Unites States, a Rogue terror state, violates Geneva Convention

Duncan Frissell frissell at panix.com
Tue Jan 15 13:03:48 PST 2002


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.)





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