Sunday, December 26, 2010
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
How to Overthrow the Government: Preliminary Thoughts
I’m going to go all the way here and say what I think and what I feel in my heart. The United States does not have a legitimate, constitutional government anymore. To use John Locke’s language, it dissolved its own authority – not all at once but step by step. Many hoped that the new administration in 2008 would decisively reverse these steps, but that didn't occur.
If you believe the government operates outside the law, both domestically and internationally, then arguments about whether other countries can trust us with their secrets don’t make any sense. If you cannot rely on the U. S. government to honor the most basic of human rights – such as not torturing people or not initiating unprovoked attacks – you should not rely on it for anything. It does not deserve any of the privileges or considerations one would accord a legitimate government.
I didn’t come to these thoughts easily, and I’m not happy with what they imply. They do underlie the arguments I’ve made about the leaked cables, and several other articles I’ve written. Right now a lot of commentary assumes that for all the troubles and extraordinary times we’ve experienced, our government still operates as a lawful force. I just can’t see it that way, and I think a time is coming when more citizens will see what has happened. When they do see that we have to replace our government to make it constitutional again, I hope we have leaders – all over the country – who know how to guide such a change.
In Revolution in the Air, I talk briefly about these changes and why they ought to occur. In the next book, I want to lay out a lot more thoroughly how a change of this nature can take place. To be successful, I believe the change has to be non-violent, or largely non-violent. A non-violent restoration of constitutional government would mean the break-up of the United States, or a clear move in that direction. That kind of transition would require extraordinary leaders: some in Washington perhaps, but most critically in the states, cities and towns. We don’t have leaders like that now, and I don’t know where they would come from.
The unknown for me is whether these things could occur while I’m alive. In a way I wish these changes would wait, because the chance for things to go wrong is great. On the other hand, waiting too long means irreversible tyranny. That is, citizens will have passed the point where they can do anything to save themselves. I think we’re in that state now: if we don’t act soon – within the next decade – we’ll have passed the point where we can undertake effective action. Tyranny, once established, takes centuries to uproot – much longer than the 225 year lifespan of our republic.
I honestly don’t like to be a pessimist. I also know our republic has been through hard times before. Things looked worse in 1860 and 1861 when the Confederate states seceded. We’re a much older country now, though, one that’s sclerotic and less able to adapt. Now we have a limited range of actions we can take to replace a government that can’t change. These actions have to come from the states, and they amount to a strategy of civil disobedience and divorce.
The states have to act as if Washington doesn’t exist, except where Washington forces assertion of its authority and tries coercion. Then the states have to resist. One could say it’s naive to expect state governments to be better or more lawful than national authority. National authority grew in part because state and local governance was often so poor. Perhaps, but concentrated power far away is worse than the devil you know next door.
Following that strategy, with discipline and with our sights on a clear set of outcomes, would have unpredictable consequences. The end of every empire has been unique. The growth of every democracy has been unique as well. What isn’t unique in its pattern and outcomes is the growth of tyranny. The outcomes we’ll see if we don’t do anything are predictable, and those outcomes are not good.
The unpredictable outcomes that follow from effective action cannot be worse than life without freedom. They cannot be worse than life under a government that pretends to be constitutional but is not. If these changes follow from effective, collaborative action, they'll bring about what Lincoln called "a new birth of freedom." We can't let self-government fail, or let perish the liberties we have enjoyed.
I didn’t come to these thoughts easily, and I’m not happy with what they imply. They do underlie the arguments I’ve made about the leaked cables, and several other articles I’ve written. Right now a lot of commentary assumes that for all the troubles and extraordinary times we’ve experienced, our government still operates as a lawful force. I just can’t see it that way, and I think a time is coming when more citizens will see what has happened. When they do see that we have to replace our government to make it constitutional again, I hope we have leaders – all over the country – who know how to guide such a change.
In Revolution in the Air, I talk briefly about these changes and why they ought to occur. In the next book, I want to lay out a lot more thoroughly how a change of this nature can take place. To be successful, I believe the change has to be non-violent, or largely non-violent. A non-violent restoration of constitutional government would mean the break-up of the United States, or a clear move in that direction. That kind of transition would require extraordinary leaders: some in Washington perhaps, but most critically in the states, cities and towns. We don’t have leaders like that now, and I don’t know where they would come from.
The unknown for me is whether these things could occur while I’m alive. In a way I wish these changes would wait, because the chance for things to go wrong is great. On the other hand, waiting too long means irreversible tyranny. That is, citizens will have passed the point where they can do anything to save themselves. I think we’re in that state now: if we don’t act soon – within the next decade – we’ll have passed the point where we can undertake effective action. Tyranny, once established, takes centuries to uproot – much longer than the 225 year lifespan of our republic.
I honestly don’t like to be a pessimist. I also know our republic has been through hard times before. Things looked worse in 1860 and 1861 when the Confederate states seceded. We’re a much older country now, though, one that’s sclerotic and less able to adapt. Now we have a limited range of actions we can take to replace a government that can’t change. These actions have to come from the states, and they amount to a strategy of civil disobedience and divorce.
The states have to act as if Washington doesn’t exist, except where Washington forces assertion of its authority and tries coercion. Then the states have to resist. One could say it’s naive to expect state governments to be better or more lawful than national authority. National authority grew in part because state and local governance was often so poor. Perhaps, but concentrated power far away is worse than the devil you know next door.
Following that strategy, with discipline and with our sights on a clear set of outcomes, would have unpredictable consequences. The end of every empire has been unique. The growth of every democracy has been unique as well. What isn’t unique in its pattern and outcomes is the growth of tyranny. The outcomes we’ll see if we don’t do anything are predictable, and those outcomes are not good.
The unpredictable outcomes that follow from effective action cannot be worse than life without freedom. They cannot be worse than life under a government that pretends to be constitutional but is not. If these changes follow from effective, collaborative action, they'll bring about what Lincoln called "a new birth of freedom." We can't let self-government fail, or let perish the liberties we have enjoyed.
Sunday, December 05, 2010
Capital Crimes, Death by Hanging, and International Law
When I was born in 1954, Ribbentrop, Keitel, Frank, Jodl and other Nazi leaders had climbed the gallows just eight years before. The International Military Tribunal in Nuremburg had sentenced them to hang for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Hitler, Goebbels, Himmler and Goering committed suicide. The allies executed the rest.
As I grew up, in school and elsewhere, people talked about Nuremburg a lot: why the trials were held, what they meant, why the outcome was justified. In international law and politics, they signified the beginning of a new era in history, where aggressive war was a crime and genocide would get you the noose. Never again could the leaders of one country attack another unprovoked, or kill civilians en masse, and think they might be spared execution should they lose the war or be captured.
Idealist though I was, I wasn't impressed. Victors get to do what they want with those they have defeated, and a show trial is a show trial. What do such trials show? That you won the war and that you can dispose of your opponents as you like. The Romans routinely executed leaders of the armies and tribes they conquered. They didn't bother with a trial. Yet the victors claimed that the International Military Tribunal after World War II made a great contribution to international law.
Perhaps it did. Cynicism takes you so far, then it eats at you! Still, I think you should call something what it is. Don't call it something that it's not. If you plan to execute your defeated opponents, just do it and don't dress it up with a lot of legal language that's going to make you look like a hypocrite later.
Let me add another note, so you don't misunderstand what I say here. I oppose capital punishment - no matter who administers it, who the criminal is, or how enormous the crime. Law, international and otherwise, can operate perfectly well without it.
Let's give the victors in World War II the benefit of the doubt here, and ask what grounds the International Military Tribunal gave for its action. Its proceedings brought the phrases war crimes and crimes against humanity into common usage. The tribunal's judges held that unprovoked, aggressive war was a capital crime. So was genocide or other disproportionate, wanton killing of civilians. Note the discriminating qualifications in these two definitions. The prosecutors and judges had to define war crimes and crimes against humanity carefully, so as not to include the victors' wanton acts, past and future.
The qualifications didn't work so well. Sixty-five years have passed since the Nuremburg trials opened. The history of warfare among nations during that time indicates the Nuremburg principles don't influence nations' behavior that much. Still, Nuremburg's prohibition against unprovoked, aggressive war became part of the United Nations charter, the cornerstone of post-World War II international law. Might makes right neither guides nor justifies the acts nations undertake in their conflicts with one another.
The country that insisted the prohibition against aggressive war become the central principle of international law, the United States, violated that principle when it launched its attack against Iraq in 2003. The United States killed fewer non-combatants than Germany, and the war it started involved fewer countries, but the act was the same. We even had the disconcerting idea to call it a war of choice, as if that euphemism would make it okay!
So what are we to think now? Either the Nuremburg trial was a show trial, designed to throw the gloss of legality over proceedings that actually exhibited the victors' raw desire to dispose of their defeated foes as they liked. Or Nuremburg actually established the prohibition against aggressive warfare that underpins international law now. You can't become a member of the United Nations without signing on to the prohibition.
Interestingly, the Nuremburg trial could serve both purposes. It served up legal justification for execution of Nazi leaders, and key principles for the new international system taking shape after the war. However we choose to characterize the trial, we violated the prohibition against aggressive war when we invaded Iraq. Once you apply a principle to others, you have to apply it to yourself. After you hang the people who launched the Nazi attack on Poland in 1939, you have to apply the same standards of judgment to the people who launched the United States' attack on Iraq in 2003.
Yet we've omitted a controlling element: the United States didn't lose its war against Iraq. Therefore George W. Bush is not in the dock - no judge sentences him to hang. Instead, Hussein went to the gallows for the aggressive wars he started, and for the wanton murder of civilians he undertook. I wonder what Hussein would have done if Iraq had won the war? Would he have hanged Bush? We don't have to guess too long about the answer to that one. He would not have bothered with the legalities, either.
