JC Re: [extropy-chat] Re: US not right to invade say Iraqis

[Brett Paatsch]

John K Clark wrote:

> "Brett Paatsch" <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au>
>
>> I need to get some sense that it will be possible for you to recognize
>> that international law exists. [....]  I await your reply with genuine
>> eagerness,  so much so that I expect you  will dodge the questions or not
>> send it.
>
> Let me relieve your anxiety, I have no intention of dogging your question.
> If the day comes when you can show me the error of my ways and that for
> years I have been laboring under a misconception and you prove to me that
> international law does indeed exists I will be forever grateful to you for
> correcting my grievous and long lived mistake.
> To render me this service all
> you have to do is name one aircraft carrier under the command of
> international law, or cruiser, or destroyer, or PT boat, or tug boat, or
> dingy, or bb gun, or cap pistol. Until that day comes to pass I will call 
> it
> for exactly what it is, international suggestions.

This doesn't make any sense you offer me only absurd ways to convince
you.  But okay lets try it.

The USS Enterprise.

Are you convinced? ;-)

> Why do you suppose people debating if Australian law existed or not would 
> be
> absolutely absurd, an exercise fit only for morons?

Because it does clearly does exist.

> It would be absurd
> because the answer is so blindingly obvious.

Its obvious to me that my answer is that it does. Its not obvious to me that
you will grant that it does, why should you, Australian law doesn't compell
you to do anything unless you are under its jurisdiction?

So far as I know you only acknowledge the existence of laws that have
force behind them.

If a murder was committed in the US and the person escaped conviction
it is not clear to me that you would consider that the crime of murder
existed.

The law doesn't cease to exist merely because it is not applied in
some cases.

Let me give you a hypothetical.

Suppose all the US Supreme Court justices conspired to together
break a law that only the Supreme Court had the jurisdiction to
adjudicate. Would the relevant law cease to exist merely because
it could not be applied in that case?


> The fact that the very
> existence of international law is controversial is pretty damn good 
> evidence
> to me of its mythical nature and can join its noble brethren, Big Foot,
> flying saucers, cold fusion, and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The trials of Michael Jackson and O J Simpson were controversial
does that make the crimes they were charged with non-existent of
mythical.

> Please don't misunderstand, I'm not saying it's a bad idea, far from it!

I am *trying* to understand.

> Perhaps someday billions of people will have enough confidence in
> international law to entrust their freedom and safety to it, I hope so, 
> but
> we're not there yet.

John the big part of my concern about this is that it had already started
to happen in a very limited way with the signing and ratification of the
UN Charter. I really don't get why you don't get that.

But the fact is that you don't get that do you?  This is where you
and I don't understand each other I think.

>
>>  I'd like to know which would disturb you  more that "they" genuinely
>> believed or that they were lying and deceiving including to Congress and
>> to the American people.
>
> You are asking me who is worse, a liar or an idiot. I have no easy answer.
> Would you rather be shot or hung?

No. I'm trying to get a handle on if or how you see ethics and degrees
of rightness or wrongness. That would help me understand how you
see law. It seems to me that you only see law as being about compulsion.

I think that you might think that if you and I made mutual promises
and there was no compulsion that you would still feel an ethical
obligation to honour your promise but you have not told me that
that is the case yet.

>> I can say good things about Bush. I think he really loves his
>> family.
>
> Granted.
>
>> I think he is probably genuine in his faith in God.
>
> Yes but believing in something (faith) when there is no good reason for 
> doing so is not a virtue it is a vice. Bush had faith there were WMD in 
> Iraq
> and look where that got us. If you put a gun to my head I would say there 
> is
> a 51% probability that Bush really did believe all that WMD crap; but the
> fact that the man who could destroy all human civilization in a few hours
> with the wave of his hand is probably an idiot rather than a liar does not
> enable me to sleep more soundly at night.

I follow your thinking in this bit which makes it all the more strange that
I don't in the other bit.

You say international law does not exist and I say it does so one of
us must be logically incorrect. I think it is you because you are making
a category error and mixing up enforceability in some circumstances
with existence of the law per se.

Brett Paatsch