Many of the gun rights advocates I come across in my readings make a claim that an armed citizenry places a check on oppressive government. Public officials, they say, including the police, should fear the population, and worry that armed insurrection is possible. They especially like the Hitler Used Gun Control to Keep Power myth, though the 1938 Waffengesetz arguably loosened gun laws in Germany and facilitated gun ownership. Government, they suggest, is not an agent of a citizenry acting as a principal and controlling it through participatory democracy. It instead has its own agency, independent of the will of the people, with interests opposing that of the people. In this formulation, the purpose of the Second Amendment, is to ensure that citizens have the tools needed to perpetuate this threat, and to carry it out in the event government becomes oppressive, since citizen participation in democratic institutions is not sufficient to direct government action. Read the rest of this entry »
Archive for category US Military
It’s a little hard to know what to make of this piece at the US Naval Institute Blog on repeal of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy, which opened military service to homosexuals as long as they keep their sexual preferences secret and remain celibate. For the record, neither US law nor military policy place restrictions like this on heterosexuals–they may openly express their lust for the opposite sex, and play as they will. The blogger, a reserve Marine LTC using the nom de plume “UltimaRatioRegis,” opens with a set of notional “amplifying instructions” guiding implementation of DADT repeal, ostensibly from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
The content of this invented document comes in a snarky tone, and includes the sort of instructions that no military officer would ever issue: direction to revise passages in the Bible which he reads as banning homosexual behavior, add pro-gay instruction to curricula at DOD Dependent Schools, and a statement that “failure to agree with my views on this subject will be considered an integrity violation and subject to administrative or disciplinary action.” Just to be clear, the good colonel thinks that military leaders repress dissent–or they should. He should know that regulations do not prohibit public disagreement with superior officers. The rules ban doing so in uniform, but the do not limit individual self expression on political issues or military doctrine.
Mr. Regis then writes that Admiral Mullen should in fact issue such instructions, and complains about dismissal of objections to the repeal of DADT as “the rantings of intolerant and hateful bigots.” He further whines about the “marginalization” of people who object to homosexuality on religious or moral grounds because of their faith and their views. Finally, he lists related issues which have “not gotten serious discussion,” including whether or not the “diversity industry” (whatever that means) will force command sponsored gay pride days, whether others would accept openly serving gays as they have the current secret ones, and of course the old slippery slope “what about transexuals” crap. Read the rest of this entry »
I normally agree with Mark Kleiman–his views are, after all, reality based–but I have to take issue with this post on two grounds.
Dr. Kleiman argues that Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters, whether or not in uniform, are prisoners of war, and the US Government may therefore keep them incarcerated for the duration of hostilities. He rightly points out two problems with this: that some prisoners were not combatants at all, and that hostilities have no apparent end point. But his central argument remains: that we are at war with terrorist organizations, and we may therefore hold captured supporters of these organizations until hostilities cease to keep them from returning to the battlefield.
First, I would challenge the assumption that a state of war exists between the United States and al Qaeda. Congress made no such declaration (a careful reading of the September 18, 2001 resolution authorizing military force suggests that Congress intended only to facilitate compliance with the War Powers Resolution), and non-state actors like al Qaeda cannot by definition commit acts of war, nor can they be “at war,” any more than a drug cartel could, for example, or Doctors Without Borders. We would look unkindly, I think, on a state detained captured Red Cross indefinitely as prisoners of war on the grounds they they supported an insurrection against the recognized authorities.
Non-state actors can, however, commit crimes, like the murder of three thousand innocent people. The hiding or protecting of such criminals by state authorites may justify declared or undeclared war against that state–as protection of drug lords might call for military operations against Columbia, or Mexico–but murder is not war, and states cannot by definition wage war on criminal gangs. Just because we use military forces to disrupt their criminal activity or capture them does not make these operations a “war.”
Unless we want to confer on them the authority to wage war. My second challenge is that our insistence on characterizing terrorist operatives as “combatants” places them on an equal footing with sovereign states with respect to the use of violenct to achieve their goals. The concept of sovereignty evolves, largely because of the actions of states (see e.g., Martha Finnemore’s The Purpose of Intervention, and Stephen Krasner’s Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy). If powerful states like the US treat organized terrorist groups as quasi states by fighting them under the rubric of “war,” we run the risk of legitimizing them. Few would argue that only a formal declaration creates a state of war, but accepting the idea that such a state can exist between states and non-state actors implies that actors other than states can legitimately use violence to achieve its goals.
Every conflict carries a normative component: each side will attempt to demonize the other, both to rally its citizens to the cause and create a justification for using extraordinary (and often bystander unfreindly) methods. Our normative efforts with regard to al Qaeda have heretofore depended on ethnic and religious arguments. We should instead delegitimize their efforts by characterizing them as the criminals they are, and treating them so.
This could have two ancillary benefits: it dissacoiates their claims against individual states from their methods, stigmatizes their activity. By classifying them as criminals instead of quasi states capable of making war, we place them outside of the international system and make recruiting more difficult. It also shows the world that we can manage an international violence problem using established legal systems, making other states less suspicious of our motives and more willing to negotiate the expansion of those systems (since others will be more likely to use them to solve their own conflicts).
Classifying al Qaeda operatives as wartime combatants so we can detain them indefinitely would seem to solve some difficult criminal justice, jurisdiction, and secret evidence issues by simply pushing them to the side. But it legitimizes al Qaeda by confering upon it at least one component of sovereignty: the power to make war. By characterizing our fight with them as a “war,” we have taken the first step toward making actors like them members of the international system. We should shut them out instead, and treat them as criminal gangs.
Putting Yourself Out There
May 20
It seems I really touched a nerve with this comment on a post about gays in the military over at The Western Experience. The proprietor, Jason Corley, responded sharply, and upon reflection I would like to say something about why I am more open about my background than he. Read the rest of this entry »
Moral Courage
Apr 29
I posted a comment to this post at Tom Redhunter’s site a little while ago. It won’t appear there, because Mr. Redhunter hasn’t the stomach for an open discussion on his blog. So I will post it here:
Torture is immoral, ineffective, and depraved. Our government has an obligation to prosecute anyone, including American soldiers and intelligence officials, who lacked the moral courage to refuse orders to torture detainees.
This goes double, of course, for those military and civilian leaders who developed an active torture program, or who simply tortured prisoners for sadistic pleasure.
Mr. Redhunter’s post is really just applause for this post by Steve Schippert at National Review Onlline. Schippert should know better, since he served in the Marines, but Redhunter is just another loudmouth who calls himself a Cold Warrior for reading and reviewing foreign policy books by right wing hacks but couldn’t be bothered to put on the uniform himself to fight the Red Menace. The fact is that not all soldiers are angels acting out of patriotic duty and a pure heart. I know–I was there.
We should all praise and show pride in our military forces and people–no one cares more about our soldiers than former NCOs like me–but we have to remember that not all serve honorably and well. Soldiers and intelligence officials who tortured prisoners served dishonorably by definition. This behavior violates several provisioins of the Uniform Code of Miltary Justice (UCMJ), including those against cruelty and maltreatment, maiming, assault, and conduct unbecoming. Like troops who violate other provisions of the UCMJ, those in the military who intentionally brutalized prisoners in their care should be punished.
Support our troops, yes. But not when they lose their moral compass, engage in depraved, immoral behavior, and break the law.