On  Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:50:47 -0500 Denys Beauchemin
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Pure sophistry=2E

> Whilst you fiddle around with the meaning of =93war=94=2C the enemy has
> a= lready declared war on the US=2C Canada and the rest of the Western
> World= and has attacked multiple times=2E  In fact the declaration of
> war from = the Islamo-Fascists is constantly expanding=2C to the point
> where anyone = who does not immediately subordinate themselves to their
> will is condemne= d to die=2C by the most disgusting means possible=2E

THE enemy? And who is THE enemy? How will you know when THE enemy is
met?  How will you defeat THE enemy?  Where will you find THE enemy?
How many more "enemies" has this pointless, aimless, futile exercise
in primitive violence begat?  How many more people must die before
the sheer impossibility of the task sinks in?  THE enemy, as if there
is ever one true source of anything.

The United States is NOT the western world.  Canada does not feel
itself under attack.  Your hyperbole reveals a naive and childlike
view of existence where all imagined groups are homogeneous, readily
identified, and easily categorized.  The world is neither so neat nor
so superficial.  It may surprise you to learn that the United States
itself is not as homogeneous as you seem to assume. Many within
consider that present attempts to force it to become more so pose a
far greater threat to the well-being of each of its citizens than any
imagined external enemy. THE enemy is met, and it is ourselves.

You mock the law because you lack both the imagination to see how it
can work and the desire to try.  Yes, the law is a oft-times
lethargic, always blunt, and frequently unsatisfactory instrument,
particularly when the fundamental desire is to promote a narrow self-
interest.  Funnily enough, that is its strength.  Instead of yielding
to red-hot emotion or private gain it forces cool public
contemplation of all the issues that can be discerned and
consideration of all of the consequences that can be estimated.  Then
it applies rules, standards, and precedence to establish a "just"
response.

A "just" response is often unsatisfactory for those that have been
injured.  That is because the law does not exist to protect the
individual but rather the society to the which every individual,
victim and criminal alike, belongs. Justice, to have effect, must be
acceptable to all, or at least a preponderant majority, or it is
retribution only.  Justice may have an element of retribution in it,
indeed it often must or else it is no justice at all, but justice is
primarily a process of establishing the rightness of public action in
the face of an offence to the common order.

To be just, all of the acts leading to judgement must themselves be
free of the taint of personal revenge and private interest.  Claims
about how present circumstances are somehow different than the past
and thus justify departure from hard won advances in civil behaviour
are the cry of the barbarian.  An appeal to base fear.  An atavistic
response to horribly complex issues that are simply not susceptible
to simple answers and are only confused and worsened by recourse to
mindless violence.

Islamo-Fascists indeed!  Your paranoia would be humorous in other
circumstances but I find it hard to smile when I consider the tens of
thousands of women and children dead because similar thoughts have
blinded people who ought, and have a duty, to think things through to
their likely outcomes before precipitating irretrievable acts of
violence.

I will put it very clearly.  The present course of action pursued by
the United States cannot succeed in reducing terrorism as a political
tool because it creates more foes than it kills.  The process is
geometric and it can only be halted if one of the instigators
restrains itself.  Since the role of barbarian has been cast for the
other side then this necessitates that those who see themselves as
civilized must act with restraint.  The process by which public
violence is both restrained and legitimized is called law.

Law is a process that develops to suit evolving social needs.  The
requirement to reduce international political violence is a pressing
social need.  Two world wars made that case very clear.  Responses
that employ raw violence without social consent fail in their social
object and often create internal social stresses of separate and
novel natures in themselves.  This in turn promotes internal
instability and may cause cherished social institutions to weaken or
fail under the trial.  The longer violence whose legitimacy is
contested is continued the greater the possibility of some
catastrophic internal failure.

The situation in Iraq is not tractable to a military solution.  The
deep unhappiness of many non-western people who see important
cultural values being swept away by a tide of capitalist inspired
consumerism cannot be satisfied by superficial calls for greater
education and more equitable wealth distribution.  These are
important issues but they are not central to this situation.  This
problem most certainly cannot be answered by killing people
indiscriminately.  A space must be made for these people or they will
continue to strike out at those whom they perceive promote this
social upheaval for private profit and against the institutions that
they believe support the process.

They will fail, because blunt violence only creates problems, it
cannot solve any.  The mistake is to copy them and respond in kind.
By doing so you play into their hands and accept the rules of the
game as they have written them.  For killing spreads unhappiness to
the relatives and friends of those killed, it does not cower them.
If you try this then you end up having everyone for an enemy and you
cannot watch everyone all of the time.  Eventually, either you must
enlist the world's co-operation to eliminate this source of violence
or you are condemned to retreating within a prison.

The law that you mock, the legitimacy that you deny, is in the end
the only thing that stands between the individual and brute force.
If you do not grant its protection to others then you will not
preserve its shield for yourself.

There is nothing utopian or idealistic about this, it is simple
politics. Piss enough people off long enough and eventually they will
combine to kill you.  The only realistic alternative is to convince
most people that the law needs to be changed to eliminate that which
you find intolerable and to see that it is equitably enforced for
all, including yourself.  And that often necessitates giving up a few
valuable considerations in exchange.  Sometimes it takes the powerful
and wealthy a long time to see where their interests truly lie.
Sometimes they never see it.  Sometimes their hands are forced and
they loose the ability to choose.

As for your opinion on the credibility of the United Nations, you are
in a minority position even within the United States.  Many who
express similar sentiments wish it were otherwise but one opinion
poll after another show that a constant 60%+ of U.S. citizens approve
of the UN and the same number indicate reliably that the United
States should only take action abroad with UN approval.

Now, once the United States is actually committed to some foreign
adventure approximately 50-55% will support their country (right or
wrong) but that is an artifact of contested loyalties overwhelming
personal belief under circumstances of actual conflict. It is not an
expression of what these people desired as preferable prior to open
hostilities.

There is a body of international law that permitted removing Saddam
Hussein from power though the UN and trying him under the authority
of the ICC.  However, that idea does not sit well with the
chauvinists presently running the United States (and to be fair, most
of the other governments of the world), who perceive one set of
standards for themselves and another, quite different, for the rest.
No, the idea that ruling sovereigns, even from forth rate countries
like Iraq, might be taken to the dock for mistreating their own
citizens and threatening their neighbours must have caused blood to
run cold in many that hold high office, both in the United States and
abroad.  So it is not surprising that the UN presently can do little.
 It is a case of the powerful having to choose between what they have
and what they want.

Naturally they want to get what they desire and also to keep what
they have.  However, past experience shows that in great events this
is an unlikely outcome.  So the present unsatisfactory state of
affairs will continue, until the growing cost in blood and gold
impresses itself upon the public consciousness and popular political
pressure to end it becomes too dangerous to resist.

And what will be the result do you think?  Do you believe that the
rest of the world thinks higher of, or is more fearful of, a super-
power with 300 million citizens that cannot impose its will on a
single impoverished state with fewer than 30 million?  Do you believe
that the rest of the world is now more inclined to follow
Washington's lead on anything?  Do you believe that the public
opinion of the rest of the world's population is of such
inconsequence that it may safely be ignored or mocked?  Do you think
that this type of behaviour actually furthers the interests of the
United States?  Do you think that the United States can afford the
bill?  For someone who hates taxes as much as you have evidenced in
the past you are not really thinking this through.

No, the law, for all its faults, is the only way to go for it is the
only thing that proves socially durable, or affordable.  The problem
is that for now the United States is unwilling, and perhaps unable,
to pay the political price that consent to the law necessitates.
However, the present mess in Iraq is representative of the
alternative and the next one will be worse.  Eventually, the value of
the freedoms lost to submission to the rule of law will come to be
viewed as less than the costs of resisting.  At that time, change
will occur.

One last point on semantics, it is impossible by definition for
sophistry to be pure since the art hinges on substituting variable
meanings for words that are used throughout the argument.  If rather
you intended its meaning in the modern sense of false argument then
again your statement fails, since no postulate can ever be formulated
free of imprecision.  Thus all true assertions must contain elements
of falsehood and all false ones, elements of truth.  Purity therefore
is an unachievable ideal.  In any case, asserting that ones
opponents' arguments are nought but sophistry requires recourse to
logic in either displaying the fundamental falsehoods expressed or
the changes of meaning employed.  This is notably lacking in your
response.  Indeed, consider the impossibility of rationally
establishing the truth or falsehood of many of your own opinions
given as evidence but falling outside the realm of objectively
determinable fact.


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