only think the laws they are proposing are so severely out of step with the Constitution that even their pet judges will balk at them.
That's a scary thought.
The laws they are proposing Pecunium are even scarier. As I've said before, Nehemiah Scudder is waiting in the wings.
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Part 2
Date: 2004-10-22 03:23 pm (UTC)The last sentence is strange. Esp. as we are discussing the Bella justum. The soldier is duty bound to follow his leaders. Those waging an unjust war doesn't taint the soldier who carry it out.
For a pretty phrasing of the argument
KING HENRY V
So, if a son that is by his father sent about
merchandise do sinfully miscarry upon the sea, the
imputation of his wickedness by your rule, should be
imposed upon his father that sent him: or if a
servant, under his master's command transporting a
sum of money, be assailed by robbers and die in
many irreconciled iniquities, you may call the
business of the master the author of the servant's
damnation: but this is not so: the king is not
bound to answer the particular endings of his
soldiers, the father of his son, nor the master of
his servant; for they purpose not their death, when
they purpose their services. Besides, there is no
king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to
the arbitrement of swords, can try it out with all
unspotted soldiers: some peradventure have on them
the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder;
some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of
perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that
have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with
pillage and robbery. Now, if these men have
defeated the law and outrun native punishment,
though they can outstrip men, they have no wings to
fly from God: war is his beadle, war is vengeance;
so that here men are punished for before-breach of
the king's laws in now the king's quarrel: where
they feared the death, they have borne life away;
and where they would be safe, they perish: then if
they die unprovided, no more is the king guilty of
their damnation than he was before guilty of those
impieties for the which they are now visited. Every
subject's duty is the king's; but every subject's
soul is his own. Therefore should every soldier in
the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every
mote out of his conscience: and dying so, death
is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was
blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained:
and in him that escapes, it were not sin to think
that, making God so free an offer, He let him
outlive that day to see His greatness and to teach
others how they should prepare.
Which addresses the issue of the soul.
The funny thing is, the very argument you are making is why the Swift Boat Boys are so mad at Kerry. They feel impugned because he said, and rightly, that some atrocities were committed. They can't seem to accept that not all soldiers are, to quote Shakespeare, "unspotted."
People in my line of work have been accused of terrible things, in Gitmo, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq. Some of them are people I know, people I worked with. It pains me, but none of what they did (and they did real wrongs, if the evidence seen so far is true) taints me. I did what I was told to do, and did it within the limits of what can be done humanely, and justly, in war. Jus in bella is pernicious, even if one can rightly say that jus ad bella was fought, but so too is it pernicious to made the argument that a lack of jus in bella makes it impossible for the soldier to act, jus in bella.
Re: Part 2
Date: 2004-10-22 07:22 pm (UTC)We imprisioned and hung Nazi generals for planning and participating in "agressive war". There were defendants at Nuremburg charged only with that count. The defense that they were simply executing the orders of their head of state did not suffice.
Last time I checked, we got taught that illegal and immoral orders should not be followed. If your argument is that the entire war is immoral, than it follows that actions in that war cannot be moral.
Now, in a moral war, atrocities can be committed (Abu Gharib, or the 'dehousing' nightime incindiary bombing campaign of WWII), but Shakespeare to the contrary, an illegal or immoral war cannot be waged justly.
Re: Part 2
Date: 2004-10-22 09:02 pm (UTC)The distinction you are trying to make is the one of jus ad versus jus in bella, which is the argument Shakespeare addressed.
An immoral war is laid at the feet of the man who starts it. He must have a just cause for the war. But an order to do the will of the king (whom both Augustine, and Aquinas gave the authority; we give it to a legislative group, who delegate the management, once the decision is made) is a lawful order.
The soldier's duty is to be moral in the war. In how he conducts himself. No soldier of the Reich was charged with being a pawn in the war, even though it was unjust (in this sense). Those who were charged, were charged with going beyond the bounds of what was legal, in the framework of war. Once committed, the nation's call on her subjects means they lose some of the ability to protest (because it rarely happens that someone gives a war, and no-body comes).
TK
Re: Part 2
Date: 2004-10-23 05:48 am (UTC)No, there were four counts. Count 1 was conspiracy to wage aggressive war. Count 2 was waging aggressive war, "the planning, preparation, initiation, and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements, and assurances."
Count 3 was war crimes, Count 4 crimes against humanity. Hess was not charged with 3 or 4, only counts 1 and 2. Raeder was charged with 1, 2, and 3 and convicted only of 2.
Donitz was, IMHO, unjustly convicted of count 3 unless we are willing to put Admiral Chester Nimitz on trial for issuing precisely the same instructions to the US submarine fleet in the Pacific ocean. However, British sensibilities overruled common sense.
At any rate, the issue is whether to obey an illegal order (which you are arguing the order to initiate OIF was) is excused because of the pay grade of the person issuing it. If a officer issues me an order to shoot an unarmed civillian who is not doing anything threatening then I am wrong if I obey him. At the least, you are arguing that General Franks and his senior staff and component commanders are war criminals. Is this your intent?
Re: Part 2
Date: 2004-10-23 06:00 am (UTC)And yes, we charged the leaders with that. But we didn't hang them for the war of agression, it was the counts 3 and 4 which got them the rope. And, again, it was not the rank and file who were reaped the fruits of that, but rather those who, as charge one states conspired to wage aggressive war.
Charge two can be misread, but it isn't aimed at those who were the pawns in the game, but rather those who managed the board.
As you point out with Raeder, 1 and 2 were not capital.
TK
Re: Part 2
Date: 2004-10-23 08:07 am (UTC)Re: Part 2
Date: 2004-10-23 04:01 pm (UTC)On a different level, even if Congress had called him on the revocation of authority, he gets 30 days, under the war powers act to do what he wants, before he has to justify it to Congress. That he broke the law isn't relevant to the lawfulness of the order (in part because there are so many laws, in regards to what constitutes a legal order; and what recourse a soldier, or unit, has to defy one that isn't. Orders give a limited privilege to the soldier).
That Congress hasn't repudiated the attacks, means they gave tacit consent, after the fact, and so the illegality is being winked at.
TK