|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
|| [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Justin Schwartz
|| >
|| >So if the rule of law has been shattered and the world has
|| been transformed
|| >into an image of Afghanistan, where warlords and bandits once
|| again roam
|| >free, there's not much sense in talking about legal
|| principles. The crime
|| >is
|| >so gross and so openly committed that it needs no discussing.
|| >
|| >Hakki Alacakaptan
|| >
||
||
|| I don't get your point. So we live in a lawless world, there's no point
|| talking about law? We also live in a world without justice. Is there no
|| point in talking about justice? In the name of what do you
|| decty lawlessness
|| and injustice, then?
||
|| jks
||
International law is now a _negative_ concept - something that should be, that once was, but no longer exists. We can no longer speak of breaches of sovereignty, of crimes against humanity, etc., _as legal concepts_ after S11 because the legal framework has been subverted. We can speak in moral terms, of course, but our discourse will be negative, for the concepts we use are no longer institutional. We should take care that any crimes we impute on a state from now on should not be understood as crimes in the legal sense, for when top cop is the biggest criminal, the definition of crime collapses.
Of course most pundits will pretend nothing untoward has happened, but the Afghanistan war has really been the daisycutter that broke the camel's back, and if the party moves on to Iraq, the camel will be atomized. It's very hard to pretend the ICJ has any legitimacy accusing Milos of genocide now (although the bastard should be convicted, legitimate or not).
I think it's important to put the US war against Afghanistan in perspective, as Chomsky is doing, and to show that above and beyond the individual cases of military action and their apparent causes, there is a continuing, persistent demolition of civilization.
Hakki Alacakaptan