The suicide of American sovereignty

Ronnie

This would be so much easier to digest if I'd never read a book and couldn't think.

CS

We were all warned....and now one by one, Obama proves his critics were absolutely correct!

David

Amazing hysteria.

Obama's done nothing radical so far in his foreign policy. He's less isolationalist than Bush prior to 9/11, and less interventionalist than Bush post 9/11. Quite middle of the road.

Michael B

Harold Koh - ideologically conceived - is an abysmal choice, a horrific choice. He's an extraordinarily polarizing ideologue, less in the Chas Freeman "realist" and monied mold than in the Samantha Power mold, in terms of ideological excesses and imaginings. Think Aristophanes' "The Clouds," responsibly conceived. A hugely regrettable choice and absolutely an indicator of note in that tranzi - "progressive" transnationalist - mold. But Obama's cult of personality, his pied piper effect, or whatever it might better be conceived as, leads (i.e. lulls) the way into an absentminded state, if not a more genuflecting posture in his direction.

Aaron Collegeman

You invite critical harm to your intellectual authority when you apply off-the-cuff comments, quoted out of context and twice-removed, in the assasination of a man's character. But hey - makes for great journalism, right?

Norm

This vision of utopia might stand a chance if countries such as Russia,China,Korea and Iran did not exist. As it is we move a step closer to global war.

Ronnie

Hands up those of you out there who think that U.S. defence spending can remain at previous levels given the eye-watering sums spent in bailing out the collapsing financial institutions?

David

"As it is we move a step closer to global war."

Indeed. What we really needed was to continue with the neo-conservative approach as espoused by Bolton et al. That didn't result in any conflict at all.......

Jeff

Obama loathes his country, and he will never be content until it is changed to fit his Marxist specifications.

There is no aspect of American life, or culture, he is not going after. He is far more radical than his brain dead followers believe. By the time they wake up, if they ever do, they will discover their freedoms are gone.

Obama said what he would do, but people did not listen. HE SAID WHAT HE WOULD DO. And the lemmings flocked to the polls to elect him.

Ronnie

'War is replaced by diplomacy...'

That this should be allowed to happen is an absolute jaw-dropping scandal. It's the very zenith of self-hating.

I hope you all realise that there hasn't been a war between France and Germany for...well... for a very long time.

Utterly bowel-movingly disgraceful. No wonder we have been swamped by the Islamofascimarxiself-loathingdhimmis.

horatiodreamt

Arnold Toynbee proposed a one-world govt. and one-world religion in his 1960s-era book "Change & Habit". The disciples of the Rhodes/Milner/Cliveden Set have been busy little bees.

porkbelly

Perhaps Obama will let American sovereignty melt away as he accepts the dominance of various international bodies but somehow I suspect his hunger for total power and his self-conception as the Chosen One will get in the way. His rhetoric may be communitarian but his soul is wearing fatigues and haranguing the assembled masses from the balcony of the presidential palace.

Ronnie

Got it!

We want war, at any time and any place we choose. If whoever they are don't agree with us, we'll just take them out.

Because we can, because we are a nation state and we have that right. End of.

Guys like Goering and Hess were just unlucky to be tried by an international or 'transnational' court. Should never have happened.

An American

Jeff,

Do you mean lemmings like David?

David,
People like you always amaze me...when it all falls apart...and it will. You'll just go on your way, never acknowledging that it was people like you who encouraged this destruction to happen.

Ronnie,
Obama and his leftys are already sucking the defense department dry. Then, when we're attacked and lack resources to strike back...they'll cry and pull their hair as they blame the Generals for not protecting us.

My only hope is that some day soon, our Generals will protect us from Obama and his socialist cronies.

By the way, did you know that Obama and company no longer use the words terrorists or war on terrorism...they've come up with some politically correct phrase that escapes me...it's so completely asinine.

John Birch

Melanie: I'm afraid you really don't get the concept of American exceptionalism. Obama regularly invokes it. He did so during the campaign and he has done so since elected. He has not repudiated it. And John Bolton is hardly a credible source about the Obama administration. I'm not sure how Obama's sending of more troops to Afghanistan (which even Bill Kristol has praised) and his expansion of missile strikes in Pakistan fits with appeasement but that would force you to actually offer some detailed analysis instead of conspiracy theories.

An American

Michael B,

Very articulate, I couldn't agree with you more.

Obama's choices tells it all.

The more I read about Koh, the angrier I've become.

Will these people really turn the US over to UN world rule, an International Court, Sharia law? It sure sounds like it, if they're able to pull it off.

The world has gone mad and Obama is it's pied piper.

iq

Ronnie, occasionally you post something interesting that makes me re-evaluate my viewpoint. But on this thread, I can't tell if you're being deliberately obtuse or naturally stupid. Or maybe I'm mixing my Ronnies.

YA

There is nothing bad in transnational order, meritocracy and universal rights, for those who endorse it. Geographical boundaries of that order however, as well as the boundaries of barbarity, will be most likely blurred. Creeping sharia is now in the UK, Europe and even - very considerably - in Israel. Proliferation of small arms is a problem, too. So what? Organism lives with, and overcomes infections, and sheds unnecessary burdens.

Cannibalism, human sacrifices, slavery, Inquisition, Holocaust.. Sharia?.. C'mon. We will overcome.

An American

porkbelly,

Obama might go along with world power if he could be crowned king of the world...

On a more serious note.

What do you think Obama would need to do to allow himself to remain on as President for life?

He's got the ego and ambition...it shouldn't be too difficult for a Messiah.

Wouldn't it be the Supreme Court that would be standing in his way? Their main job is to protect the Constitution. We already know the Congress no longer supports the Constitution by their actions of late.

With our government made up of three powers, Executive, Judicial and Legislative, Executive would be in the bag and Legislative would fold quickly...that leaves just one more to destroy... Judicial.

Events are moving so quickly to the dark side...I now believe anything can happen.

Jerry

Freedom is the right to act based upon your own conscience, not on somebody else's conscience. The most important attitude that President Obama has not internalized is that, having won the election with 52 percent of the vote, he is only entitled to implement 52 percent of his programmatic ideals. America is not a "winner-take-all" country. His failure to recognize that unwritten, but commonsensical notion is what makes him so dangerous.
/
Regarding future events and his ability to dictate them, President Obama knows not a wit more than my local supermarket clerk. Acting as though that absolute limitation on knowledge and thus control does not exist constitutes his hubris. He is the quintessential bull in the china shop, and it is we who will pay for his damage long after he has left the scene.

Olaf Rye

Ronnie, war is not a good thing but it is necessary. The international consensus is paralytic and cowardly: look at the UN waiting for consensus as people are massacred in Darfur, and before this, in Rwanda, the Balkans and Cambodia.

We must also remember how the world stood and stared as the National Socialists in Germany armed the nation for war, and the paralytic response to the USSR. Waiting for an international community to issue permission for war is absurd--nations that cannot fight, that have persistently underfunded their military, will be able to pontificate and know that they face no risks. The European Union and the UN were both useless in the Balkans and Rwanda and, as ever, showed up when it was too late.

Suzi J

Melanie Phillips: “Nations cause nationalism; nationalism causes conflict; abolish nations and you abolish conflict and usher in the brotherhood of man.”

And that‘s the sum of this asinine creed. The simple equation these naļve people are still stuck on is ‘treat everything as relative and you cancel out what causes conflict’.

According to this kindergarten thinking, free nations cannot say, ‘Stop right there, that’s where we draw the line’, instead, they must just say, ‘It‘s their culture, innit?’ In other words, surrender replaces steadfastness and when people finally realise what‘s going on, they run to extreme politicians to save them.

Larrey Anderson gets to the point in a wonderful essay on American Thinker where he points out that the keystone value ‘the truth is that there is no truth’, is what has led to all this muddled thinking.

Larrey Anderson: ‘If there is no truth out there then there are no values out there either; rather, the only values out there are the subjective ones that we create and put there. Thus, it is possible for us to agree to have this value as a shared value: if you let me make my values, I’ll let you make yours. The allowance by a society of the creation of conflicting values between one human being and another is, in our culture, called “tolerance.” As we will see, tolerance is one, but only one, possible moral outcome of relativism.’

This is what lies at the heart of the vacuum into which the UN is sucking the free world.

It lies at the heart many other lunacies from the ‘nice’ Lefties including ‘lifestyle choice‘. We have another fly-by-night male partner sentenced in the courts this week for punching a toddler to death - where were the ‘nice’ Lefties when that was going on? Telling us not to demonise women who have every Tom, Dick and Harry in their bed and near their offspring. Who are we to judge, eh? Just let them get on with punching the toddler and wring our Guardian-reading hands afterwards.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/4932852/Man-guilty-of-killing-girlfriends-toddler-son.html

To return to Anderson: ‘Once upon a time every first year philosophy student knew that relativism is self-referentially incoherent. Relativism claims that everything is relative - but it leaves us wondering if that everything includes relativism, itself.’

Quite.

‘Relativism asserts its own universality as it proclaims the relativity of all other assertions. Every other sentence ever uttered or ever to be uttered is relative to some one circumstance or another … but not this one. That’s an awful lot to swallow and an amazing number of people have swallowed it.’

And when the recipe is served up by Barack O’Teleprompter, there’ll be queues of people guzzling it down.

This is how we end up with, as Ms Phillips puts it, the ‘UN as the supreme global arbiter of international legitimacy and ethics’. There is nothing relative about those who would subjugate the free world, just ask the people in their own countries who they’ve already subjugated. Many of them would kill for a visa to get into America as it is, thank you very much. I wonder why.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/the_myth_of_relativism_and_the.html

Dixon

Ronnie
March 31st, 2009 9:37pm
Got it!
We want war, at any time and any place we choose. If whoever they are don't agree with us, we'll just take them out.
Because we can, because we are a nation state and we have that right. End of."

ABSOLUTELY!

Yee-Haa American

Would you rather we just come over and invade you? Sounds like a plan there. Mother England never got the proper ass whooping she deserves. Out with Obama, in with Imperialism! Where's Bush and Cheney. We want them back. Hahaha... jeez, stop being so dramatic. Our country has been the big dumb jock for 8 years. It's time to get along with the world again. Stop writing rubbish, Mel.

Conservative Cabbie

Ronnie

"Hands up those of you out there who think that U.S. defence spending can remain at previous levels given the eye-watering sums spent in bailing out the collapsing financial institutions?"

Well, if he hadn't spent those eye-watering sums in the first place, then he wouldn't need to cut back on defence spending.

As for your rather specious argument that the Nuremberg trials were somehow transnational in the sense that Melanie applies it, well that's just wrong. It was only international in the sense that it was constituted of the four key victors in the war.

And you've also got my war-mongering blood boiling. So war is bad in the absolute sense is it? Without war, the Serbians would have been able to carry out a more comprehensive genocide in the Balkans. Without war, the Taliban and Saddam Hussein would still be in power and of course, without war, Europe would be unified under a totalitarian regime. Oh well, two out of three aint bad in making my case.

seb

Of course national governments are a waste of time. The EU was founded on this very principle. Other than wasting taxpayers' money and micro-managing citizens' private habits, they serve no purpose. National governments, so Heath and many of his generation believed, caused wars. So they have to go. Genius!

TomTom

This is the same cycle of the interwar period where Socialists dreamed of world government through The League of Nations and Ramsay MacDonald as Prime Minister tried to disarm Britain with naval treaties as a precursor to Disarmament Conferences and Labour objected to training of Home Guard units.

This is typical Socialist Utopianism that infects democracies with a Secular Religious Fervour. It is what it has always been - the answer of the sentimental and confused who project good feelings in place of rationality and experience. It is a faith without any empirical basis

benjamin

I think this could be an interesting debate but most of the posters here make kneejerk reactions to Melanie’s obvious manipulation of what Koh said or didn’t say and don’t try to even take 2 seconds to think about what they are saying.
When I was at school we were told that the 2 wars in Europe in the 20th century were due to the rise of the “nation-state” and extreme nationalism engendered i.e. nation states not necessarily good! As loose groupings of peoples within vague structures such as the Holy Roman Empire coalesced into nation states competing for natural resources world wide, conflicts became inevitable and more and more deadly. The Austro-Hungarian Empire was relatively benign just because it didn’t have to the power to impose itself strongly on all its dominions. Ditto for the Ottoman Empire (emphasis on the words “relatively benign”). Many of the present problems in the world seem to me to be a result of the fragmentation of larger loose political structures into tiny nation states where extreme groups can take power and naturally have all sorts of grievances against their neighbours. The apotheosis of the extreme nationalistic nation state was of course Nazi Germany where the idea of nation was wedded to race with the most disastrous consequences.
In Ireland where I grew up, Britain was the bogey man of the history class – 800 years of trying to stop us becoming a nation. Strangely, in recent years a revisionist historical view has been put forward suggesting that if Ireland had not broken with Britain in the 1920’s we could have developed towards national autonomy with less bloodshed and hatred and even benefited from economic and social developments in Britain (I don’t particularly agree with this opinion, but one can discuss it rationally)
In recent years the calming of the conflict in the Northern Ireland has been partially attributed to the improvement of economic conditions in both parts of Ireland, basically through major investment from European funds and American economic investment (of course Melanie will tell you it is ONLY and UNIQUELY because of the military crushing of the IRA by M. Thatcher!). Thus in Ireland, most people would agree that the loosening of the national borders in the broader European context was positive.
So Melanie’s arguments for strong nation states and derisive attitudes toward any international bodies or supra-states are a sort of a contradiction. I think there should to be a balance between the idea of nation and the broader continental or world context. The survival of small nation states can only be guaranteed by the protective umbrella of benign “Empires”. In my opinion the US has performed the function of “relatively benign” Empireship over large parts of our little planet since the 1940’s (again emphasis on the word “relatively”). The European Union is beginning to take over this role from the US in Europe.

Ruairidh

Everything that Aaron Collegeman said.

Conservative Cabbie

Benjamin

Great post - rational and well-argued. Unfortunately I disagree with a fair bit of it but that doesn't deny it's logic, it's only the conclusion I have a problem with.

Yes, the pre-maturation stage of the nation state resulted in conflict. However, your argument supposes that states aren't able to mature and learn. The major global conflicts of the first half of the 20th Century were mistakes that maturing democracies were able to learn from. Violent nationalism has been sidelined to the radical few and diplomacy and co-operation has become the currency of choice in matters of foreign affairs.

I am all for co-operation between nation states so long as sovereignty isn't affected. International bodies and supra-states are a step removed from the democratic process. Their permanence necessitates a bureaucratic mindset that is antithetical to democracy and, by extension, freedom.

Co-operation between sovereign states able to retain their sovereignty is fine (NATO for example), it is when the bureaucrats and lawyers supercede the authority of individual democratic nations to act autonomously that I have a problem.

Original Tony

Heratiodreamt...you have come closer to the truth than other other post today. The financial crash and de-nationalisation of the USA is the beginnings of a new world order; with one religion, one monetary system and one government.

Mustapha Bunn

Olaf Rye.....you couldn't be more on the ball ref.Rwanda and the UN.
I personally know of young men who were there as members of the Australian military who were ordered,by the UN, to not interfere in the inter tribal killing that was happenning in front of them.To prevent them from interfering they were only ever issued with 5 rounds of ammunition.The result of having to watch this horror has left many suffering mental problems.
People,such as Ronnie etc. never have to deal with the results of their pie in the sky ideals....unfortunately !

Michael B

benjamin,
Your misreading of what is being forwarded is as simplistic and as uncomprehending as the underlying dogmas that inform your misreadings (i.e. "... we were told that the 2 wars in Europe ..."). No one is suggesting that inter-national organizations per se cannot be viable and propitious of better relations and comity. Otoh, supranational or transnational orgs that fail to be accountable to their constituting publics, that likewise appeal to a collective, amorphous consciousness rather than individual, local and national accountability are what are being called into question, largely due to that lack of local accountability, consciousness and conscience. National and local sovereignty can be analogized to sovereignty as applied to the self, to an individual. Establishing - and maintaining - that sovereignty does not, eo ipso, solve problems in some type of utopian sense, but it does serve to localize accountability and the corresponding development of conscience and consciousness. That was the (essential) genius of Westphalia. Imagining one can relinquish individual/personal accountability into some amorphous collective whole is no more viable than imagining a more local nation/state can relinguish its own sphere of responsibility and "sense of self" - and identity, culture, etc. - into some still greater transnational collective.

For example, TomTom's historical reference, his analogy with the interwar years, is fitting.

TomTom

Germany under Hitler was not nationalistic. Not at all. Hitler did not believe in the nation-state - he believed in Das Volk. The Volk transcended nation-states and was a Gemeinschaft which encompassed German-speakers with German bloodlines throughout Europe embracing those in the nation-states created at Versailles in 1919 like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria....he did not recognise national boarders as legitimate but saw his role as to bring together Das Deutsche Volk into a destiny and his Waffe-SS was to be the updated Teutonic Knights.

The Nazis were romanticists using 20th Century technology to attain Medieval dreams transcending national identity just as African nation states resent the imposition of defining frontiers set by European colonial powers crossing tribal lines.

Hitler was a Pan-German just as Bin Laden and Nasser were Pan-Arabists seeking to sweep away the national frontiers which they view as an artificial imposition across blood lines.

The Waffen-SS accepted non-Germans into its premier fighting force - it was a New Europe under Pan-German leadership not a nation-state. It is political propaganda to portray Nazism as the triumph of the nation-state and Socialism, as being somehow transcendent.

Michael

Hey! Conservative Cabbie!

Did you not get the memo? The Taliban seem to be doing just fine thank you very much. Fat lot of good that spot of blowing up did, eh??

And Melanie....What a ludicrous article. And this childish insistence on some lame joke of calling Barack Obama 'The One'. Grow up, use his full name, act your age, because you just end up sounding like a spoilt little brat who didn't get her own way. Thank God.

Mr Melrose

AN AMERICAN

You said…‘My only hope is that some day soon, our Generals will protect us from Obama and his socialist cronies.’

Err.... that’s not a call for the democratically elected president to be removed by a military coupe is it ? I know we have had calls for patriots to arm themselves and take to the streets before, but this is big-league stuff!

Mind you, it has been quite successful in other USA supported countries, and I don’t think anyone should knock a Military Dictatorship until they have actually lived under one.

Which model do you think your Generals should follow, An American?

Argentina? Chile? Uganda? (now there was a strong man who didn’t take any nonsense!)

Perhaps you would care to comment?

Linda Smith

However big or small the group, and however defined, they will always be rivalrous, one group attempting to dominate the other group. It is a basic fact of group psychology.

A classic US experiment of the 1960s divided a classroom of elementary schoolchildren into two groups, brown eyes and blue eyes. They soon became nasty and rivalrous to each other. Plenty of studies in the literature.

Conservative Cabbie

Michael

I was very cautious in choosing my words. I said that they would have been in power, which they are not. So despite your cheerleading for a murderous regime, you are wrong!

Additionally, thanks to the marvel of American unmanned drones, the Taliban are being gradually decapitated as leader after leader are eradicated. You seem to think that war is a digital event, either you've won or you've lost. Maybe in your insulated little liberal world that may be the case, unfortunately, reality is some what different. War is a process, not an either/or.

You chide Melanie for calling President Obama "the one". I'm sure you go onto leftist blogs and refer tho those who refer to George Bush as "Bushitler" as childish too. Of course you do, because to not do so would demonstrate double standards on your part. But then, if as I suspect, you are of the left, double standards aren't something you are unfamiliar with.

Dixon

Linda Smith
April 1st, 2009 12:37pm
However big or small the group, and however defined, they will always be rivalrous, one group attempting to dominate the other group. It is a basic fact of group psychology.
A classic US experiment of the 1960s divided a classroom of elementary schoolchildren into two groups, brown eyes and blue eyes. They soon became nasty and rivalrous to each other. Plenty of studies in the literature."

See also the studies of Zimbardo.

Last night on BBC I learned that in Britain today deaf people who use sign language are one of the groups being targeted in "hate crimes". They had nasty examples to support the contention.

fellow traveller

Do we think it is ok to intervene in the business of other countries simply because it suits our 'national' interest (which then means we can do it for profit, or because we want land or oil, or that we just want to kill people who aren't of the same nationality), or do we seek some ethical justification? If the latter, then from where does the ethical justification come?

It might be that we consider it ethical to attack other nations because we feel threatened, but then the most important consideration is whether this intervention reduces the threat - ie makes us more safe.

Practically, that means asking which other nations would support us, and which would oppose us? and what would they do to back this up?

To find this out, we need some kind of transnational framework for debate. Not least because if we rely on the 'shared threat' as the only justification for intervention, it will produce weak, transient alliances.

If we intervene because there are larger ethical considerations than just our own safety, then those ethics need to derive from some shared standard or authority. Therefore to make any intervention based on these ethics legitimate, we have to apply the same standards to our own behaviour.

That implies that some transnational organisation to define and uphold ethical standards.

We don't individually vote on what these ethics are, just as we don't vote on every decision that members of national parliaments make, or on every sentence that a judge passes.

I wouldn't argue with the posters who say that our transnational organisations need urgent reform.

But I don't understand the logic of the original post, which sets up a straw man (neither Obama nor Koh has argued for the ending of the nation state) and then uses it to argue against any transnational ethical basis for any policy.

Brian Moshe

I bitterly regret that the great John Bolton isn't the President of the United Sates.

Les in Florida

I don't like President Obama and I believe his policy approach in a number of areas thus far has been inept. That being said, I think Bolton is doing a bit of fear mongering here. Adjustments in US defense spending and foreign policy have been inevitable for some time and those adjustments are going to mean less American influence across the globe.
Before 9/11, George Bush was already beginning to reflect an increasingly isolationist view of the globe. This was no accident as the US was trying to adjust it's role in the world to match its means. I expect that trend to resume as our economic problems and global realities proceed to their inevitable conclusion.

Conservative Cabbie

Fellow Traveller

Welcome back, haven't seen you on here for a while. Is it you that's been commenting on the Liberal Conspiracy site?

"If we intervene because there are larger ethical considerations than just our own safety, then those ethics need to derive from some shared standard or authority."

That depends on what you consider a shared standard. If you consider freedom and democracy such a standard then fine but why does it need to be controlled by a centralised authority? A loose coalition of like-minded nation states serves the purpose equally well. The Gulf War was a perfect example.

Any centralised authority that welcomes the despots and tinpot dictators of the world into it's organisation can hardly claim to be representative of, or working for, the people of the world. You call loose alliances 'transient'. I would call them dynamic and motivated unlike a United Nations that has been rendered inert by gas bags and douche bags.

Going to war for purely reasons of self-interest (save defence) is wrong, but as an ultimate vehicle for spreading democracy has merit. A democratic world will eventually mean a peaceful world. Unfortunately, to achieve that end, war, as a last resort, is required to achieve that end.

Karen USA

This is sadly exactly what is happening and it's terrifying. Iran will have it's bombs, there will be massive destruction. Obama and his Ivy League thugs will use the chaos to rule in tyranny. And we, the people who believe in the freedom of the individual, will have to fight for our very survival. See the movie Defiance. It explains as nothing else can the negative commentary to your article. They are the ones who will be too afraid to fight. They believe this can be "waited out." Waiting = death. We need to stop this now. John Bolton sees reality. More than half the world is blind to it.

An American

Mr. Melrose,

I realize this is an extreme statement. Until lately, I wouldn't have thought myself capable of thinking it. But, if we are to survive as a Republic, this socialistic parasite that has become our government...has to be stopped.

Unfortunately, I think we are too far gone to vote Obama and the socialists out. Obama and his ACORN is now in the process of taking over the census to game the system. No president in history has done this before. The next step is that they will vote out the electoral college and replace it with a popular vote so that the liberal west and east coast will have the power to continue this socialist state for perpetuity. Our votes will mean nothing, kind of like what Labour accomplished in the UK.

I don't see a way out, unless the military takes over to protect our Constitution and reinstate our Republic.

Our very government and its politicians are destroying the great country that our forefathers gave us.

It's time to clean house and start over again. Even President Jefferson said it would take a revolution every decade of so to keep our Democracy on track. We're overdue.

Norman Matton Thomas, a leading American socialist and six time presidential candidate for the Socialist Part of American said this in 1944:

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism. But, under the name of "liberalism", they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program, until one day America will be a socialist nation, without knowing how it happened". He went on to say: "I no longer need to run as a Presidential Candidate for the Socialist Party. The Democratic Party has adopted our platform".

Michael

Conservative Cabbie:

Good to see you looking after Melanie! I've never posted on a blog other than this in my entire life, simply because I've never found one so astounding as this here gem. So you can drop the name calling.

However, I continue to enjoy reading the variety of views espoused on here, and I thought your conversation with the poster Benjamin (who I think made some excellent points) was very interesting indeed.

Carry on!

Conservative Cabbie

Michael

I'm not sure I called you any names save 'liberal' and leftist, but then I admit to certain prejudices in that area.

Commenting on blogs (and this one in particular) can be a very informative experience. There are a number of very intelligent reasoned and reasonable posters from all sides of the political spectrum. Can I suggest that for your second post you engage in reasoned debate rather than falsely representing what I said and attacking Melanie. If you go for reason, I will be happy to engage with you on that level, no matter whether I agree or disagree with you.

As for Benjamin's post, yes he did make a number of excellent points some of which I disagree with.

d1carter

This is what we get when an amateur is placed in such a powerful position...What did we expect?

fellow traveller

Cabbie

Sorry not to have been engaged. To be honest, I got tired of the name calling.

I think it's important to derive our ethics not from the immediate situation, but from a more general set of values. That is to say, the ethics come first, the intervention (or not) follows. A coalition of the willing might satisfy these criteria, but maybe not: without a commitment to uphold a set of values, what binds the coalition is as likely (maybe more likely) to be narrow self interest.

Bill M

The Ghosts of Appeasement

http://www.johnjayinstitute.org/index.cfm?get=get.lecture_11162006&nav=lecture2006

Conservative Cabbie

FT

I spend most of my time at Americano now. MP's blog is too heavily focused on the Middle East and the anti-semitist/racist dialectic is a bit tedious.

To talk of ethics is fine, but what constitutes those ethics. In a pan-global talking shop like the UN full of different cultures, traditions, histories and political freedoms, how on earth is it possible to arrive at a consensus on ethics. This is why the UN is so ineffectual. Outside of the aid elements of the UN, I'm struggling to think of any sustantial achievement that the UN has accomplished at a political/diplomatic level.

A coalition of the willing (ie a democratic state only UN) whose ethical position is to spread freedom and democracy to the subjected people of the world would be the only type of transnational organisation that I would like to see.

fellow traveller

Cabbie

It's too easy to say "outside the aid elements..." of the UN. That's a vast undertaking, and a justification of the UN's existence alone.

But I agree that the UN is a poor forum for ethics-based diplomacy. Maybe your coalition would be effective - but only if it imposes its values on itself. Does it turn a blind eye to torture? Does it accept help from regimes with values it despises because they're our enemy's enemy? If so, what does the coalition stand for, other than the continuation of its own power?

From what I read, that's exactly what Koh is talking about, rather than the crude caricature presented in this post.

Dixon

fellow traveller
April 1st, 2009 2:24pm
Do we think it is ok to intervene in the business of other countries simply because it suits our 'national' interest (which then means we can do it for profit, or because we want land or oil, or that we just want to kill people who aren't of the same nationality), or do we seek some ethical justification? If the latter, then from where does the ethical justification come?"

How it was. How it shall be. How it ought be!

YES!

Dixon

Fellow Traveller ( apt name ) Ronnie et al...open your eyes and embrace the only only guiding truth in the universe: SELF INTEREST!

An American

Dixon,

I agree that it's not human nature to work hard and give most of what you grow/make to strangers, many of whom aren't working, doing their fair share. Humans work for their own survival and the survival of their family. They only give to the government because they're forced to.

Some good news, political hack and crook Senator Chris Dodd is falling out of favor with his democratic voters. One down, many more to go.

What do you think of Brown joining Obama and other countries to divie up one trillion dollars. This while our countries are going down the drain financially. Wouldn't solving the financial problems of your own country help the world financial balance instead of instituting yet another quagmire of spending.

Magda

Melanie is right, Obama is the anointed one, he's been chosen by the Bilderberg group bankers who ant to rule the world, by hyper controling the global economy, by obliterating private capital and business, and people's self-determination.

The global financial crisis has been meticulously engineered by them. They are the ones who've run up the debts and who've been totally fraudulent and unaccountable. Now they're proposing not just to burden us with more debt, they propose to rewrite our laws, our values, and our history in their own image. They are historical revisionists and ideologues no better than Moas, Stalins, or Hitlers of this world.

They've already got vast monopolies on the world's natural resources. It's really amazing how Obama and Gordon have been saying how much they care that poor countries have to be helped and not left behind. In Orwelian speak that means they don't give a damn about poor countries or poor people, Gordon and Obama are part of the evil imperialist machine of exploitation and subjugation that has made poor countries poor in the first place. Barack and Gordon are now making the rich countries like the US and the UK poor! Wakey wakey! Barack and Gordon do not represent the interests of any nations, least of all the US or the UK as we know it. They represent the interests of completely unethical, and immoral, and decidedly non-humanitarian, non-egalitarian, chauvinist bankers, that want to control, exploit, subjugate, and enslave all humanity.

These people are the ones who have been profitting financially from Iraq and Aphganistan. These people are the ones who own the pharmaceutical industry and have vast monoploies on weapons of mass destruction. They will not hesistate, and have not hesitated to play nations off against eachother, and create financial, politica, social instability.

Magda

The reality is that B.Obama and G.Brown support brutal financial, social, political, and physical tyranny exerted by the few over the many. Watch closely the unfolding of the NEW WORLD ORDER agenda. This agenda is the real threat to our and any civilization as we know it. The New World Order is a tyrannical hegemony, that is now morphing into exerting tyrannical macro- and micro- hyper control of all aspects of our existence. This is what lies behind our nanny state, our beaurocracy, our social disintegration, and disfunction, and our political and moral corruption and bankrupcy.

NKH

Of course, there are problems with both approaches in their purest forms. The problems with 'transnational progressivism' is that taken to its logical conclusion, you end up with a world run by supposedly well-meaning technocrats and ordinary people feel totally disconnected from the decision-making process. This is a problem the EU continues to face despite its attempts to democratise.

Total reliance on 'national exceptionalism' has its drawbacks too. The biggest is that it helps protect despots under the guise of the ASEAN-type principle of non-interference in others' internal affairs. If the only thing a sadistic leader has to worry about is other countries defending their own legitimate national interests, then all he needs to do is make sure he focusses his wrath on the weak and uninfluential. But now we have the ICC as a serious attempt to fill that justice gap.

And regardless of what other (many) criticisms you can level at the EU, it has succeeded in one important area - for the first time in the history of western Europe, it is practically unthinkable that any of its member states would go to war against each other.

Verity

Well, the end of American sovereignty. That would be about right, given that Obama gave a deep bow to the King of Saudi Arabia (can't recall his name) and his trashy wife "hugged" our own dear Queen.

Verity

NKH - Socialist rubbish. Global trade has ensured peace. Not the fascist EU.

To what "sadistic leader" do you refer in today's context?

How about Common Purpose?