Oh, well, if you say it doesn’t, it must be true! When I next need to figure out what political reality is, I’ll just consult anonymous people on the internet. The fact that the anarchists were consistently the strongest fighters against totalitarianism in Ukraine, Republican Spain, etc. is neither here nor there when it comes to evaluating the truth of Kropotkin’s statement. All that matters is what you say is reality.

No idea what you’re talking about, not interested. I’ve told you what I think of your views and theoretical circle jerks are not my cup of tea, so off you go. Best of luck in your future endeavors.

Oh, yes, you’ve told me what you think, but you’ve given me no reason to care what you think. At least I’m capable of adducing a series of a reasons, and addressing the fundamental issues at play here. You are doing nothing more than whining, misrepresenting, engaging in partisanship, and spouting off a lot of unexamined prejudices. Hell, in my last message I practically gave you a roadmap to an arguable position, and you still couldn’t manage it.

Pyotr Kropotkin

Well, nuts, if Kropotkin said it it must be true. Seriously, do you believe this horseshit applies to the real world? Because it doesn’t.

To put it more bluntly: what is the “rule of law” and how does the “law” effect its “rule”?

No idea what you’re talking about, not interested. I’ve told you what I think of your views and theoretical circle jerks are not my cup of tea, so off you go. Best of luck in your future endeavors.

There’s one obvious way around that, but since you think that the elimination of state power would be a “miracle”, it’s not hard to infer why you can’t see the obvious.

But Pyotr Kropotkin did the work for you: “Under these circumstances it is obvious that any visible reprisal could and would be met by a resumption of the same revolutionary action on the part of the individuals or groups affected, and that the maintenance of a state of Anarchy in this manner would be far easier than the gaining of a state of Anarchy by the same methods and in the face of hitherto unshaken opposition . . . They have it in their power to apply a prompt check by boycotting such a person and refusing to help him with their labour or to willingly supply him with any articles in their possession. They have it in their power to use force against him. They have these powers individually as well as collectively. Being either past rebels who have been inspired with the spirit of liberty, or else habituated to enjoy freedom from their infancy, they are hardly to rest passive in view of what they feel to be wrong” (Kropotkin, Act for Yourselves! pg. 87-88).

And yes, I believe in the rule of law because it beats the shit out of rule by whim of the strong.

That’s not an answer, that’s just a prejudice. To put it more bluntly: what is the “rule of law” and how does the “law” effect its “rule”?

Perhaps you ought to give your own links a closer read, particularly when it comes to the section titled “Critique”, which mentions Giorgio Agamben’s State of Exception. Hélène Cixous also makes the point that the law doesn’t have any concrete existence in Readings: The Poetics of Blanchot, Joyce, Kafka, Kleist, Lispector, and Tsvetayeva, although she approaches it from the perspective of a literary discussion of Kafka’s “Before the Law”.

Next.

I have a suggestion for what’s next. Perhaps you could start dealing with the argument I’ve actually made. I outlined it for you above, and you had no response to it. You could attack it on several fronts: 1) that neither Clinton nor Bush have committed war crimes nor crimes against humanity, 2) that moral hairsplitting over which war crimes or crimes against humanity are worse is an ethically sound position and doesn’t lead to diminishment or denial of the horror of the others’ crimes, etc. etc. Go ahead and put some flesh on the dry bones of your argument!

Great, then we can all be governed by Blackwater. Sounds good.

Did I say that? As usual, you are making up shit again.

No, I said that. It’s what would happen were you to miraculously able to “smash the state”. The most ruthless people with the most guns would move in and take power.

And yes, I believe in the rule of law because it beats the shit out of rule by whim of the strong. Next.

Well, tough. I’m not going to play that game, because it’s clearly meant to distract from the subject of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The US can go take a flying leap, for all I care.

The 1.5 million number is inflated, btw- the ~500,000 is sadly not.

If an author at The Nation told me that the sky was blue, I’d stick my head out a window to check. When it comes to foreign policy, they have a long history of carrying water for the State Department under the banner of liberalism.

Consider, for example, this passage: “The government of Iraq also bears considerable responsibility for the humanitarian crisis, however. Sanctions could have been suspended years ago if Baghdad had been more cooperative with UN weapons inspectors.”

The reason that Hussein may not have been in a mood to cooperate with UN weapons inspectors was that the US planted spies in the IAEA inspection teams. (Since you demand citations for everything, this information can be found, along with a citation to the original New York Times article, in Blowback by Chalmers Johnson.) Obscuring that reason is part and parcel of whitewashing the whole thing to make the U.S. look good.

You used the phrase “war crimes and crimes against humanity” and then the only example of that you gave was the RTS bombing. You can see how a person might reasonably think you were calling the RTS bombing a crime against humanity? Yes?

No, I don’t. I can see how a dishonest, partisan person who is intent on misreading other people to his own advantage could do so, but a reasonable person would consider the phrase “war crimes” that comes before the conjunction, and might even use the principle of charity to arrive at the correct conclusion that the author was intending the RTS bombing as an example of a “war crime”, rather than mucking up his nicely turned phrase with the inelegant conjunction “and/or”.

You got me. With statements like the one above you seemed to be equating Clinton’s “crimes” with Bush’s actual crimes, which is the most ludicrous fucking thing I have ever heard, so I exaggerated your position to highlight that in a humorous manner.

You failed in one respect: it wasn’t funny. It was, however, highly dishonest.

And if it’s ludicrous to make the argument I’m making, then I’d be obliged if you’d actually respond to the argument I’m making. That argument is, since you seem to have trouble following it: Clinton is a war criminal. Bush is a war criminal. Since I find it ethically bankrupt to engage in hairsplitting about which one is worse than the other, since they’ve killed so many between them, I find it appropriate to hold them equally guilty and find them equally loathsome. I don’t see what’s so ludicrous about that position, and I’d be obliged if you would explain to me why you think so.

Yes, I could’ve done the search myself but you’re the one making the argument. Support your assertions.

I can support my assertions. What you are demanding is that I support my assertions in the precise manner in which you demand it: with references online, which is not where I get the vast majority of my information. Since you are demanding references from a source I hardly ever consult for information about world affairs, you put me in the position of seeking out what you could well have read yourself, and obliging me to read what I already know over again so that I can insure that these links you can find yourself are providing you with accurate information.

I’m making my argument. It’s up to you to argue for what you think.

But you are not making any sort of argument, you’re just making a series of willful misreadings and unsubstantiated assertions about what I believe. There’s no actual content in your posts and I’d be very grateful if you’d start putting some in.

When did I say that Iraqi lives didn’t matter? My point was that deaths resulting from legal economic sanctions are not war crimes. It’s a matter of legality, not “moral authority”.

Well, you say it every time you make legality the issue, as if legality itself can remove the value from a human life and make killing it an acceptable matter. If you’re going to then turn around a deplore the deaths of Iraqis in Bush’s war, it’s perfectly legitimate to question your moral authority to deplore those deaths when you wink at the numbers of deaths due to sanctions. Either Iraqi civilian deaths are bad or they are not. It’s really as simple as that.

Great, then we can all be governed by Blackwater. Sounds good.

Did I say that? As usual, you are making up shit again.

That would be great, except the other governments of the world are for the most part no more concerned with the will of the people than is the US gov’t.

And what does that have to do with anything? I”m not in favor of any governments of any sort. However, I also am particularly against governments which use massive deaths and the threats of massive deaths to strongarm countries to fall under the influence of superior force.

Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed that you disapproved of Saddam.

Which is a fairly typical Crossfire response. The false dichotomy was a particular favourite of that show, and you’ve just given a particularly nasty example of it here. So fuck you.

OK, well, we don’t have much to talk about if you don’t believe in the rule of law.

Of course I don’t believe in it. I doubt very much if you believe in it either. The “law” is an abstraction. It has no hindsight, no foresight, no abilities of its own to impose its will in any way, etc. So then how can it rule? What can rule is the mechanisms of the state, under the cover of law, and when we start reifying the concept of the law, treating it as if it were a ruler in itself, that’s the first step in handing over our autonomy to the state. So of course there’s no rule of law. What there is is a rule of legislators who operate in their own interests and the interests of this enormous mechanism of state power, rather than the interests of the people, and then we have the judicial system and the cops, which act as the bureaucracy and the occupying army of state power. At no point does “law” come into this, except as a figleaf for maintaining systematic inequality and forcing conformity upon the dissenters. So you tell me, do you believe in the “rule of law”? If you do, why?

Considering that you don’t blench at the thought of 1.5 million civilian deaths, over half a million of which were children under the age of five, I’m sure you’ll get over it. Your queasiness is a little…convenient.

I wish you would tell me what US course of action would’ve been acceptable to you. The non sequitor you give in response later in the post- “smash the state” (by which I guess you mean “cease to be”)- isn’t going to happen, so in the physical universe we inhabit what is the least bad option for a government to take in this situation?

The 1.5 million number is inflated, btw- the ~500,000 is sadly not.

Note that I never characterized the RTS bombing as a crime against humanity. This is part and parcel of you dishonestly making up my position for me, which we will see many times before this thread is done.

For example, here is what I said: “May I infer that you agree that bombing a civilian TV station was a war crime? If so, then what is the point of looking for more examples?”

My apologies for mischaracterizing what you said. Here’s where you used the phrase ‘crimes against humanity’:

NATO, led by the US, committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kosova, including, but not limited to, the bombing of a radio and television station in Serbia
…
he did bomb the shit out of Kosova, a situation which was as much a crime against humanity as Bush’s Iraq misadventure.
…
Clinton is responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

And you directed me to

Marjorie Cohn’s “Nato Bombing of Kosovo: Humanitarian Intervention or Crime against Humanity?”

I don’t know how I got the idea that you were misusing that phrase.

I was asking if you agreed with me that the bombing of RTS was a war crime, leading the literate person to infer that I think that the RTS bombing was a war crime, not necessarily a crime against humanity, although on occasion a war crime can also be a crime against humanity.

Jeez, you’re spinning worse than Tony Snow. You used the phrase “war crimes and crimes against humanity” and then the only example of that you gave was the RTS bombing. You can see how a person might reasonably think you were calling the RTS bombing a crime against humanity? Yes?

Moving on.

Actually its earliest use was during the Armenian Genocide, which was 1.2 million estimated deaths.

Thank you, I didn’t know that- I thought it came out of Nuremburg.

Obviously if our military is deliberately targeting civilians it’s a crime and someone needs to answer for it.

Yes, “someone”. Interesting that you don’t try to indicate who that “someone” might be.

Because I don’t know.

It doesn’t seem to qualify Clinton as history’s greatest monster,

And here we have the second example of you rewriting my argument to suit yourself, even after I have already said “Getting into moral hairsplitting about which war criminal is worse ultimately ends up absolving one or the other of responsibility for their crimes, whereas the right thing to do is condemn them both equally.”

Sound like I’m trying to claim that Clinton is history’s greatest monster or anything close to it? I’ll answer that for you, since I don’t trust you to honestly relate anything about my position: no.

You got me. With statements like the one above you seemed to be equating Clinton’s “crimes” with Bush’s actual crimes, which is the most ludicrous fucking thing I have ever heard, so I exaggerated your position to highlight that in a humorous manner. Have you ever visited Sadly, No! before, by the way?

This isn’t common knowledge and I would really appreciate links to your sources for this.

I don’t have links to my sources, because my sources are text-based. What you find on the internet is little more than what I’d find given the same time. If you want to consult my sources, I’ve already given you a for instance with my citation of Dr. Cohn’s article.

You mean “Nato Bombing of Kosovo: Humanitarian Intervention or Crime against Humanity?”

If you’d like another, here’s what a quick internet search that you could have done yourself turned up:
http://www.ieer.org/reports/bombing/pbwh.pdf

Yes, I could’ve done the search myself but you’re the one making the argument. Support your assertions.

…

You’re running around calling Clinton a bigger war criminal than Bush.

I am? Here’s the third instance of you making up things I never said and putting them in my mouth. If you can’t honestly address what I’m saying, why bother wasting the effort to type out anything?

My mistake, you merely said that Clinton is a bigger murderer than Bush:

Bush has still killed less Iraqis than Clinton, even considering the latest study which estimates 1 million dead. Bush is doing his level best to catch up, but Clinton is still the top murderer of Iraqis so far.

My apologies.

Right, I’m ignoring the sanctions, which I think were legit.

Excellent! We all get to ignore the deaths due to sanctions, simply because you think they were a legitimate projection of American muscle. Apparently, it doesn’t matter what I and many others think, or even less what the Iraqis think–those that are still alive–but merely what you think.

I’m making my argument. It’s up to you to argue for what you think.

Some people are saying that over a million people have been killed as a result of Bush’s war.

Yes, but we can throw that figure out since Iraqi lives do not matter to you. You might not like that conclusion, but it’s inescapable. If you’re prepared to wink at 1.5 million Iraqi deaths, then you have no moral authority to start complaining about three hundred million less deaths as a result of a war and its aftermath. All these Iraqi dead are useful for is a truncheon to beat Bush over the head with.

When did I say that Iraqi lives didn’t matter? My point was that deaths resulting from legal economic sanctions are not war crimes. It’s a matter of legality, not “moral authority”.

500-1800 civilians killed in Kosovo = ~.1% of Bush’s ~1.2 million killed.

What we have here is the “paradox” of the heap. The Greek philosophers wondered when a grain of sand would become a heap of sand. We do the same thing now, apparently, except that now partisans argue over when a number of deaths becomes a human tragedy. The answer seems to be it’s a human tragedy when the responsible party has a different political affiliation for oneself, otherwise it’s one of those regrettable but necessary events which can be excused because of its “legitimacy”.

Whoa whoa WHOA- we were talking about war crimes. “Human tragedy” != “war crime/crime against humanity”.

…

Since you’re condemning them I would think you’d have some kind of opinion of an alternative course of action.

Would “smash the state” do?

Great, then we can all be governed by Blackwater. Sounds good.

I’m not going to engage in some kind of armchair quarterbacking for the purpose of instituting a kinder and gentler American Empire. That’s what political analysis of that sort amounts to these days. It’s always taken in the implicit context of American Empire, and all the arguing is around the periphery–never ways to confront imperialism, but just ways to do it better. Screw that. I don’t view America as a benevolent empire; I think of it as an overgrown and ravenous spoiled brat, and the sooner the world says “No” to it the better.

That would be great, except the other governments of the world are for the most part no more concerned with the will of the people than is the US gov’t.

Give me a break. If Clinton hadn’t maintained the sanctions you’d be accusing him of coddling a tyrant to get cheap Iraqi oil.

It’s a shame that Crossfire is no longer on the air, because you’re a past master at making shit up on the fly and applying it to a person you perceive as an ideological opponent.

Sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed that you disapproved of Saddam.

For one thing, whether or not you think they were justified the sanctions were legal, and the Bush war isn’t.

Ah, legality, what a concept. [,,,]

OK, well, we don’t have much to talk about if you don’t believe in the rule of law.

Considering that you don’t blench at the thought of 1.5 million civilian deaths, over half a million of which were children under the age of five, I’m sure you’ll get over it. Your queasiness is a little…convenient.

Note that I never characterized the RTS bombing as a crime against humanity. This is part and parcel of you dishonestly making up my position for me, which we will see many times before this thread is done.

For example, here is what I said: “May I infer that you agree that bombing a civilian TV station was a war crime? If so, then what is the point of looking for more examples?”

I was asking if you agreed with me that the bombing of RTS was a war crime, leading the literate person to infer that I think that the RTS bombing was a war crime, not necessarily a crime against humanity, although on occasion a war crime can also be a crime against humanity.

That phrase was invented to describe the systematic extermination of millions of humans, with the goal of erasing their ethnic group from the planet.

Actually its earliest use was during the Armenian Genocide, which was 1.2 million estimated deaths.

Obviously if our military is deliberately targeting civilians it’s a crime and someone needs to answer for it.

Yes, “someone”. Interesting that you don’t try to indicate who that “someone” might be.

It doesn’t seem to qualify Clinton as history’s greatest monster,

And here we have the second example of you rewriting my argument to suit yourself, even after I have already said “Getting into moral hairsplitting about which war criminal is worse ultimately ends up absolving one or the other of responsibility for their crimes, whereas the right thing to do is condemn them both equally.”

Sound like I’m trying to claim that Clinton is history’s greatest monster or anything close to it? I’ll answer that for you, since I don’t trust you to honestly relate anything about my position: no.

This isn’t common knowledge and I would really appreciate links to your sources for this.

I don’t have links to my sources, because my sources are text-based. What you find on the internet is little more than what I’d find given the same time. If you want to consult my sources, I’ve already given you a for instance with my citation of Dr. Cohn’s article.

If you’d like another, here’s what a quick internet search that you could have done yourself turned up:
http://www.ieer.org/reports/bombing/pbwh.pdf

Bear in mind that this is not one of my sources, however it is something which tells much the same story as any one of the ones I’ve already read.

The fact that you haven’t heard of Pancevo is a major indictment of the mainstream American media.

You’re running around calling Clinton a bigger war criminal than Bush.

I am? Here’s the third instance of you making up things I never said and putting them in my mouth. If you can’t honestly address what I’m saying, why bother wasting the effort to type out anything?

Right, I’m ignoring the sanctions, which I think were legit.

Excellent! We all get to ignore the deaths due to sanctions, simply because you think they were a legitimate projection of American muscle. Apparently, it doesn’t matter what I and many others think, or even less what the Iraqis think–those that are still alive–but merely what you think.

Some people are saying that over a million people have been killed as a result of Bush’s war.

Yes, but we can throw that figure out since Iraqi lives do not matter to you. You might not like that conclusion, but it’s inescapable. If you’re prepared to wink at 1.5 million Iraqi deaths, then you have no moral authority to start complaining about three hundred million less deaths as a result of a war and its aftermath. All these Iraqi dead are useful for is a truncheon to beat Bush over the head with.

500-1800 civilians killed in Kosovo = ~.1% of Bush’s ~1.2 million killed.

What we have here is the “paradox” of the heap. The Greek philosophers wondered when a grain of sand would become a heap of sand. We do the same thing now, apparently, except that now partisans argue over when a number of deaths becomes a human tragedy. The answer seems to be it’s a human tragedy when the responsible party has a different political affiliation for oneself, otherwise it’s one of those regrettable but necessary events which can be excused because of its “legitimacy”.

No, that’s not what I said.

Well, your mouth says “no, no” but your statements say “yes, yes”. The Iraqi sanctions were no less neoimperialism in action than the current Iraq war is, but you wink at one and condemn the other.

Since you’re condemning them I would think you’d have some kind of opinion of an alternative course of action.

Would “smash the state” do? I’m not going to engage in some kind of armchair quarterbacking for the purpose of instituting a kinder and gentler American Empire. That’s what political analysis of that sort amounts to these days. It’s always taken in the implicit context of American Empire, and all the arguing is around the periphery–never ways to confront imperialism, but just ways to do it better. Screw that. I don’t view America as a benevolent empire; I think of it as an overgrown and ravenous spoiled brat, and the sooner the world says “No” to it the better.

Give me a break. If Clinton hadn’t maintained the sanctions you’d be accusing him of coddling a tyrant to get cheap Iraqi oil.

It’s a shame that Crossfire is no longer on the air, because you’re a past master at making shit up on the fly and applying it to a person you perceive as an ideological opponent.

For one thing, whether or not you think they were justified the sanctions were legal, and the Bush war isn’t.

Ah, legality, what a concept. The powers that be determine what is and is not legal, and therefore it’s hardly going to find that its own actions are illegal unless it suits them to do so. The concept of “legal” and “illegal” is a joke, since the state reserves the right to do things which would be, and often are, criminal offenses simply because it sets the rules. It’s a rigged game, and in international law it’s doubly so.

But I think one should vote for the candidate who best represents ones interests.

I think of it more in terms of a choice between A) losers who share about 50% of my values, mostly don’t deserve my support and will probably let me down on many occasions and B) satan incarnate. One of these two has to win, and no one else has a chance in hell.

A is the Dems and B is the Republicans, by the way.

And a more comprehensive HRW report on the campaign had this to say about the TV studio bombing:

One of the worst incidents of civilian deaths, and certainly the worst in Belgrade, was the bombing of state Serb Radio and Television (RTS) headquarters in Belgrade on April 23 (incident No. 30). According to military sources, there was considerable disagreement between the United States and French governments regarding the legality and legitimacy of the target, and there was a lively public debate regarding the selection of Yugoslav civilian radio and television as a target group.

The NATO attack was originally scheduled for April 12, but due to French disapproval of the target, it was postponed. According to military, media, and Yugoslav sources, Western news organizations, who were using the facility to forward material from Yugoslavia, were alerted by NATO government authorities that the headquarters would be attacked. Attacks also had to be rescheduled because of rumors that foreign journalists ignored warnings to leave the buildings.78 When the initial warnings were given to Western media, the Yugoslav government also found out about the intended attack. When the target was finally hit in the middle of the night on April 23, according to RTS and Yugoslav government officials, authorities were no longer taking the threats seriously, given the time that had transpired since the initial warnings. As a consequence, sixteen RTS civilian technicians and workers were killed and sixteen were wounded.

Paragraph 7 of the 1956 ICRC guidelines describing lists of targets that are legitimate military objectives includes “installations of broadcasting and television stations; [and] telephone and telegraph exchanges of fundamental military importance.”79 In a May 13 letter to NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana, Human Rights Watch questioned the legitimacy of the target group in the Yugoslav war. The reasoning was that the system was not “… being used to incite violence (akin to Radio Milles Collines during the Rwandan genocide), which might have justified their destruction. At worst, as far as we know, the Yugoslav government was using them to issue propaganda supportive of its war effort. And, in fact, NATO has stated that it bombed the television facilities because they were being used as a propaganda tool of the Milosevic government.” As a consequence, Human Rights Watch believes that “While stopping such propaganda may serve to demoralize the Yugoslav population and undermine the government’s political support, neither purpose offers the `concrete and direct’ military advantage necessary to make them a legitimate military target.”80

Even if one could justify legal attacks on civilian radio and television, there does not appear to be any justification for attacking urban studios, as opposed to transmitters. After strikes on the Belgrade and Novi Sad headquarters, Yugoslav state broadcasters were able to easily move operations to other facilities. In this case, target selection was done more for psychological harassment of the civilian population than for direct military effect. The risks involved to the civilian population in undertaking the urban attack thus grossly outweighed any perceived military benefit. What is more, NATO failed to provide clear advance warning of the attacks “whenever possible,” as required by Protocol I, art. 57(2).

Calling this a crime against humanity seems a little sick to me. That phrase was invented to describe the systematic extermination of millions of humans, with the goal of erasing their ethnic group from the planet. Obviously if our military is deliberately targeting civilians it’s a crime and someone needs to answer for it.

The NATO fact sheet on the air war indicates a lot of co-ordination with the UN. In other words, if you didn’t like the air campaign (which was relatively if not mercifully short) there’s blame to be shared both by NATO and the UN, which reached agreement both on how air power was to be used and what targets to include. It was an international war, and the bombing campaign involved direct consultation with UN forces.

http://www.afsouth.nato.int/factsheets/DeliberateForceFactSheet.htm