We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.
-- Benjamin Franklin
The discussion at the Belmont Club on the possible implications of the Hamdan decision are, without question, some of the most mindblowing arguments I've ever encountered. As a nationalist with a great deal of respect for the possibilities outlined by Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age, I am really conflicted by the possible demise of the Nation-State.
At the very beginning of this conflict I rather hastily predicted the demise of the nation, and it wasn't until Colin Powell's very convincing argument that I came to agree that nations are more important than ever. And so I have never really questioned the wisdom of GWBush to declare an enemy any state that harbors or supports terrorists. But the Supreme Court decision effectively grants 'national' rights unilaterally to the enemies of nations. It arrogates the privileges of treaties to non-signers, and it essentially defeats recourse in kind. While I am fascinated by the development of the idea, it scares the mess out of me. As a commenter notes:
The Supreme Court’s “Hamdan v. Rumsfeld” decision, if I understand the commentary and selected quotes, holds that since al-Qaeda is known to have operated within the territories of various signatories to the Geneva Conventions, each of those signatories is therefor bound to treat al-Qaeda or any person suspected of being associated with al-Qaeda according to the limits and constraints of the conventions, regardless of where they encounter them. [My emphasis] Where battlefield prisoners have been taken into custody in parts of the world where repressive and terrorist regimes otherwise reject all the niceties of both the U.S. constitution and the Geneva Conventions, the wise ones of the court have declared that the rule of the U.S. constitution and the Geneva Conventions SUPERSEDE any other law.
But, Wait! Every Islamic Jihadist is by definition a member of a group that operates in all territories of all the signatories to the Geneva Convention. The court’s reasoning essentially means that any MUSLIM terrorist can claim to have the full protection of the Geneva Conventions, simply on that basis. Of course, the inexorable extention of the court’s logic is that anyone who opposes the U.S. on any basis, being a human is thereby a member of a group that operates in all the territories of signatories to the Conventions, and so is fully protected by those Conventions.
You see I remain a witness to the power of decentralization and peer communications.. a revolution across my career as a programmer of business intelligence systems. And quite frankly I do believe that the paradigm of hierarchical organizations is gravely threatened by cells and networks. But I have yet to find, in virtual networks, the humanized aspect of trust we seem to understand implicitly in hierarchies. Think of Henry V at Agincourt speaking to the troops. He breaks ranks and travels undercover to establish trust with the troops, a classic kind of network move. But it is as he reveals himself as King that he truly and finally rallies his organization. A true cell or networked organization works based on the basis of a disconnected and implicit trust, the unit works based on it autonomy and adaptability. But what would a unit do when common sense says it's beaten? What rallies it beyond the ordinary to extraordinary? Would a cell sacrifice itself autonomously if that was not the original plan? I don't think so. I think it goes against human nature to sacrifice anonymously, it violates Thucydides' principle of nations being primarily motivated by Fear, Honor and Self-Interest. So does network or cell organization only useful for death cults? It begs the question 'death'. If a cell's self-destruction is just an exit strategy, that the members disband spontaneously (Or as DeNiro says,"Do not allow anything into your life that you cannot walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner.") then perhaps you can beat Thucydides. You simply have to be willing not to know if you are serving a higher purpose.
So basically we have this random fidelity to Islam serving as a proxy for membership in AQ, (but it needn't be AQ and it needn't be Islam), it merely needs to be some identifyable enemy of the state, and they are now given standing by attacking the US or any signatory to Geneva. See?
Now there's a patriotic side of me that thinks, this is just what Perot ordered. You remember his privately organized rescue of hostages. But really we do not want to go there unless we are ready to concede that uniformed armies cannot win. That will then be the end of nations. So again, I have to harken back to my call for the American Empire. We need to put nations to the test - our constitutional system against theirs. The will of our people against theirs. I salute GWBush for making the US Army go to Iraq as opposed to sending some unidentifyable commandos to capture Saddam. But maybe he too is stopping too short as did the Gulf War. Maybe the only way to win wars as a nation is to destroy the people, occupy the territory, send in colonists and rejigger the borders. If we fail to do this as nations, we will do it as entities smaller than nations, as Red States or Blue States or Christian Rightists or Islamic Jihadists or as the People's Militant Vanguard of the Vaguely Central Right Formerly Citizens of the Nation Known as the USA.
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