Atrios speculates here that it will be Pace who loses his job rather than Rumsfeld.

Posted November 30, 2005 6:39 PM by Lenny Bailes

I'm liking Pace a lot. Via Rosemary for Rembrance, have you seen this? I particularly like "I'm not trainable today," when Rumsfeld tried to teach Pace not to call Iraqi insurgents...insurgents.

Posted November 30, 2005 6:47 PM by Madeleine Robins

And notice that Pace did not specify abuse by Iraqi troops. Any US soldier who sees any inhumane treatement has an obligation to intervene to stop it.

Pace will probably be fired real soon.

Posted November 30, 2005 6:48 PM by Beth Meacham

Whether Pace goes or whether Pace stays -- Rumsfeld is no longer effective. His troops are in open revolt.

Posted November 30, 2005 6:48 PM by James D. Macdonald

Lenny: Very probably. Consider, though, that the head of the armed forces has decided to take this stand in public, even though he's sacrificing his career. The message going up the food chain is very stark: "We, the armed forces of the USA, oppose you, Donald Rumsfeld, on this issue. We oppose you so much that we will make you fire or imprison us rather than submit."

While this is not a mutiny, this has a resemblance to the English Navy's rather formulaic mutinies in the early 1700's; or to peasant revolts in feudal Japan. The leaders often got killed (particularly in the Japanese case), but the complaints were heard, often at a very high level.

Posted November 30, 2005 6:55 PM by Victor S.

Lenny - Given what happened to Shinseki, if Pace rocks the boat, he's out on his ear. Will he rock the boat? I have no idea, but I'm betting he won't, and the whole thing will blow over media-wise, while everyone in the know will understand that most real commanders (the ones who are not REMFs as my military friends call them) hate Rumsfeld with a passion, but continue to do the job in front of them without rocking the boat.

I swear to god the man is the biggest phony to ever walk the planet. Have you heard him speak? The whole charming grandfather routine with the "my goodness" and "gracious me" bits makes me want to vomit all over him.

Posted November 30, 2005 7:04 PM by Josh Jasper

Pace probably will get fired, and if he does, I can't imagine the situation will get better. Can you be a martyr while still alive? We're about to find out...

Posted November 30, 2005 7:26 PM by Will "scifantasy" Frank

Well, as you would expect of someone that would be picked by the Cheney administration for the big chair, Pace supports this war and thinks we can win it. But he seems to have his own mind in regard to what is and is not acceptable. From the November 7 News Hour interview:

JIM LEHRER: There was a -- the U.S. military announced today that five Army Rangers are charged with abusing some captured Iraqis. What did they do? What's the allegation?

GENERAL PETER PACE: I do not know the specifics of that allegation. I do know they were charged. That is under investigation right now. It would be inappropriate for me to voice an opinion especially as chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff -

JIM LEHRER: Sure.

GENERAL PETER PACE: I can tell you categorically that any maltreatment of any detainees by U.S. forces or coalition forces is totally unacceptable -- that our orders have and will continue to be that we will treat everyone in our charge with -- humanely and with respect.

JIM LEHRER: Sen. McCain has been - the Senate has passed - it has yet to be approved by the House, a legislation that would use the Army manual as the rules for how to treat prisoners, detainees. And he said that it was necessary because we have changed the rules so often that the average U.S. troop over there doesn't know what he is, he or she is allowed to do at any given time. And he said this: He said that, let me find his quote here. He said, "U.S. personnel don't know what's permitted or forbidden." And he said and "when something goes wrong we blame them and we punish them and we have to do better than that."

Do you support what he is doing? Do you support the legislation to make the Army manual the rules and so everybody knows you don't beat up on people, you don't torture them, et cetera?

GENERAL PETER PACE: I would say that the members of the U.S. armed forces understand clearly what they are allowed to do and what they are not allowed to do with regard to treatment of prisoners and detainees and they understand that they are to treat them humanely.

Having said that, it is perfectly fine to have the Army field manual for the detention of individuals, as the bible, so to speak, of how we are supposed to be doing business. That's exactly what it is. And for the senator to say that we should be following our own rules certainly makes sense.

JIM LEHRER: Again, I would not try to get you to comment on this case of the five rangers, but just generally speaking, for a U.S. soldier, Marine, sailor, whatever, to claim that he or she didn't know the rules about how to treat a captured Iraqi, you just wouldn't buy as a general premise, right?

GENERAL PETER PACE: I would not buy that as a person in uniform and I would not buy that as an American citizen.

If Rumsfeld was surprised by this yesterday, he hasn't been paying attention. This is what you get when you put a Marine with combat time in charge.

And Josh, it is one thing to announce someone's sucessor early to undercut them (Shinseki was scheduled to retire in 2003 anyway) and another to try to remove a Chairman who has just taken the job -- especially the very first Marine. Pace probably has better connections in the five sided madhouse than Rumsfeld. If you want a real revolt, pull something like that.

Posted November 30, 2005 7:36 PM by Claude Muncey

Another thing to consider --

All military appointments at the three star level and further north require congressional review and approval. Any bets on how well Pace (and his staff) know the members (and staffs) of the various defense and appropriations comittees of both Houses? Bush is not popular any more, and Rummy was never that popular at all. Lots of congresscritters are facing election within a year and may well prefer to be associated with Pace than Rumsfeld.

Posted November 30, 2005 7:44 PM by Claude Muncey

I would like to take this moment to nominate "congresscritters" as the best new word to be born to the public at large on Making Light since "Disemvowel".

I have a new word, and I will use it with much vigor and smirking. Thank you, Claud Muncey.

Posted November 30, 2005 7:50 PM by Karl Kindred

Karl, I can't accept blame or credit for "congresscritter". The term has been around for quite a while, so I doubt that there is a copyright problem. Use it all you want, with my compliments.

Posted November 30, 2005 8:01 PM by Claude Muncey

Er, Karl, I don't think it's all that new. I used it, for example, at my place on March 26, 2003.

Nonetheless, it's a wonderful non-gender-specific word, whoever coined it.

Posted November 30, 2005 8:01 PM by Linkmeister

'congresscritters' is a Pogo word, from the pen of Mr Walt Kelly. I applaud its resurgence.

And three cheers for General Pace! 'Bout time.

Posted November 30, 2005 8:03 PM by pericat

Congresscritter. God I loath that term. If it wasn't born in the one of the "all government is hopeless corrupt" schools of thought, it surely should have been. It serves on every level to demean and dismiss, on the one hand, the idea that government can ever be a tool in which good people can do good things, and on the other, the idea that one ought to expect good things out government generally or the congress specifically. You don't look for help from "critters" and you can hardly hold them to account for not rising above their natures.

Posted November 30, 2005 8:11 PM by James Angove

Damn, why did it have to be a Staff Officer? If he was in the line, that was an order.

Damn.

Shame that we know *exactly* what Rumsfeild has to do, and quickly. Here's hoping he can't figure it out.

Posted November 30, 2005 8:18 PM by Erik V. Olson

Might be worth looking up the rest of the story out of Haiti several years ago - IIRC a soldier (Army not Marine) left his post by a few feet to intervene inside a building - but also lost sight of his post - at least the first level Court found an obligation to report but to not intervene under the circumstances.

Posted November 30, 2005 8:27 PM by Clark E Myers

The question on my mind: if Rumsfeld doesn't quit, and the CEO President doesn't fire him, what will the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff do about it?

"Whether Pace goes or whether Pace stays -- Rumsfeld is no longer effective. His troops are in open revolt."

They're not brandishing their weapons yet, so there's still something— I won't call it hope.

Posted November 30, 2005 8:41 PM by j h woodyatt

GENERAL PETER PACE: I can tell you categorically that any maltreatment of any detainees by U.S. forces or coalition forces is totally unacceptable -- that our orders have and will continue to be that we will treat everyone in our charge with -- humanely and with respect.

What crack has this man been smoking? Who's running Gitmo?

Oh yeah, that'd be the US Armed forces. waterboaring, sleep deprivation, sexual abuse, 'stress positions', cold water treatment, religious harrasment. And more.

Is it just me, or does Pace have a different version of the word "humane" than the rest of the planet? Or did he somehow manage to miss what we're doing in Gitmo?

I don't think anything will come of his dissent. It looks too staged to mean anything real.

Posted November 30, 2005 8:44 PM by Josh Jasper

My memory isn't that good or contemporary reports were slighted or perhaps both. The case I was thinking of above just about has to be:
Captain LAWRENCE P. ROCKWOOD II
United States Army, ARMY 9500872
CARTER, Judge:
A general court-martial composed of officers convicted the appellant, contrary
to his pleas, of failure to go to his appointed place of duty, leaving his appointed
place of duty, disrespect to a superior commissioned officer, willfully disobeying a
superior commissioned officer, and conduct unbecoming an officer in violation of
Articles 86, 89, 90, and 133, Uniform Code of Military Justice, 10 U.S.C. §§ 886,
889, 890, and 933 (1988) [hereinafter UCMJ].1 The court-martial adjudged a
sentence of dismissal and forfeiture of all pay and allowances. The successor convening authority2 disapproved the finding of guilty of conduct unbecoming an
officer, approved the remaining findings of guilty, and approved a sentence to
forfeiture of $1500.00 pay per month for two months and a dismissal. This case is
before the court for automatic review under Article 66, UCMJ.
Appellant raises six assignments of error, all of which we decide against him.......

Just the same Captain Rockwood seems to have made a point with some people:
Stephen Wrage
Center for the Study of Professional Military Ethics, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD, USA.
...
This teaching case study poses classic questions about following orders versus
serving one's conscience. It tracks the actions of Captain Lawrence Rockwood,
an intelligence officer with the Tenth Mountain Division of the United States
Army, who was sent to Haiti in September 1994 as part of the mission to oust the
dictator Cedras and put the elected Aristide in power. Captain Rockwood felt that
his conscience, his humanitarian duty and international law all required that he
inspect the National Penitentiary where, intelligence reports showed, political
prisoners were being tortured and murdered. His chain of command was unanimous
in refusing him permission to inspect the prison and in directing that he do
nothing that would endanger fragile relations with the peacefully departing
Cedras regime. The case is intended for use in courses on force and justice, for
ethics and leadership classes at military academies, at chaplaincy schools and
seminaries or in classes on law of war and international law, civil-military
relations, peacekeeping and new missions for the military.
.....

Certainly as I read it this case (and others) stand for [not implying a precedential effect for this particular case] a duty to report and once having reported there is no general duty to intervene even if a superior is later criminal in action or inaction as the facts may be.

Posted November 30, 2005 9:13 PM by Clark E Myers

I have no doubt that Rumsfeld has lost the trust and support of the military; unfortunately, he has the support of the V-P, which appears to be all important in the Bush White House. I hope Claude is right, that removing Pace would cause a "real revolt." Though I have no idea what that would look like...

Posted November 30, 2005 9:54 PM by Lizzy L

I particularly like "I'm not trainable today," when Rumsfeld tried to teach Pace not to call Iraqi insurgents...insurgents.

By my count, the all-bullet-points-all-the-time National Strategy for Victory in Iraq refers to "insurgents" or the "insurgency" no less than 23 times. (And have you ever seen "bullet points" used in a more appropriate context?)

Posted November 30, 2005 10:27 PM by Alex Merz

Is it just me, or does Pace have a different version of the word "humane" than the rest of the planet? Or did he somehow manage to miss what we're doing in Gitmo?

It's not just you. I was wondering the exact same thing.

I don't think anything will come of his dissent. It looks too staged to mean anything real.

I don't think it's staged, but I also don't think it will lead to anything. I doubt it will be all that widely reported in the mainstream media, for one thing (I hope I'm wrong on that one).

Posted November 30, 2005 10:49 PM by Meredith

It serves on every level to demean and dismiss, on the one hand, the idea that government can ever be a tool in which good people can do good things, and on the other, the idea that one ought to expect good things out government generally or the congress specifically.

Well, yeah. That's why I like it. Never forget, every action by a government agent has, at it's core, the promise that if that agent is disobeyed, eventually another government agent will come and shoot you. Government is force. If the only way you can get people to support your program of social reform or charitable aid is by threatening to kill them if they don't do what you tell them, you're probably not the best person to administer that plan.

Posted December 1, 2005 12:25 AM by Joe Crow

"His troops are in open revolt."

Doesn't anyone else see this as at least as serious than the specific issues, here? So far our military has been loyal in the face of appalling civilian leadership. But...Iraq...is it possible? Could this war drive our military to revolt?

Posted December 1, 2005 1:59 AM by Randolph Fritz

Revolt?

Hold to their principles and uphold what they swore to uphold, more like.

Posted December 1, 2005 3:16 AM by elise

Rome.

Posted December 1, 2005 4:25 AM by bryan

Well, Julius Caesar probably thought he was doing something very similar when he did his thing. That's been one of my larger worries about this whole Bush fiasco, that the generals would get tired of being ignored and having their soldiers wasted on dumbass stunts and pull a military coup. After all, it'd just be temporary, y'know, until they could put the country back on track and return it to the staunch republican values of our forefathers. That always works, doesn't it?

Oh, wait, no it doesn't. Military rule is a genie that's damn hard to put back in the bottle, but it can be really tempting to folks who are used to having people do what they're told without question, and not all of the folks in the upper military echelons are as fond of the subordination of military power to civilian authority as they used to be. US military culture has been getting more and more separate from civilian culture over the last 150 years, and a lot of the brass are from military families and have been part of that military culture since before birth. We're profoundly alien to them, and it's very easy to just opt for violence as a method of dealing with the alien.

Posted December 1, 2005 4:29 AM by Joe Crow

So, Joe, the government is a gang of thugs whose arbitrary rule is enforced at gunpoint, and the military is an alien culture which might take over from them any minute.

Let's see, how do you feel about public education?

Fluoride in the water?

Tinfoil hats?

Ayn Rand?

UFOs?

Pi?

Posted December 1, 2005 5:39 AM by Niall McAuley

Well, there's another seven years to go yet until the Coup of 2012. Funny; that predicted a military takeover in the wake of a gradual expansion of the military's civilian duties - law enforcement, transport, disaster relief and so on - although, on rereading it, I notice that the triggering event was "the wretched performance of our forces in the Second Gulf War" - this written in 1996! - and a loss of faith in Congress.
Think about when revolutions happen - in 1919 in Germany, in 1917 in Russia.

Posted December 1, 2005 8:56 AM by ajay

"Never forget, every action by a government agent has, at it's core, the promise that if that agent is disobeyed, eventually another government agent will come and shoot you. Government is force. If the only way you can get people to support your program of social reform or charitable aid is by threatening to kill them if they don't do what you tell them, you're probably not the best person to administer that plan."

You skipped a step or two there. It isn't just government that depends on threat, it's practically everybody. There are people who say they won't do violence themselves because they depend on the police to do it for them, but that's just hiring it out.

Say you take a gasoline can and go into a church during services and say, "I'm going to burn down this building and I'll get it done before the police can get here.". Do you think anybody will try to stop you? Maybe some quakers wouldn't, but there's an old quaker tradition of "Pardon me kind sir, but thou art standing where I am about to shoot.".

I've hardly ever thrown anybody out of my house with physical force or overt threat of physical force, but that's because I'm very tolerant and also I tend to get visitors who're civil. Government isn't the only one that threatens. It's just the biggest that makes a point of threats.

And government doesn't just threaten. Government generally depends on cooperation, and often acknowledges that directly. Even when the rules are explicitly stated as threats to those who don't cooperate, often that is just a sort of bluster by the people who can't imagine anyone disagreeing, and those threats are not particularly enforced. People often organise cooperation using government because that's one of the tools available.

If you decide ahead of time that it's all about force, then there's usually some biggest force that throws its weight around. If not a government then a mafia. And when there isn't a biggest force there are two are more large forces that are more-or-less evenly matched, and when they disagree it's like the public is ground between millstones. When you think in those terms there's nothing else whether there's an official government or not. You get to choose whether you give legitimacy to a government or else regard it as a mafia. You get to choose whether to secretly oppose a government and hope the next one will be better for you. But there's no respite.

If you want something better you'll have to create it in your own mind, with some better idea. Start with the idea that it isn't only about force, and maybe there will be room for something else.

Posted December 1, 2005 8:56 AM by J Thomas

"Congresscritters" -- given Walt Kelly's Pogo was peopled with critters, did he use the term in the pejorative?

Posted December 1, 2005 10:49 AM by Richard Anderson

I see from his bio that Rumsfeld is one of the few Bush administration members with any military service at all; but I was mistaken to think he had combat experience. He was a Navy pilot and flight instructor in 1954-57 and in the Reserves after that; so he managed to miss out on both Korea and Vietnam.

I'm sure Pace knows that.

Posted December 1, 2005 11:00 AM by theophylact

Consider: General Pace is a Marine, the first Marine to hold the Chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs.

Congressman John Murtha is retired Marine Colonel, and ranking member of the Armed Services Committee of Congress.

Posted December 1, 2005 11:24 AM by Beth Meacham

Alex Merz: regarding bullet points, this seems particularly appropriate -

http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/graphics/home_stalin_poster.jpg

Posted December 1, 2005 11:25 AM by EliB

This so-called "pi" is a MERE THEORY which at its heart is nothing more than a GODLESS COMMUNIST PLOT. For as all right-thinking people know, the Bible CLEARLY STATES in 1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chron. 4:2 that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is THREE, no more and no less. Not two, neither is it four; five is RIGHT OUT.

(Did I use enough CAPITAL LETTERS for authenticity?)

Posted December 1, 2005 11:38 AM by Julie L.

Of course Rumsfeld's a naval aviator. He's an arrogant, unteachable egotist who fetishises technology, ignores criticism, despises ground troops, and thinks you can win wars with go-faster stripes and air power.
Naval aviators are not all like that - it's just that these are the bad personality traits that they sometimes acquire, just as infantry officers can become hidebound, over-cautious, unwilling to reorganise and obsessed with mass over manoeuvre.
And aviators go deaf, while infantrymen get creaky knees.

Posted December 1, 2005 11:42 AM by ajay

Portuguese Angola is, I suggest, the most useful recent example of a disgusted army in a modern country. The soldiers rather than the army did go home and turn the government (Salazar) out of office mostly to good effect. Didn't do Angola a lot of good.

On the other hand there is a whiff of the worse the better here and beware the fury of the Legions is a very old warning.

On the gripping hand, I would continue to argue as I suggested supra that Rumsfield was precisely correct in a technical or legal sense as might be expected from his history.

This implies a different ground for the disagreement. I'd like to think Chief Warrant Officer Hugh C. Thompson represents the best of the American soldier (grounded his bird and prepared his door gunners to fire at Americans) but he wasn't the majority opinion at My Lai.

The vote of the Legions is I suspect still out.

Posted December 1, 2005 11:45 AM by Clark E Myers

If they were legions, that is military bodies raised by a particular general (holding other civil rank) and dependent on him for their pay, bonuses and retirement package, then I too would fear them once he and they came into conflict with civil authority.

The question is, how paramount is the civil authority? That is to say, the government of the United States?

Posted December 1, 2005 11:52 AM by Dave Luckett

Clark: came pretty close in France in '61-62, too. OAS? Tanks on the streets of Paris? People expecting 'les paras' to drop onto the Champs-Elysees in revenge for the abandonment of the pieds-noirs and the harkis in Algeria? The Bastien-Thiry conspiracy? The Generals' Putsch and the seizure of Corsica?

Posted December 1, 2005 12:02 PM by ajay

Algeria is an interesting case - are there any current patterns of car horn blowing to match Algerie Francaise? That might be an indication of general involvement? [there may be ways to indicate rhythm and emphasis here but I don't know what they might be] Opposition in the United States to Vietnam shared some common chants - Ho Ho Ho Chih Minh Ho Chih Minh is sure to win - I don't see anything like that currently.

I don't remember that abandoning the pieds-noirs was quite so important as abandoning what was in some sense the frontier of opportunity in a France recently fought over. Sort of we can't give it up I don't have mine yet. It was a complex time and place.

A Foreign Legion is readily distinguished from a citizen soldier (see George Washington on the subject). Indeed I think Dr.Pournelle is correct. If we are to be a competent Empire we need a Foreign Legion here and the lack is a sign of incompetent Empire to the extent we are an Empire.

Considering the Legion and les paras differed greatly even on pace to march in review (smiley) I don't think the military was applying force in line with itself let alone with civilian desires.

Posted December 1, 2005 1:24 PM by Clark E Myers

I think that Pace is being given a bad rap, here. He did not make any statement about what is currently happening at Gitmo or elsewhere. What he said was that it is the responsibility of every soldier to not merely report but to actually intervene in instances of inhumane treatment. That kinda covers Gitmo, really. Not only are those service people failing to intervene, they are actively participating in committing inhumane treatment. Note that his comment does not limit this to Iraq, either.

This is an interesting game being played out at an extremely high level, and I don't know very many of the moves, but it is obviously a high-stakes game. Why did Pace put his butt on the line? Who has political capital, and how much? As Bush's popularity falls, Rumsfeld's power drops. As the popularity of the war drops, Rumsfeld's power drops even further. Who has what kind of political capital? What alliances have been made?

This isn't chickenshit. This is a major event. I'm certain I don't know what comes next, but I can sure tell what it means: the Armed Forces have had it up to fucking here. I'm not worried about a military coup. A huge majority of the Armed Forces actually approve of democracy, and I believe they will defend it. My guess is that they would go through the impeachment process. Who gets to lay articles of impeachment against the president? We are an established democracy, and for all of our cynicism, it still means a great deal to most of us. We've never had even a breath of a possibility of a military coup. Hell, the closest we've ever come to a turn-over of power by the use of force was in Florida in 2000. That was a terrifying precedent, but note it didn't include any armed servicement at all.

I think that what we're seeing is the Bush administration finally overstepping its bounds so far that it's running into the real government. They were so arrogant that they thought that all they needed for control were political appointees who were beholden to them. Have you ever worked for a boss who was so bloody incompetent that the only way to get things done was to ignore him? This is kind of like that. While the Bushies play around upstairs, the governmental wheels grind away. If they get caught between those wheels, they are ground up, even if they did have the illusion of control.

Posted December 1, 2005 1:42 PM by Lydy Nickerson

Redefining the United States Marine Corps is taking place in the background. Notice the extent to which the Navy is going to replace the function of fleet Marines with a new naval infantry.

It is not just the band that has been "The President's Own" see e.g. Tripoli to Central America for using Marines to fight undeclared wars or project power or pick your own words.

As the light infantry wave of the future the Marine Corps seems to be in process of pick one - cutting apron strings/declaring its independence mostly of the Navy certainly establishing a new identity.

I'd agree with the pundits who are suggesting that interpretation of emphasize the unique identity on the interpolated sir.

Posted December 1, 2005 2:15 PM by Clark E Myers

This so-called "pi" is a MERE THEORY which at its heart is nothing more than a GODLESS COMMUNIST PLOT. For as all right-thinking people know, the Bible CLEARLY STATES in 1 Kings 7:23 and 2 Chron. 4:2 that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is THREE, no more and no less. Not two, neither is it four; five is RIGHT OUT.

Not only that, but these "mathematicians" will even ADMIT that they can't tell you PRECISELY, EXACTLY what Pi is! Infinite number of digits, my foot. There's only ONE thing that is truly infinite, and that is THE LORD.

Clark - are you quite all right? That last post was...syntactically complex. The last para was downright incoherent. I honestly haven't the foggiest notion what you were trying to say.

Posted December 1, 2005 3:07 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

I think that what we're seeing is the Bush administration finally overstepping its bounds so far that it's running into the real government. They were so arrogant that they thought that all they needed for control were political appointees who were beholden to them.

Very true, and very important.

This has happened before -- consider what would have happened if Nixon, in his last month in office, called that anonymous major or lieutenant commander waiting just outside into the oval office and tried to issue an execution order for OPLAN 1000. I have no doubt that this would have been checked first with the Secretary of Defence, and would have been quietly ignored. (The double check is normal procedure -- emergency war orders are to be issued jointly by both the PotUS and SecDef, not by the President alone, despite what all the novels say. The "Two Man Rule" on nukes operates all the way to the top.) Shortly afterwards, Vice President Ford would have invoked Section 4 instead of Section 1 of the 25th Amendment, as Nixon would have been residing in a quiet locked room in Bethesda.

You ignore the permanent government at your own risk.

Posted December 1, 2005 3:13 PM by Claude Muncey

They were so arrogant that they thought that all they needed for control were political appointees who were beholden to them.

And comfortable, because the electorate didn't seem to care/notice/vote.

Posted December 1, 2005 3:13 PM by Lin Daniel

tried to issue an execution order for OPLAN 1000. I have no doubt that this would have been checked first with the Secretary of Defence,

There was a standing order that any instructions concerning the military from President Nixon were first to be confirmed by the Secretary of State/Defense (don't remember which) because Nixon was experiencing paranoia because of the steriods he was taking.

Posted December 1, 2005 3:19 PM by Lin Daniel

Some useful bits of information:

1. The military is a mannered, semiotically nuanced universe. Staged dissent is no less real for being staged.

2. Refusing to obey Rumsfeld doesn't automatically mean the military is in a state of mutiny. All the members of the U.S. Armed Forces have sworn (or affirmed) that they will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and that they will bear true faith and allegiance to the same. What comes after that differs, depending on whether they're officers or enlisted personnel. The differences are interesting. Have a look.

3. General Pace was speaking prescriptively when he said that if members are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, they have an obligation to try to stop it. Regrettable recent events may explain why he found it necessary to make that statement, but they don't nullify it.

4. As noted, Rumsfeld has no combat experience. He also has little or no experience of commanding troops. He was a pilot.

Onward.

James Angove, I don't share your loathing of "congresscritter", but I'll wholeheartedly join you in despising the idea that all government is inherently corrupt. That belief empowers the incompetent, the self-seeking, and the wicked, and is a calumny upon our democratic government and the public servants who make it work.

Joe Crow, was Civics not a requirement at your high school? I ask this with reference to your statement that:

"...every action by a government agent has, at it's core, the promise that if that agent is disobeyed, eventually another government agent will come and shoot you. Government is force."

By mutual consent, we elect representatives to a central federal government and to our local governments. By mutual consent we tax ourselves to provide for our various needs -- defense, infrastructure, and the well-being of our citizens, mostly. By mutual consent, we fund police, firemen, EMTs, prisons, and the judicial system.

Mind you, all that mutual consent is the mutual consent of the community, assuming that what they consent to doesn't infract other laws or your own LL&thePoH. Our entire system of government doesn't get renegotiated if one individual withholds consent.

You also don't get to opt out. That used to be possible, long ago and on another continent. If you decided you weren't subject to the law, you could be declared an outlaw (funny how that works), at which point you reverted to a state of nature in the eyes of the court and your neighbors. Being outlawed meant you were kicked out of the community, and declared to have no rights anyone else was bound to respect. The usual outcome was that you died.

Bearing that in mind, let's consider your scenario where, if you disobey one agent of a government, it necessarily follows that another agent of that government will eventually turn up and shoot you. I've heard that one before. The first time, I think it was, "If you don't pay your traffic tickets, eventually the state will send someone to kill you." I'll go with the traffic ticket version. It's as good as any.

So, let's say you get ticketed for offenses against the commonweal (which they are; driving is an inherently cooperative activity, and traffic laws are all about safety and the public good), but you don't pay them. The penalty for doing this is not death. Usually it's additional fines. Depending on your jurisdiction, further penalties can include towing, booting, putting a lien on your registration, turning your case over to a private collection agency, suspending your license, and putting out a warrant for your arrest.

Since you're a middle-class white guy with a buzz cut, pretty much the only way you can get shot by an officer of the law is if you get violent first and then get violent second: say, assaulting the guys who operate the tow truck, or tussling with the police when they try to take you in on a warrant, and then escalating into "credible threat" range when you're told to freeze, put your weapon down, and come along quietly.

Could you start with unpaid traffic tickets, and end up getting shot? You could -- but you'd really have to work at it, and what you'd actually get nailed for would be assault plus immediate threat of further life-threatening mayhem. Meanwhile, the root offense underlying all your troubles would be, approximately, "refusing to acknowledge that you live under the same rule of law as everyone else."

State of nature: no fun. That's why human societies stop living in it, as soon as they figure out that there's another way to go.

Posted December 1, 2005 3:36 PM by Teresa Nielsen Haydent

I believe Alexander Haig sent around a "reminder" to a certain level of officer in the armed forces not to take any orders outside the chain of command. There was some not unreasonable fear that Nixon might attempt some kind of coup - putting himself in power as dictator rather than president. He was Nixon's Chief of Staff.

Haig was later famous for saying "I'm in control here" when Reagan was shot. He was Sec'y of State at the time, so technically he was wrong. But since George Bush the Elder wasn't present at the time, he may have prevented a certain amount of chaos with his "blunder."

Posted December 1, 2005 3:41 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

State of nature: no fun. That's why human societies stop living in it, as soon as they figure out that there's another way to go.

Or as a great man once said, "The whole point of having society is to be less unforgiving than nature." The same one who first used the word 'disemvowel', as far as I can tell.

I suspect this is not a coincidence.

Posted December 1, 2005 3:52 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

There was a standing order that any instructions concerning the military from President Nixon were first to be confirmed by the Secretary of State/Defense (don't remember which) because Nixon was experiencing paranoia because of the steriods he was taking.

Posted December 1, 2005 4:03 PM by Dan Blum

Sorry some of the type scrolled out of the box as I was cutting and pasting and I hit post without adequate preview - looked for changes but not hangovers - because I had to run - my apologies.

The most recent but perhaps not last obscure post as a whole was in response to:This is an interesting game being played out at an extremely high level, and I don't know very many of the moves, but it is obviously a high-stakes game. by Lydy Nickerson.

My point is that one of the games currently being played is the ever green purple suit

(what you get when you blend all the colors of the services to make one defense department)

versus the pickle suit.

(some sort of wordplay intended brown shoe jokes invited)

The Marines are in the midst of finding/making of themselves an independent and increasingly important service.

In the context it has been suggested the sir is an explicit, almost insulting, reminder that the very first Marine Chair of the Joint Chiefs is not a creature of the Pentagon but of the military - a rifleman

(my duty assignment is flying jets but what I am is a rifleman)

not a technocrat. Marines have not traditionally been creatures of the Pentagon, leaving that role as they have to the Navy. That is, there is some feeling around for a new role here.

I think there is some large and long term foreign policy significance in taking the President's Own - the ability to Send the Marines away from him. This does not necessarily imply a broader disagreement between the current administration and the services. There may be a broader disagreement but perhaps for a Marine to distinguish himself from the Administration is in this case peculiar to the Marines and not the the Armed Services.

Posted December 1, 2005 4:29 PM by Clark E Myers

Lydy - I think what he said can be stretched to cover Gitmo if you choose to look at it that way, but it's by no means a specific comment that what happened at Gitmo counts as abuse, which has been the administration's claim. It's "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques".

Pace has not gone far enough for me to consider him heroic, nor do I see the military in anything resembling revolt. I think what comes next will be more of the same, and that Pace's dissent is not of great consequence in terms of any real change in the way things are run, and the relationship between Rumsfeld and the military.

Optimistic people said the same thing about Shinseki and Zinni. I remember hearing how the dissent they had was a big deal, and that it meant something in erms of a conflict between the military and Rumsfeld. Both Zinni and Shinseki sunk without a trace in the public perception.

I'm a cynic, and not an optimist about this, but I have some good reasons for being cynical.

What I do see is that the military, not the Bush administration, has been responsible for *any* real progress in Iraq, both with the transitional government, with the Iraqi citizens, and with the Iraqi military.

What I think you will see is that, as the Iraqi forces, as Bush put it "stand up", our military will be watching them to make sure they follow real rules of conduct.

This is the kicker. It's going to be hard (but not impossible) for a Saddam-lite to set up shop while US forces are observing them. Pace and others have made it clear that they won't tolerate such a thing.

And US forces, from the basest grunt, won't put up with it either.

A soldier who's blog I read, who's fairly conservative, was *outraged* that someone's car that had liberal stickers was vandalized. She's literaly risking her life in Iraq for what she considers to be the essence of freedom and democracy. She won't tolerate it's abuse. And I'd bet she wouldn't tolerate the abuse of that by an American supported strongman in Iraq.

The real danger that Rumsfeld faces is that our forces will do too well in setting up a real democracy in Iraq, and won't rest until they actually get one.

One of the reasons I've been staying on the sidelines of the whole "Bring the troops home NOW debate is that bringing them home now would mean installing a Saddam-lite to take over, and I know that's not what our troops want.

They want to finish the job in front of them, and then go home (gratuitous Sam Vimes reference). And they don't want to go home with the job half done. But Rumsfeld would be happier with a Saddam-lite than a real democracy, because a real democracy involves us training the Iraqis on how not to torture.

Torture is a popular thing in the middle east among governments. I don't know of one that dosen't use it in some form or another. Getting them to stop is not going to be easy or cheap.

what impresses me about Pace is that he's got the guts to say that it's our responsibility to try and make sure it doesn't happen even if it means using force against our allies.

Now that thought has to have Rumsfeld worried, if he's considered it. Imagine a US soldier intervening in prisoner abuse that really is sanctioned by one branch of the Iraqi government or another. It'd be quite the scandal. It'd also call in to question the stability and morality of the Iraqi government as a whole.

Now *that's* dangerous.

Will it happen? I think not. But remember. Cynic.

Posted December 1, 2005 4:41 PM by Josh Jasper

BUT. Prior instances of military figures standing up to Rummy happened when the administration had high approval among the Great Unwashed. It may be a different thing at 37% than at 68%, or whatever it was.

I've spent my life overcoming the cynicism I was raised with, and replacing it with skepticism. I will wait and see, but while I breathe, I hope.

Posted December 1, 2005 4:54 PM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Further to Joe Crow, though Teresa said most of what I would have, and said it well:

I suppose there is, in some sense, a threat of violence behind what government does. I don't see that "we will use force, if necessary, to prevent you from entering your neighbors' home without their consent and stealing their jewelry, destroying their furniture, or harming their children" is an evil statement.

Further to the traffic ticket example, if it takes an armed agent of the commonweal to prevent someone from driving while dangerously intoxicated, or at 100 kph the wrong way on a divided highway, well, it's a shame that someone's native sense didn't stop them first, but let's hear it for the police officers who are out there saving us all from J. Q. Random's stupidity.

No, not all actions of government officials are beneficial--they're human, like the rest of us, and thus flawed. But not everything that can be argued to involve a threat of force is thereby evil, nor is all nonviolent action virtuous.

Posted December 1, 2005 5:23 PM by Vicki

Teresa: What comes after that differs, depending on whether they're officers or enlisted personnel.

That's more than interesting. Do middies and plebes never actually swear to obey the POTUS, or do they swear an oath of enlistment at matriculation? (If the latter, the officers' oath's addition of duty to the enlisteds' obedience leaves a lot of room to argue about what duty is.)

Posted December 1, 2005 8:20 PM by CHip

Chip - I asked my husband, who is enlisted currently but has been selected for officer programs. The enlisted oath does not swear obedience directly to POTUS, mostly because enlisted personnel's orders do not come to them directly from POTUS. Like everything else in the military, it boils down to pecking order. They swear to obey the orders of the officers appointed over them, which technically includes POTUS as commander-in-chief. They typically take this oath immediately before shipping out of MEPS for training.

Posted December 1, 2005 8:44 PM by LeeAnn

Pace/Rummy, military revolt, democracy:

I wish General Pace all success in his truth-telling. I'm sorry about Gitmo, and I don't know how he reconciles that with his belief.

The military chain of command doesn't have to revolt openly. Passive officiousness slows action to a crawl.

Regarding Pace's job tenure, I keep thinking of the Saturday night massacre. (Nixon to AG: Fire the special prosecutor. AG: I resign. Nixon to deputy AG: Fire him. Deputy: I resign. The 2nd deputy fired the special prosecutor.) The great unwashed understood this. Firing Pace may improve Rummy's life in the very short term, but not in the long term.

Where democracy figures in, in addition to all that has been said so well above, is that we, the unwashed, know that the wind is going to change. Some of Congress are going to be gone by the end of next year. Bush et al. will be gone at the end of 2008. There's no point in trying to overthrow a government whose end date is on a calendar. It's much simpler to hunker down and wait.

Posted December 1, 2005 10:14 PM by Brenda Kalt

This talk about whether or not the threat of violent retaliation is at the basis of society reminds me of when hate-crime laws started getting some teeth to them these last ten years. Conservatives would parrot each other, spewing out the code phrase you-can't-legislate-morality.

I always thought that was a stupid thing to say, especially coming from the law-and-order types. I would have liked to ask them what purpose the Law has other than legislating morality.

Posted December 1, 2005 10:40 PM by Serge

I would have liked to ask them what purpose the Law has other than legislating morality.

Um, property rights: securing, codifying, clarification and publication thereof. I have a theory that laws which do not at some basic level settle a property-rights ('property' being very broadly defined, and including one's own person) issue are those most likely to end up unenforced or recognised as oppressive and overturned on those grounds.

Posted December 1, 2005 11:37 PM by pericat

Serge writes: I would have liked to ask them what purpose the Law has other than legislating morality.

The answer would probably be nonsense. Anybody using that phrase is either 1) being disingenuous with it, or 2) completely ignorant of modern moral philosophy and theory of conduct.

Coincidentally, Orcinus has posted on the topic of hate crimes recently. His opening paragraph may be relevant to where this discussion is heading:

Have you ever noticed how, when libertarians and right-wingers talk about "threats to our freedoms," the only source of those threats is the government?

(I also note for the record that vigorous dissent to the Peace of Westphalia continues in some quarters...)

ObTopic: Yes, I realize this comment is contributing to the ongoing thread drift. My apologies.

Posted December 1, 2005 11:43 PM by j h woodyatt

Ah, the Saturday Night Massacre. There was a great button that appeared immediately afterward: FIRE THE COX SACKER.

Posted December 1, 2005 11:51 PM by Teresa Nielsen Haydent

Property rights do fall within the domain of morality, pericat. After all, is it moral for someone to take what is mine without any compensation?

Posted December 1, 2005 11:58 PM by Serge

Serge: Is it moral to keep property if you've purchased it from, or been given it by, someone who stole it? I'm speaking of much of North America, of course.

Posted December 2, 2005 12:54 AM by Alex Merz

Re the Saturday Night Massacre, it astonished me to learn that the guy who ended up doing the firing was Robert Bork. Somehow I missed that connection back when his confirmation hearings were going on.

Posted December 2, 2005 1:12 AM by Linkmeister

Serge:

I would have liked to ask them what purpose the Law has other than legislating morality.

Pericat:

Um, property rights: securing, codifying, clarification and publication thereof. I have a theory that laws which do not at some basic level settle a property-rights ('property' being very broadly defined, and including one's own person) issue are those most likely to end up unenforced or recognised as oppressive and overturned on those grounds.

"Possession is nine-tenths of the law." Contrary to its colloquial usage, it actually means that ninety percent of law is about property rights.

I agree that almost all crimes are really property crimes, assuming that you believe that a person's body is their natural property and cannnot be held or altered against their will.

I don't see why morality needs to be legislated for the most part. Major immoral acts, such as murder, theft, rape, assault, and so on, seem to be covered by the theory that people own themselves, and their property. (I'm simplifying the property part, but high finance is kinda beyond what I'm able to tackle at one in the morning.) What other immoral acts should we legislate against? I know that a lot of churches want to legislate how and who people can screw, but I completely fail to see why the government needs to have any part in it. It's late, what morally culpable acts should the government have laws about?

One of the problems I see with the "property model" is that I don't see how traffic laws fit, and I'm pretty sure they're a damn good idea. I can make taxes and special assessments for sewer and so on fit into the property model (ownership is shared between the individual and the government which holds it in trust for the common good, or something like that), but I don't think that you can claim that behavior that doesn't cause immediate harm, like speeding, has any basis in property rights. The other problem with this model is that the word "property" has come to mean something very different from what you are talking about -- assuming we are on the same wavelength.

I've never looked it up, but I'm told that not only did Proudhon say, "Property is theft," but also, "Property is necessary," and "Property is impossible." I guess it's a koan, but I find it expresses a lot of how I feel about the whole issue of property.

Posted December 2, 2005 2:15 AM by Lydy Nickerson

Let's see, how do you feel about public education?

I think the public oughtta be educated, and in most available cases, when left to their own devices, will do a good job of educating themselves. I know I did. Overwhelming majority of the stuff I learned came from reading on my own.

That, and eating smart folks' brains.

Fluoride in the water?

Waste of time and money.

Tinfoil hats?

Sez it all.

Ayn Rand?

Mediocre writer, worse philosopher. Had an occasional good idea, but tended to express them poorly.

UFOs?

They make pretty lights

Pi?

I like pecan-pumpkin pie.

Historically, that's been the basis for many governments, but not the one you live under. Yours is based on the mutual consent of the governed, and on the individual's inalienable right to life, liberty (as in "nobody owns you," rather than "nobody can tell you what to do"), and the pursuit of happiness.

That may be what it says on the paperwork, but there's a lot of wiggle room in the fine print. Those rights are plenty alienable if somebody rich or powerful wants your land or doesn't like what you put in your body or what you read. Yeah, there's paper defences you can use, but they're only as solid as the green paper you can stack up behind 'em.

By mutual consent, we elect representatives to a central federal government and to our local governments. By mutual consent we tax ourselves to provide for our various needs -- defense, infrastructure, and the well-being of our citizens, mostly. By mutual consent, we fund police, firemen, EMTs, prisons, and the judicial system.

Mind you, all that mutual consent is the mutual consent of the community, assuming that what they consent to doesn't infract other laws or your own LL&thePoH. Our entire system of government doesn't get renegotiated if one individual withholds consent.

If you can't say no, how does that qualify as consent? Can't say no, can't leave (no place to go), what else is there but sullen aquiecence? Yeah, the threat of violence is sufficiently delegated that in most cases it's nearly invisible, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

If a government body does a crappy or malevolent job, it doesn't go away. It might get restructured, and a couple of stooges might get reassigned if they step on somebody big's toes or if somebody small attracts the attention of somebody big, but that's the way it is with any coercive power structure. If you can get the right nobleman's attention or if the local capo tries to skim too much from the pot, yeah somebody bigger might step on him. That doesn't make you free.

Since you're a middle-class white guy with a buzz cut, pretty much the only way you can get shot by an officer of the law is if you get violent first and then get violent second: say, assaulting the guys who operate the tow truck, or tussling with the police when they try to take you in on a warrant, and then escalating into "credible threat" range when you're told to freeze, put your weapon down, and come along quietly.

"Middle class"? Heh. No, blue collar welfare kid. No, really my collar's blue and everything. And yeah, now that I know most of the cops hereabouts from pumping their gas every night for the last 11 years, I'm much less likely to get the same ration of shit they dish out to everybody else. Doesn't mean a thing outside the city, and it doesn't mean a thing to my not-so-respectable-looking friends and family members.

So, yeah, I'm polite and friendly with the police sergeant who's polite and friendly back, but I still remember him breaking my long-haired friend's nose on the hood of his car for walking around at 3 in the morning.

Could you start with unpaid traffic tickets, and end up getting shot? You could -- but you'd really have to work at it, and what you'd actually get nailed for would be assault plus immediate threat of further life-threatening mayhem. Meanwhile, the root offense underlying all your troubles would be, approximately, "refusing to acknowledge that you live under the same rule of law as everyone else."

So, yeah, if I actually defend my property or personal liberty, yeah, I might get shot. That's one of the reasons my boss usually says to just give the guy with the gun the money. Sometimes, I just can't. Yeah, that's nearly gotten me shot or stabbed occasionally, but sometimes I've gotta push back and say "Fuck no, you're not getting the money in the drawer."

Yeah, as long as I'm willing to roll over for whoever's got the gun, whether they've got a badge or not, I'll probably live. And yeah, as a responsible dad, most times I've gotta roll over to keep food and roof for my daughter. That doesn't mean I can't dream of a freer world for her to grow up in. And that doesn't mean that social administration based on coercive force isn't wrong. So I'm an idealist. There are worse things to be.

State of nature: no fun. That's why human societies stop living in it, as soon as they figure out that there's another way to go.

Well, when we do, sign me up. That's what I'm working on, too. But what we've got now is just the State of Nature with the big rock hidden behind somebody else's back.

Hey, that got kinda long. Sorry about that, and my apologies for the continuing thread drift. I just like you guys, and I'd like to have you get a vague idea what I'm talking about.

Posted December 2, 2005 3:58 AM by Joe Crow

...we, the unwashed, know that the wind is going to change...
[snark]Let me know, so I can be downwind.[/snark]

(I love this msgboard!)

Posted December 2, 2005 3:58 AM by jhlipton

Serge: Property rights do fall within the domain of morality

Indeed, but it does not follow that morality should itself be the domain of law. If you write a law that says no one can possess or use X because it is immoral, then right away anyone who does not share your moral convictions, whether or not they like playing with X, will not have much stake in abiding by your law, or persuading others to do so. They won't call the police if they see their neighbours carting X around, grilling X on the patio, etc. "Their patio, their X, their nastified grill; no business of mine."

OTOH, if (whatever your personal convictions) you write a law that prohibits use of X in populated areas because it tends to depopulate them, then, provided that's true, even people who like setting fire to X over long weekends will be more likely to abide by your law and assist in enforcing it.

Lydy Nickerson: One of the problems I see with the "property model" is that I don't see how traffic laws fit

I thought traffic laws, at least the ones that last, are written for the purpose of allowing people to use the (commonly owned) roads as much as possible without harming each other, or each other's belongings. Drunk driving isn't illegal because it's immoral to be drunk, frex.

Traffic laws created solely to increase revenues, despite whatever lip service they pay to 'safety' or 'public good', IME are generally scorned, and in some cases (small town speedtraps in Texas) have been eventually dismantled.

Posted December 2, 2005 5:45 AM by pericat

I agree, pericat. My morality wouldn't necessarily be the same as my neighbor's. My society's morality wouldn't that of the country next door. But within the society where 'I' belong, there are some laws that must be obeyed if the society is to function and endure. Like, if I'm at an intersection, I do NOT go thru when the light is red.

Heck, I'm not sure what I'm getting at. The coffee hasn't kicked in yet, I guess. What I originally was trying to say something like this...

Yes, it IS legislating morality when someone comes up with a law that says it's no more OK to beat up a homosexual than it is to abuse one's wife. But eventually, that law becomes part of the moral code.

I'm probably digging myself in deeper. Drat.

Posted December 2, 2005 8:49 AM by Serge

It works a lot better if you stipulate that morality is personal and does not extend to the social, which is the province of law and manners.

Those can exist to maintain all things as they now are, or they can exist to foster increase in access to choice, or they can exist to demand conformity to a particular ideal. (Those are about the only three known-stable options.)

Laws, once accepted as a means of producing moral conduct, degenerate into a coercion contest. I regard this as an excellent reason to not legislate on the basis of morality at all.

Posted December 2, 2005 9:00 AM by Graydon

"...Laws, once accepted as a means of producing moral conduct, degenerate into a coercion contest..."

I don't know, Graydon. It's not coercion when one's Society says that thou shalt not beat up your wife nor your homosexual neighbor. Well, it IS coercion (in the same manner that we're bigots in the bigot's eye when he's not allowed to act upon his bigotry), but of the kind I can live with.

Posted December 2, 2005 9:18 AM by Serge

Alex Merz asks me if it's moral to keep property if you've purchased it from, or been given it by, someone who stole it. Yes, if I know it was stolen. With one exception... It's OK if stolen from anybody working for the current Administration.

Posted December 2, 2005 9:20 AM by Serge

Serge --

It's fine to say "don't do that". It's not fine to say "don't do that; it makes Baby Jesus cry", even when it's the same thing, because that hauls in the (unanswerable, intensely personal, unquantifiable) question of what Baby Jesus wants, instead of "does this contribute to the general weal?" or "is this required to be consistent with our stated principles?" or similar at least marginally concrete concerns.

Also note that coercion isn't the same thing as a coercion contest; the later is an arms race to see who can get their views most effectively enforced. They're really, really bad ideas, because instead of merely wasting ability and effort, they convert ability and effort into damage. (Frequently unrecoverable damage.)

Posted December 2, 2005 9:41 AM by Graydon

'Alex Merz asks me if it's moral to keep property if you've purchased it from, or been given it by, someone who stole it. Yes, if I know it was stolen. With one exception... It's OK if stolen from anybody working for the current Administration.'

okay, well, I think you messed up in your first Yes.

But in your ending OK I would be in agreement. But then I would probably also take it further than that.

Posted December 2, 2005 9:47 AM by bryan

Serge, I take it from the context of your post of 9:20 that you mean it's immoral to keep property you know was stolen?

Posted December 2, 2005 9:51 AM by Aconite

"This isn't chickenshit. This is a major event. I'm certain I don't know what comes next, but I can sure tell what it means: the Armed Forces have had it up to fucking here."

From the later commentary I think we can see that it isn't clear what it means.

I remember back in the old days, we didn't know what was going on in the Kremlin, and every little change in formulaic wording in speeches, eyebrow twitches, minor protocol violations, they all got interpreted as shifts in the soviet power structure. Russians and interested americans both speculated endlessly on what it meant, both being powerless to affect it. It was some concern since the russians were The Enemy, but they didn't actually do much. They invaded afghanistan, and they supported an active intelligence service that gave minor aid to revolutionary movements, and their subs played tag with our subs. But it seemed like whenever anything kind of drastic was going on like Flight 007 it was a lot closer to their borders than to ours.

Somehow I miss those days.

Posted December 2, 2005 9:57 AM by J Thomas

Oops. Yes, bryan, Aconite... I did mean that it's immoral (in my own opinion anyway), unless the property was stolen from the current Administration (also in my own opinion)...

"Psst... I've got office supplies from Rumsfeld's own office. Interested in some post-its?"

Posted December 2, 2005 9:57 AM by Serge

"I would have liked to ask them what purpose the Law has other than legislating morality."

There are some moral stands that almost everybody agrees with. In general it's better for people to live than die. It's better to have more wealth and more choices available than otherwise. It's better to avoid stupid destructive accidents.

There are a few religious zealots who disagree with all of these. It's better to die for the cause than to live. Better to live piously and humbly than be rich and corrupted by material goods. Better to accept the will of god than to blame things on stupid accident. But most people most of the time do agree with this morality.

Lots of other things are not generally agreed. We have accepted that pornography should be regulated by local standards. We accept that evolution should be taught or not taught by local standards, and the cases where we get upset come when whole districts or states try to decide how everybody will do it.

We as americans have not agreed that people may enforce local standards more generally. We think ethnic cleansing is generally bad. But driving out the evil outsider is a common moral action, and people aren't happy when they have to live close to evil outsiders and get along with them.

A lot of our current problems come from american racists. Liberals thought that racists were being immoral for being racist. We got laws passed that destroyed their property values and forced their children into private schools that were expensive but not very good. We told them at length they were immoral and they had to change.

We imposed our local community standards on them. They made 'liberal' a dirty word and they helped take over the government and now when we complain about them doing things that aren't fair they remember how we treated them and they laugh at us. Payback.

I don't have a solution. I don't know what we should have done instead, or what we can do now. But some ways things go smoother when the laws trail the morality rather than lead it. The legal system seemed to work as a tool for social change, and now the guys we wanted to change are pushing back.

Again, I don't have a solution. Katherine McLean's The Missing Man pointed out an alternative that had its own problems.

Posted December 2, 2005 10:34 AM by J Thomas

Joe Crow:

Well said.

-another of the sullenly acquiescent

Posted December 2, 2005 10:36 AM by Scott H

"It's OK if stolen from anybody working for the current Administration."

There's a slippery-slope potential here.

This is what the looting in iraq was about. The citizens stole everything they could get from the former government, and as a result it was hard for the new government to get organised. (But then, the more continuity they had with the old government, the more they'd carry-over the bad habits of the old administration. It might have been better to tear down the old buildings and start over with brand new people who learned their administrative skills outside the country. If we could just get enough of them quick enough....)

If it's OK to steal from the government, what about getting government contracts and then just not delivering? Are our corrupt contractors doing the right thing?

Slippery slope.

Posted December 2, 2005 10:43 AM by J Thomas

To ease back closer to the topic,

per Claude Muncey:

This has happened before -- consider what would have happened if Nixon, in his last month in office, called that anonymous major or lieutenant commander waiting just outside into the oval office and tried to issue an execution order for OPLAN 1000. I have no doubt that this would have been checked first with the Secretary of Defence, and would have been quietly ignored. (The double check is normal procedure -- emergency war orders are to be issued jointly by both the PotUS and SecDef, not by the President alone, despite what all the novels say. The "Two Man Rule" on nukes operates all the way to the top.) Shortly afterwards, Vice President Ford would have invoked Section 4 instead of Section 1 of the 25th Amendment, as Nixon would have been residing in a quiet locked room in Bethesda.

So let's review how this applies to the current situation. Such an order, or any order, would have be be reviewed by both Rummy and the Shrub. That's like saying my decisions have to be reviewed by me and myself. But wait! Section 4 could then be invoked by--woops!--President Cheney, from a secured, undisclosed location, to countermand an order he gave in the first place anyway.

Does anybody see how the current administration has already gotten around any safeguards against its insanity there may have been? The SecDef and the real CEO already march in lock-step, and The Smirker is simply a figurehead. He's been residing in a quiet locked room on Pennsylvania Avenue since September, four years ago.

Regarding the "hunker down and wait" theory, it's easy enough to do, especially when equipped with blinders, earplugs, and enough booze. But I'm concerned about how much additional damage can be done in our foreign affairs, and to our treasury, in the next three years.

Posted December 2, 2005 10:55 AM by MacAlister

In your wild ass dreams-lol

Posted December 2, 2005 10:55 AM by Howard Burkhart

Yes, I know, J. It'd be a slippery slope.

To tell the truth, I would NOT accept property knowing it was stolen from Rummy or Dubya or Dick or... Hell, if I saw one of them about to get run over by a truck, I'd probably try to get them out of the way.

Which probably makes me a sucker.

Posted December 2, 2005 10:56 AM by Serge

Hell, if I saw one of them about to get run over by a truck, I'd probably try to get them out of the way.

Oddly enough, so would I. But if I were not present, and heard later that they got run over by a truck, I'd dance the Dance of Joy. And be happy that I wasn't there to save them.

That's very strange. And I'll have to think about what it means.

Posted December 2, 2005 11:21 AM by Xopher (Christopher Hatton)

Xopher, I'd do the same thing.

Posted December 2, 2005 11:28 AM by Serge

It's not fine to say "don't do that; it makes Baby Jesus cry"

Graydon, are you saying that you consider it perfectly acceptable to slice raw onions next to Baby Jesus? Fie.

Posted December 2, 2005 12:03 PM by Julie L.

As I understood it, Prohibition was the prime example of how legislating morality doesn't work. A person or group of people can believe something like drinking is immoral (a debate unto itself) and therefore should be illegal, but if the grand majority doesn't believe that drinking is immoral, and drinking becomes illegal, then you've got a problem. Morality (supposedly) guides the opinions, but it is the general consensus that creates legislation. Laws in America, IMHO, are grease to help us interact with the least amount of friction, not instructions on How The World Should Be.

To try to tie it into the original topic, what was seen was the conflict between what someone believes and what we all have agreed upon is right. Pace is trying to enforce the law as written whereas Rumsfeld wants the law to be interpreted through his own version of morality. If the Nation (losing it's collective mind) were to decide that torture, in xyz circumstances, was okay, then I'd guess Pace would have to enforce that. I'd like to think he'd resign first though.

Posted December 2, 2005 2:43 PM by dolloch

Julie L. --

Should the actual, physical, tangible Baby Jesus happens to be right there on the counter top where you're slicing onions, the injunction is entirely reasonable. The injunction on behalf of the abstract, absent Baby Jesus as postulated by one's interlocutor, on the other hand, is objectionable.

Posted December 2, 2005 3:04 PM by Graydon

Crooks and Liars has the Pace/Rummy video now available here:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/12/01.html#a6137

Posted December 2, 2005 3:18 PM by d

"...Prohibition was the prime example of how legislating morality doesn't work..."

And the War on Drugs too, yes. But what about the legal remedies to the following? Segregation. The glass ceiling. Gay-bashing. Domestic violence. And probably a few other issues that don't spring to my mind right now.

Posted December 2, 2005 3:58 PM by Serge

Well if the onions are frozen then no problem.

There are many kinds of laws and bills in many kinds of legislatures. FREX there is the fetcher bill - fetches lobbyists. There are laws which exist to outlaw things so the state can sell licenses to break the law - some licenses to park in no parking zones are cheaper at the precinct or individual officer level.

Describing all States as ruling by force and further suggesting there is a sense in which all rule by force is rule by fraud - cf civil disobedience - is a sometimes useful way of looking at the problem of the state.

We can describe the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (as amended) as a concensus consent of the governed/social contract among those subject to the jurisdiction. Doesn't make it easy to find Roe v. Wade in the document or to exclude a right to keep and bear arms from the document but people do it all the time. This suggests no simple description embraces the whole notion of the people or the state. I've been known to say that if I wouldn't strap on my own guns to enforce a given law then it's a bad law by my lights.

Posted December 2, 2005 4:05 PM by Clark E Myers

Is it moral to keep property if you've purchased it from, or been given it by, someone who stole it? I'm speaking of much of North America, of course.

Why do we just say this about North America? Did the peoples of the rest of the world get their land in a different fashion? Or did it just happen so long ago that no one cares?

Posted December 2, 2005 4:15 PM by Laina

Laina: yes. Some of us had ancestors who moved in as the ice thawed away. It's possible that someone was displaced by the ice, I'll admit, but by then we're back to 100+ kYA, and I'll say that's long enough that no one cares.

Posted December 2, 2005 5:25 PM by cd

Serge -

It doesn't matter what the issue is because morality and laws are not the same thing. If someone breaks a law they are not morally corrupt. I believe that's one of the themes of "Les Miserables". Valjean isn't a bad man, but he has broken the law which Javert is trying to uphold.

What I'm hearing is that you believe the laws are solving moral dilemmas. What I'm trying to say is that the laws are solving rights issues. To use your examples, Segregation was removing legislation preventing peoples rights to go wherever they want. The glass ceiling is preventing bias against an individual. Gay-bashing and domestic violence is supporting an individual's right to not be assaulted or making the penalties for such assaults higher as a deterrent. The moral issue is seeing all persons as equals, but the laws can't force that to happen.

I don't believe that you can force someone to be a "good" person. Isn't that what the Neo-Cons are trying to do by outlawing abortions? From their moral standpoint, abortion is murder (not just Christianity either, sections of Taoists and Buddhists also reject abortion on the basis of destroying life). Whether or not abortion is moral or immoral is immaterial because not having it legal is more of a detriment to society than having it illegal (unwanted children abused, back-alley clinics, coat hangers, etc). If our society decides that the benefits of abortion are outweighed by the deficits, it will become illegal.

How we perceive an individuals rights are governed by morals, however, and I think because they are so closely associated, the issue becomes muddied.

Posted December 2, 2005 5:27 PM by dolloch

Graydon: does this contribute to the general weal?

Even that can be bent by the crying-Baby-Jesus crowd; observe that the attacks on gay marriage concentrate the alleged destruction of the family. In my observation, \most/ morality arguments are presented with twists that claim they're practical.

J Thomas: We got laws passed that destroyed their property values and forced their children into private schools

Uh.... They \moved/ to private schools when they were told the public schools were public, rather than their exclusive property. That they still resent this does not make their resentment any less uncalled-for -- or any less of a problem for "us"

Posted December 2, 2005 6:34 PM by CHip

They \moved/ to private schools when they were told the public schools were public, rather than their exclusive property.

And some of them still have problems with how 'dark' the student population is, at various state universities (I heard this said WRT San Francisco State; ymmv).

Posted December 2, 2005 6:37 PM by P J Evans