O.K. then, let's give it another try:

Barbary Pirates, 1804?

BT


Tracy Johnson
MSI Schaevitz Sensors 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: HP-3000 Systems Discussion [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
> Behalf Of James B. Byrne
> Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 6:52 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [HP3000-L] OT: Non-conservative comments
> 
> 
> On 27 Oct 2004 at 15:35, Denys Beauchemin wrote:
> 
> > USS Stark, March 17, 1987.  Look it up.
> 
> The problem with this gross over-simplification is that unlike states
> individuals, even groups of individuals,  cannot go to war.  Private
> violence has long been marginalized as criminal activity.  This is
> for the very good reason that unrestrained violence begets revenge
> and so states have learned that if they are to retain legitimacy over
> their subjects, then social violence must be highly ritualized and
> constrained.  Thus the the laws must be publicly known to
> transgressor before the act, police must not kill out hand, official
> brutality must be repressed, courts must operate in full public view,
> evidence and witnesses must meet sufficiently high standards of
> credibility, accused must be properly represented, etc.  War contains
> none of these things.
> 
> War is simple, deadly, violence, unleashed with effectively no
> restraint.  The Geneva conventions and such really only hold before
> engagements and after, but do not effectively constrain acts of
> violence perpetrated in combat.  War serves neither justice nor law,
> but deals death and destruction indiscriminately, consuming foe and
> innocent with regard for neither.
> 
> The United States is placing itself in the position where this
> distinction, between criminal acts and war, is becoming a moot point.
>  By doing so the United States is legitimizing private violence on an
> international scale, by its actions granting these private groups the
> same status as sovereign states.  This seems to me to be a rather
> self-defeating outcome.  It also runs against the last 500 years of
> European, and by extension American, history and social development.
> 
> I recall the lines from "A Man for All Seasons" where Roper and Moore
> are sparing in court and Roper tells Moore that he would "drive a
> road through the law to get at the devil."  Moore's reply is
> devastating. As I recall it went something like "and when the last
> law was down, and the devil then turned to face you, just where would
> you hide?"
> 
> That sentence, and it may have originally been Shakespeare's,
> concisely captures why dispensing with the law is so destructive to
> those that choose the shortcut to revenge over the long road to
> justice.  It is not this case, but those that follow.  It is not your
> present sate, but the condition you will one day find yourself in.
> That is why the law must prevail, not just for now but forever. If it
> does not suite then it must be adjusted, but in such a fashion that
> all may find shelter within.  But to dispense with it it entire is
> short-sighted and self-destructive.  Whatever the result is called,
> it will not be recognizable as peace.
> 

> 

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