----- Original Message ----- From: "Yoshie Furuhashi" <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>
> >====================
> >
> >All wars are crimes against humanity.
> >
> >Ian
>
> Including the American Civil War, for instance? Slaves and free
> blacks would have disagreed with you!
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The US' un-Civil War was not fought to free the slaves:
"Congress tried to make the railroad surveys a scientific solution to what was essentially a political problem. The real issue was whether the North or South would be the terminus of the transcontinental railroad. Congress deadlocked [oh, metaphor!], and so public officials looked to scientists to consult nature for the best route. In charge of the organization of the expeditions was Jefferson Davis, then US secretary of war and within a decade to be president of the Confederacy. Davis, like most southerners, had already decided upon the best route - the 32nd parallel route to San Diego- before the railroad expeditions even departed. He was willing to allow other routes to be surveyed, but he had decided in advance that none of them was likely to be feasible. Nature, Davis believed, favored the South." [Richard White, "It's Your Misfortune and None of My Own" 1991 Univ of Oklahoma Press, p. 125]
> People have the right to defend themselves, overthrow tyrannical
> regimes under which they suffer, liberate their land from colonial
> occupation, and so on, but they don't have the right to wage war for
> conquest, colonization, retaliation, etc. That's a question of ends.
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All contestable concepts no? See how quickly you express the legitimacy of the right to defend when if there is no right to inuagurate agression how can there be a right to defend? How many times have folks on this list pointed out the unavoidable circularity of rights discourse? When have the aggressors ever 'fessed up to claiming they were inaugurating aggression pure and simple? If there is no right of aggression, and I think we both agree there isn't, how can there be any just wars? BTW, by conservative estimates there are some 25 million people currently living in slavery; who should be attacked and who should authorize the attacks?
> Now, a question of means. Some means are justifiable; others are
> not. For instance, rape, torture, murders and mistreatments of POWs,
> attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, etc. are war
> crimes, even if they are committed by those who are fighting for an
> otherwise just cause (e.g., national liberation from colonial
> occupation).
> --
> Yoshie
================
Ah, the torch of Platonism burns deep in the belly. If there were an intelligible transcendental realm of right and wrong with regards to behavior in war there'd be no desire for aggression, conquest and the like. Justifiability is also an essentially contestable concept and those who engage in the behaviors you condemn would surely assert you were begging the question[s]. To take one example how can there be a right to kill a combatant in war, but not torture them? Because a bunch of lawyers said so? Violence and institutionalized violence are the black hole of thought.
Ian