@muspell
I'm not seeing the removal of rights happening. I'm not seeing anyone deny anyone's rights on a grand scale. I've discussed the incident that T.F.B.M raised and my rationale behind my belief that the Marine didn't commit a crime in this case. I agree that some members of the coalition have indeed violated the human rights of Iraqis. For example, the guards at Abu Ghraib, who are being prosecuted (some have already been) and sentenced. There have been other incidents and in each of these, the soldiers responsible have been investigated and prosecuted where appropriate. The United States takes this very seriously. At the same time, we have, in our nation, a belief that accusation doesn't imply guilt. In other words, a person is presumed innocent of crimes until that person is proven guilty. Each case must be looked at and reviewed. Doubtless, you have seen or heard of cases where you disagree with the outcome. So have I, but the cases were looked at by people in posession of more facts and a greater knowledge of law than you or I and I therefore accept the outcome. The point is that the cases were reviewed and prosecuted and if a person was found not-guilty by people in posession of all of the facts, then I am willing to accept that verdict.
The "democratic" values that you and T.F.B.M refer to are not "democratic" at all. The values that are held in the United States have little to do with democracy (indeed we aren't a truly democratic nation), but instead can be better described as American values. They don't have much to do with our governmental system, but instead are rooted in our culture, our faiths (where applicable), etc. Calling them universal wouldn't be appropriate because in our current world, there are many nations that don't agree with them. For example, many cultures don't agree in a right to life, or a right to liberty. Some nations don't agree with the idea of personal responsibility or individualism. These aren't therefore universal, any more than they are democratic. As such, we would be amiss in expecting those from other cultures to hold these same values, wouldn't we? Nonetheless, the values we hold are the measure we live by, so the question is, to a great extent, are we living by them?
In every society, there are criminals. There are those who disregard the values of their society and their lives show this. The United States is a nation of over 300,000,000 people. In Iraq, there are about 150,000 soldiers. Some of those people are going to go against the ideals that the remainder of the nation stands for. The percentage of those who do this is going to be very small, probably less than 5% but it will be a real number. Focusing on that small percentage ignores the greater than 95% who commit no crimes and violate no rights. Consider this, as I wrote before, one of our values is the idea of personal responsibility. We hold each person to be responsible for his own actions. As such, if a criminal does commit crimes, we hold that person responsible, but we don't hold his family, his squadmates, his organization, his nation, etc. responsible. I would guess from some of the writing here that others don't agree with this. That the United States is responsible for the actions of its criminals. I submit that the United States is responsible to investigate criminal activity of its own citizens and prosecute them. The United States is doing this and will continue to do so. As such, we are our own watchdogs. There is a full arm in each of the military services dedicated to just such investigations and prosecutions. Have we seen a mass, government sponsored, violation of rights of Iraqis or foreign insurgents in Iraq? Have we instead seen a generally fair handling of this war with a few exceptions of criminal activity? I suggest that we've seen the latter in the general case.
The United States doesn't try to justify "just about everything". We take things case by case and look at the facts. That is how we can prosecute some soldiers and still defend others. We look at each detail of a given case as part of our legal process.
@T.F.B.M
Voting directly and having representatives are not equivalent in many respects. One of the things that makes democracy a poor governmental system is the inheirent oppression of minority viewpoints. With a direct vote, that will always be the case. As I've described, however, a representative system with the representatives free to vote as they will, means that minority viewpoints can and are heard. In short, sometimes a minority makes the rules and not just the majority as would occur in a democracy. Another thing a representative system gives us that a democracy wouldn't is the ability to make decisions quickly without halting society for 150,000,000+ voters to vote on day-to-day issues. Democracy would require daily votes of all concerned citizens and society would grind to a halt during those times. The representative system that we have allows society to proceed because there are professional legislators whose job it is to make these daily decisions. The governmental system in the United States would be better termed an elected oligarchy instead of a democracy. You mention the United States Constitution, I'm sure you're aware that the "democracy" is never mentioned in this document.
The root of values in the United States should be part of your concern. If values, for example, come from a given religion, then we would expect to see those values exhibited in all nations where that religion exists regardless of that nation's governmental systems. Similarly, if values come from an ethinc background or a cultural background, nations that share that background would exhibit those values regardless of their governmental systems. As such, the source of values is of great concern when you wish to make assertions about those values and their relationship to a governmental system.
I'm not certain how you tie the existence of values to the "excuse to intervene" in a sovereign nation's business and call that fact. At best is is an opinion of what happened and a derogatory one at that, suggesting that the value system of the United States is somehow used as an excuse for war. As such, it is criticism. Perhaps you'd like to provide a reference to the United States government, prior to the war, making the contention that "democratic values" were a reason for entering Iraq so that we can see the fact of such a statement. I've gone over the bases for this war in other posts and don't feel the need at this time to revisit them, but I "democratic values" weren't part of them. If they had been, especially if they had been a compelling part, then the United States would be "intervening" in the "business" of every nation that wasn't "democratic". Truly enough, the United States wishes to see all peoples of the world exist in a government where self determination is a reality. Where people can select their own form of government and have the freedom to change it through a legal process if they so desire. These are desired by the United States government, but we aren't forcing this requirement on other nations, but instead are trying to effect this type of change diplomatically in all but a very few cases. Iraq is one of the exceptions and changing the government of Iraq is not one of the major bases of our presence there.
As to the idea of many forms of democracy, I would disagree. While many have used the term democracy to define the United States and other nations, a true democracy is simply a direct vote by the citizens on all issues. That clearly isn't what exists in the United States and other nations, and so we struggle under a lack of proper terminology. My objection to using the word democracy to describe the United States is that the term is imprecise and brings with it some negatives that exist in a democracy but not in the United States' governmental system.
You ask what other universal values are. Since you are definitely part of the universal set, you should be able to answer this question as well. What do you think they are? What values, in your opinion are part of the base set of values that all (or even nearly all) humans or have?
As to your statement about the Marine, you are (intentionally?) missing a few points. I didn't suggest that the Marine was justified in shooting the insurgent because his squadmate had been killed previously. I mentioned that previous killing to suggest the Marine's state of mind. A killing is justifiable if the killing is done in self defense or the defense of others. From watching the video, it is clear that the Marine was indeed fearful of the insurgent's potential to do harm. That fear was partially inflated by his squadmate's being killed previously and largely because the insurgent was in the middle of a decption (pretending he was dead). Some of the facts in this case are:
- The insurgents were non-uniformed combatants (which grants them no Geneva Conventions protection, it also means that they cannot claim civilian status, so the Marine didn't target a civilian here).
- The insurgents had not been under guard, they were not yet prisoners, and although they were wounded, it was not known whether they were armed (an unguarded enemy is presumed armed in combat).
- The extent of the insurgent's wounds weren't known to the Marines (so they couldn't know if they had the capacity to attack or not).
- One of the insurgents was attempting to deceive the Marines into thinking he was dead.
- In prior engagements with insurgents in Iraq, these Marines had experienced that the insurgents were willing to disregard the commonly accepted rules of warfare (including the Geneva Conventions) by doing such things as pretending to surrender and then shooting the troops who were trying to disarm them, booby-trapping their dead, hiding behind civilians and in civilian areas including mosques, etc.
- The Marine in question did not walk into the mosque shooting at every insurgent there (which would be the act of a man who was intent on simply killing or committing murder).
- The Marine didn't attack the remaining insurgents even after he killed the deceptive one (if he wanted to simply kill insurgents wouldn't he have killed them all?).
- The Marine's own words, at the time, show that he feared the insurgent.
As such, it is reasonable to believe that the Marine acted in what the Marine perceived as self defense or defense of his squad. As I understand it, the United States Marine Corps is not simply accepting this. The Marine has been pulled from his squad and the incident is under investigation. He will likely face a courts marshal and if found guilty will be punished appropriately. If he's found innocent, he will return to his duty. The challenge of law in this situation is to determine what the Marine was thinking. Was the Marine genuinely concerned with self defense? Was the Marine instead intentionally targeting this insurgent for death without regard to any of the rules of war? Only the Marine can possibly answer this question, but as I've written before, in the United States, we presume innocence until a person is proven guilty. As such, I presume that the Marine was indeed in a state of mind where self defense is a reasonable motive. If it is later shown that this was not the case, that he wasn't acting in self defense, I'll be happy to reverse my opinion on this case, on this board.
It is true that everyone is born a civilian (not just most people). The refugees in a Palestinian camp as well. If said refugees are being targeted by Israeli soldiers, they have the following recourses which will not mark them as terrorists and will be well within their rights:
1) Protest to the UN.
2) Protest to the Israeli government.
3) Join/form a uniformed Palestinian militia (uniforms are important because they identify soldiers as soldiers which can easily be differentiated from civilians).
If they remain non-uniformed, but only attack Israeli military targets (military targets as defined in the Geneva Conventions), then I wouldn't consider them terrorists (and enemies of civilization), although the Geneva Conventions still mark them as not being protected.
That said, the Israeli soldiers who targeted civilians should be prosecuted. This isn't happening, at least partially, because of the nature of the conflict. The conflict is between an established military (the Israeli army) and a group of non-uniformed combatants (who are given no protection in any legal forum). What is worse (for the Palestinians) is that the non-uniformed combatants have targeted not only the Israeli military which would at least allow them to take a moral high ground, but they target civilians as well (which results in classifying them as terrorists), and they eschew the rules of war as defined in the Geneva Conventions. Because they are non-uniformed, the Israeli military (who must defend themselves from attacks and must defend the civilians as well), find themselves facing an enemy who hides in crowds, behind civilians. They are dressed as civilians (e.g. non-uniformed) and thus the Israelis have a very difficult task determining who is an enemy. Let me be very clear here. The Israeli soldiers who fire on civilians without a reasonable belief that those civilians are actually combatants should be prosecuted. It is, however the tactics of the Palestinians, in violation of the Geneva Conventions, that created the difficulty in the first place.
In the United States, many (possibly most) states have adopted a law similar to the following: If someone is committing a crime and someone is injured or killed during the commission of the crime, the criminal is responsible for that injury or death even if the criminal did not directly cause the injury or death. This is because the criminal created the situation that led to the injury or death. The injury or death may not have been the intent, but the criminal's actions are still the ultimate cause. If this law were applied in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, it appears (to me as an outside observer) that it is the Palestinians who are fighting in violation of the Geneva Conventions, and in pursuing those non-uniformed combatants, the Israeli military is injuring civilians, the injury therefore being the responsibility of the Palestinians. If the Palestinians were to simply put on uniforms, establish an army, and fight according to the Geneva Conventions, I suspect the civilian deaths and injuries would drop drastically.
I fail to see how the idea of a popular vote (democracy) leads to nazism. Hitler's Nazi party was a dictatorship (e.g. the people had no vote), not a democracy or even a representative system. Please explain (clearly and with only the smallest leaps of logic) how you arrived at this conclusion.
It isn't that the insurgents are not recognized that deprives them of rights. In fact they have human rights and in general those are respected. It is insted that they have forfeited their rights as combatants by disregarding all of the rules of war that would give them those rights. If they were uniformed. If they respected the rules of surrender. If they weren't targeting civilians, then they would be treated to a different standard. These are not the case.
-- Jeff