On Mon, 14 Jan 2002, Tim May wrote:
Why would it not? It was the regime controlling Afghanistan. Sure, it was not the regime that signed the Geneva Accords of Whichever Type, but neither is the Bush Jr. Administration the same as the Clinton, Bush Sr., Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, or Truman Administrations.
Nor is the Putin Administration the same as whatever band of brigands ran Russia 50 years ago. And so on.
The Taliban Regime was as much in the line of succession as any of hundreds of other regimes.
That the U.S. is choosing to ignore the Geneva Accords of Whichever Type is, hopefully, one more nail in their coffin.
I was of course speaking of statements written in the "Law of Nations" programming language. If you use a different programming language, the code won't run. Like most of our legal discussions here, morality is not at issue just what opinions courts have expressed on various matters. The US was, in fact, convicted of war crimes in '86 in a trial at the International Court of Justice for air-sown mines in Nicaragua but nothing came of it. US treatment of those who formally declared war on it a half-dozen times since 1996 and initiated hostilities is not likely to constitute that entity's worst human rights violations. Perhaps not a rights violation at all in strict libertarian terms. Libertarian penal theory has not been well developed. Naturally we don't favor sticking prisoners in utopian socialist colonies (prisons). Slavery to the victim or family is possible but difficult. "The Market for Liberty" suggested that crime would be so rare that shrinks would rent the few prisoners as study subjects but I doubt that's very realistic. There's always the payment of wergeld but the poor often can't pay. Since torture or execution are not strictly prohibited by the non-aggression axiom in the case of those who have agressed, there are likely to be differences among libertarians on the treatment of prisoners. Still an unresolved problem. DCF ---- "Ideally, the death penalty should be administered on the spot at the hands of the intended victim(s). (The UA 93 solution to the 11 September attacks.)