If Erik Prince's mercenaries start trying to overthrow national governments, hell yes those governments have a right to shoot back.
See, you admit that having men under arms at one's disposal alone is not sufficient justification to strip people of their legal rights.
You're referring to Erik Prince of Blackwater, yes? Then again, Prince is not attacking the Pentagon. Allegedly, the work his company has engaged in is legal security work (I realize there is some debate around that, but lets not get distracted) which would require the bearing of arms as part of that work. Assuming that is the case, the only exceptions we should see would be (hopefully) rare incidents of individual misconduct by employees, which any company is at risk for.
If the “men at arms” are mostly shooting people in the drug trade, or some other form of crime, and aren't engaged in slaughtering thousands of uninvolved, innocent civilians they're considered a problem and a threat, but not in the same manner someone randomly bombing skyscrapers would be. It's not worth starting a war over that.
Terror attacks don't constitute a substantial threat to the US.
The ones on 9/11 not only killed 2900+ people, they shut down the
entire US airspace. Canada
also shut down their airspace. This played merry hell with the transportation system, and was not only one giant pain in the ass inconvenience but also cost a fuckton of money, from business disruption to people spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars out of their own pocket for alternative transportation. The US can tolerate that on rare occasions but not as a regular and repeating event.
Yes, it was a threat to the US because:
1) It killed nearly 3k people
2) It reduced 16 acres in Manhattan to rubble, resulting in the loss of several buildings with a high value due to their location.
3) It knocked down part of a military holding (the Pentagon)
4) It shut down the North American airspace
5) The consequences just from the above cost a shitload of money.
Is it in the same league with, say, what London went through in the Blitz? No – but then, the US has an obligation to avoid letting things get to that point, if the US is able to prevent such circumstances.
It's not that I fear the consequences of this, it's that I expect them to be totally ignored by any nation that actually has anything at stake in the matter.
Is that an admission that you forfeit arguing for the legality of international hitjobs and simply claim Might Makes Right?
Without making a judgement of morality here, it is well to remember that on an
international level that Might Often Makes Right. Big, powerful nations don't stomp on little ones to quite the extent they used to, but even in today's world power still counts.
Whether it's SEAL's riding stealth helicopters or agents sprinkling radioactive Polonium on someone's sushi, governments still do this shit. It is not limited to the US. There is probably less of it than at some times in history
because we have the UN and Interpol and other means of cooperation between nations but we are
far from
international matters truly being run by law rather than raw power and alliances. I suspect all of us here would be in favor of more law and less might but that's not our currently reality however much we would prefer it.
Master of Ossus wrote:I'd only add that warfare should not require that the opponent threaten "the national integrity of the" threatened state. IMO, the deliberate targeting of masses of civilians within the territory of another state by the military forces of another country, should be sufficient to constitute warfare.
Simon can answer this one, but where should the line be? Tim McVeigh killed 150 people in one fell swoop and he was treated like any other criminal.
Actually, 168 people, a significant number of them children, and knocked down a Federal government building (well, damaged it so much what was still standing had to be knocked down.)
Another point about Interpol is that they do make arrests themselves – they are more facilitators than actual police officers. Interpol only works when the police in the involved nations are cooperative with Interpol.
Anyhow, a VERY IMPORTANT POINT which seems to escape you was that there was no a police force with the authority to
find and capture him, at least, not one willing to do so. There is no US police force that has jurisdiction in Afghanistan. There is Interpol, yes, and both Afghanistan and the US are members – which might be why the US asked Afghanistan to turn over bin Laden before the invasion, and most likely would have been happy to work through Interpol IF Afghanistan had agreed to play, too. But the Taliban in control of Afghanistan basically said “fuck you” to the US. On practical level, this may not have been their best decision. Also, Interpol doesn't get involed with politcal, military, or religious issues and the business of 9/11 definitly fell under one of those, likely two, and possibly all three. Basically, Interpol deals with people all parties agree are criminals (or under suspicion of being such)
Metahive wrote:Well, I already divorced the question of Interpol's availability from their effectivity. Did the US even try to get OBL this way?
Perhaps you are not old enough to remember the year 2001. The US most certainly
did ask the Taliban to hand over bin Laden. Interpol would have been happy to facilitate, and it's quite likely that the US would agree to that if it got them bin Laden quickly and cheaply. IF that had happened it might even have been possible to try bin Laden as a criminal in the State of New York (though a venue change would probably be asked for due to bias in the potential jury pool). When it became a matter of having to go to war to extract bin Laden it all became much more serious for everyone. The Taliban helped escalate this by choosing to shelter bin Laden rather than hand him over. It was, of course, their choice to make.
In addition, the FBI was involved in investigating the 9/11 attacks, which is about as good as police investigating gets in the US. Initially in many ways this was treated as a criminal act. It involved over half the FBI's agents. See
here for the wiki, if anyone wants to know more you can start there.
If the US really didn't give a fuck it could have bombed Afghanistan on September 12 – but it didn't. They waited until October 7. What do you think the US government was doing in the meanwhile, picking its nose?
Mind you, some of the people in Afghanistan were smart enough to figure out what was going to happen and tried to flee the country. It did NOT help that Pakistan closed its Afghanistan border on September 17, trapping many civilians inside a country that was pretty certain to come under US bombardment in the near future. Granted, Pakistan had reasons beyond just being mean to do that.
Also, let me direct you to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1368, passed unanimously on September 12, 2001 by UN SCR members China, France, Russia, UK, US (of course), Bangladesh, Columbia, Republic of Ireland, Jamacia, Mali, Mauritus, Norway, Singapore, Tunisia, and Ukraine. The important points are as follows:
- The Security Council condemned the attacks on the US on September 11.
- Expressed sympathy for the victims, their families,
and the US government (which would seem to indicate the Security Council viewed this as an attack on the US government).
- The resolution called on ALL countries to co-operate in bringing the
perpetrators, organisers and sponsors of the attacks to justice and that
those responsible for supporting or harbouring the perpetrators, organisers and sponsors would be held accountable.
- Referred to United Nations Security Council Resolution 1269, a prior resolution on terrorism
I mean, fucking hell, CUBA offered sympathy to the US and said they'd lend assistance if asked. CUBA. It's not like Castro
likes the US or anything, you know? Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah of Hezbollah condemned the attacks. Apparently, Metahive, even if this looked like an ordinary crime to you a LOT of world governments and organizations, including those with no reason to like or side with the US or who had been the declared enemies of the US for decades, felt otherwise.