> in the present moment we now call anything we favor “democratic” and anything we oppose “un-democratic.”
I think the author, like many today who try to disparage democracy, gets too caught up in the founders as scripture and old word usages.
The modern usage of democracy is at least a century old, per the article itself - hardly the 'present moment'.
Democracy is superior not because some founders wrote some scripture, but because of its moral and rational foundation, that all are created equal, all have universal, inalienable rights that include liberty, and thus nobody else has the right to tell them what to do without their consent. Thus only the people can legitimize a government, and governments exist to protect the people's rights.
And yes, oppression of the minority is a danger, but the solution isn't to have some self-selected people take power from the democracy and call themselves a 'republic' (and what stops those people from oppression, corruption, etc. Why would they be superior?). The solution is human rights, as implemented in the Bill of Rights. The majority can't violate the rights of the minority.
> Thus only the people can legitimize a government, and governments exist to protect the people's rights
One of the coolest tidbits of Slovenian history is that in the early 800’s AD we had a kingdom where the coronation involved peasants giving the crown to their king and the king promising to do good by them. It was still hereditary and all that, but rather than power coming from God it came from people.
We lost that sometime in the late 900’s when the future king, now German, said “I don’t understand this peasant language, what are you talking about?” and decided to just keep ruling anyway. By then this coronation was but a quaint tradition from one corner of a larger kingdom. Sad.
It took until 1991 before we were independent again.
That is to say: it doesn’t matter that people legitimize the government if they won’t unlegitimize it back when necessary.
edit: I got the years wrong, the tradition lived longer than the 900’s but as part of larger foreign (Frankish, then Holy Roman) kingdoms.
> the coronation involved peasants giving the crown to their king and the king promising to do good by them. It was still hereditary and all that, but rather than power coming from God it came from people.
How can it be both hereditary and given by the people? Could they have choosen to give it to someone else? Did they ever? Because if not, then that is just set decoration.
> How can it be both hereditary and given by the people?
These are medieval times. Just that power wasn’t granted/legitimized from god was a huge innovation for the times.
Here’s the ritual, from Wikipedia:
> The peasant, sitting on the Stone, was representing the people during the ceremony and he had to ask in Slovene: "Who is he, that comes forward?" Those sitting around him would reply: "He is the prince of the land".
> "Is he an upright judge seeking the well-being of the country; is he freeborn and deserving? Is he a foster and defender of the Christian faith?" the representative of the people had to ask them. "He is and he will be", they would reply.
> "By what right can he displace me from this my seat?" he had to ask them and they would reply: "He will pay you sixty denarii and he will give you your home free and without tribute".
> The peasant then had to give the duke a gentle blow on the cheek (un petit soufflet), after which the duke was allowed to draw his sword, mount the Stone and turn full circle, so as to face ritually in all directions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince%27s_Stone#Democratic_pr...
But I mean it’s not like the other kings/rulers in Europe actually got their power from God. That’s just a story we tell. Coronations are about pomp and tradition, power comes from having a local monopoly on violence.
In some places a priest of some sort would crown the ruler, thus signifying that they derive their legitimacy from a deity. Having a representative of the common people perform the ceremony is not devoid of meaning.
If the majority can simply erase the rights of a minority with a vote then nothing stops them from doing so. The Bill of Rights is worthless unless the courts enforce it. And judges are appointed experts in the law with absolute power within their jurisdiction. They’re as far from democracy as you can get.
The majority can’t violate the rights of the minority as long as some enlightened people are empowered to enforce the Bill of Rights.
But the judges are appointed by democratically elected representatives in the USA and UK.
So the judiciary is a sort of low pass filter. Filtering out fads, but responding to longer term trends in public opinion.
> If the majority can simply erase the rights of a minority with a vote then nothing stops them from doing so. The Bill of Rights is worthless unless the courts enforce it. And judges are appointed experts in the law with absolute power within their jurisdiction. They’re as far from democracy as you can get.
Only if you define democracy as mob rule and not in the modern sense of self-determination, which includes self-determination by people in the minority.
Everything always depends on politics, but universal human rights has held up for centuries now. The people who instituted them had very little to work with - universal human rights as institutions were new in significant ways - we've been handed everything. We can certainly uphold it if we like.
(Also, judges are appointed democratically.)
> Democracy is superior not because some founders wrote some scripture, but because of its moral and rational foundation, that all are created equal, all have universal, inalienable rights that include liberty,
That is a really great formulation of the imago dei, image of God, doctrine.
> and thus nobody else has the right to tell them what to do without their consent.
And this is a generalisation of a principle that is downstream of the English yeomanry, of freeborn men who can kill a knight.
To see an Anglo proclaiming the universal destiny of all humanity to follow the Anglo culture is just such a stirring thing.
Enemies of universal human rights - of freedom - throw everything they can think of at it, including this thin argument common to them: That it's just a cultural thing, like certain kinds of beer.
I don't know that the idea was invented in Anglo culture - what about the rest of Europe? What about so many other places in the world that have rights of different kinds? It seems anglocentric to think it was invented in the anglo world.
Regardless, universal human rights has been embraced by cultures all over the world, with the exceptions almost always where thugs have stopped them (and people who already have it quit and deny all their personal responsibilities to their communities). They are embraced in all of the Americas, East Asia (Japan, South Korea, China (anywhere people have an option, including Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tiananmen Square; and China was democracizing before Xi), South Asia, Europe, parts of Africa, etc etc. People fight and die for freedom everywhere.
Universal rights (which include democracy) also provide freedom, peace, and prosperity on levels never seen in history.
And they are self-evident, as Jefferson says: By what argument do you get to tell people in other cultures what to do? It should be there choice, not yours; their self-determination; their freedom; their right.
"To see an Anglo proclaiming the universal destiny of all humanity to follow the Anglo culture is just such a stirring thing".
Very woke, good for you.
I guess you forgot about ancient Athens, Rome, medieval Iceland, Venice. There are many other examples:
https://franklin.uga.edu/news/stories/2022/origins-democracy...
Johnathan Wainright admonished soldiers demobilizing from the second World War:
“You have seen, in the lands where you worked and fought and where many of your comrades died, what happens when the people of a nation lose interest in their government. You have seen what happens when they follow false leaders. You have seen what happens when a nation accepts hate and intolerance.
We are all determined that what happened in Europe and in Asia must not happen to our country…If you see intolerance and hate, speak out against them. Make your individual voices heard, not for selfish things, but for honor and decency among men, for the rights of all people.”
From the author's note at the end:
"An earlier version of this article was submitted to the U.S. Army War College’s War Room blog back in the fall of 2024.... The piece was accepted and scheduled for publication in February. I found out on February 25, 2025 that USAWC had changed their mind and decided not to publish the piece, after having to pull another previously-published piece 'due to sensitivities' of 'unnamed critics that wield the power'."
Can he sue, due to freedom of speech?
The fact it was accepted and they then said we are censoring it the speech due to the government.
Going to court only works to the extent decisions are actually uphold, which looks like very unlikely in current administration.
unlikely, freedom of speech does not extend to forcing others to repeat that which you say.
What if the government orders your speech not to be said
Then we wouldn't see the speech here.
In general it would be a First Amendment violation for a government employee to say "you can't publish your speech here but you can find another place to publish it". Also, in general, a government-funded organization managed by non-government employees has the First Amendment freedom of press to decline to publish an article. The only potential legal wrinkle I can spot centers around the previous piece that the USAWC un-published.
> I found out on February 25, 2025 that USAWC had changed their mind and decided not to publish the piece, after having to pull another previously-published piece “due to sensitivities” of “unnamed critics that wield the power.”
The USAWC likely had the First Amendment right to voluntarily pull the piece. The question is, did some federal government agency or employee send a coercive or threatening demand to pull the piece? If so, then that federal agency/employee likely violated the First Amendment. But I don't know what actually happened with the previous article yet.
Democracy is just a different arrangement of same malice that exists in all other earlier forms of the rule. It's zero sum game. You focus on a few things at the cost of the other things. Overall, there is no net gain. You don't need to look beyond the coalition politics of Europe, for example.
In non-democratic systems, people are assumed to be not having the expertise needed to choose the ruler. In a democracy with a large number of political parties, people's vote will be highly fragmented, leaving the decision to coalition politics, making the people's vote meaningless.
Also, the assumption that crowd is right about what policies should a government have, is also questionable. 100 monkeys, or the leader elected by them, can't make a better decision than a single subject matter expert.
Since non-democratic systems give far more power and duration to their leaders, a good leader in these systems provide a superior rule than a good leader in a democratic system, while bad leaders in non-democratic systems is worse than bad leader in democratic system. Over a long-term of multiple generations, both even out.
I don't think democracy is about having the "best" government, that'd be technocracy, I guess. Democracy is about sharing the power, and having the most legitimate government based on the principle that everyone's voice is equal.
Also, it's not a zero sum game at all. First, even if the long stretches of good and bad governments equalized over the long term, it's much worse to live all your life under a bad government than have one half the time. Also,thinking as an engineer, think about the stability implications of a wildly swinging signal vs a smoothly swinging one, even if both are centered.
In any case, coming from a country which had a long dictatorship until not so long ago, it's fairly clear it's not a zero sum game.
Maturity of a voter is over-estimated. If they are like kids, giving them candy is all that is required to get votes. If they hate the other community, hitting hard at the other community is all that is needed. Sharing of power? Coalition governments can't agree on almost anything. Heck, they take months to even form a government, after the elections are over.
Sometimes a move to democracy only resulted in the same aristocratic families grabbing the power quite easily and keeping it for decades.
Getting votes is entirely a different skill from running a country to its prosperity. Unfortunately it is seen as qualification to become a leader.
>It's zero sum game.
I don't that that's true. You have good governments and bad with different results.
> In a democracy with a large number of political parties, people's vote will be highly fragmented, leaving the decision to coalition politics, making the people's vote meaningless.
I do bot think in Germany there are large numbers of parties. Still this seems to aplly very much.
> [Author’s note: An earlier version of this article was submitted to the U.S. Army War College’s War Room blog back in the fall of 2024, was put into their excellent editorial process, and benefitted greatly from their editor’s feedback. The piece was accepted and scheduled for publication in February. I found out on February 25, 2025 that USAWC had changed their mind and decided not to publish the piece, after having to pull another previously-published piece “due to sensitivities” of “unnamed critics that wield the power.” I’m grateful you can see it here, but I am sad that our Army’s institutions appear to have retreated so quickly from our shared values.- GBH]
I don't know whether "having to pull another previously-published piece" means that the USAWC received a coercive memo from the federal government, but after un-publishing the first piece the USAWC chilled its own press functions in declining to publish the contents of TFA and implicitly is doubting its own freedom of press.
An adjacent article with a legal focus, "A Politically Neutral Military Is Not Always Obedient", likely did not involve a First Amendment violation but did undergo a similar `almost published, then published elsewhere` process [1]:
> After a series of edits, the article was almost ready for publication, but the author reached out to withdraw the submission, citing intense pressure from his institution, the United States Military Academy West Point, to do so. This occurred on Jan. 23, three days after the inauguration.
[1] https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/a-politically-neutral-m...
The speed with which the author diverts focus away from the perpetrators of the Abu Graib atrocities and toward Washington is, I think, a reason to take some of these conclusions with a grain of salt. I do think his linked evidence supports the argument that Washington played a key role in eroding norms behind PoW treatment, but I do not think it supports the idea that Washington is somehow more responsible than the soldiers and officers perpetrating, and complicit in, those acts.
The broad failure of human rights enforcement required for these events absolutely could not have happened over the objections of all, or even most, on the military side. Tacit and widespread approval of Washington's agenda on 'terrorism' was, at the very least, a precondition.
Taking this in context of his broader point: I can see why it would be comforting to believe institutional norms tend to be stronger than petty politics, but if that's the case he wants to make, I'm not convinced. To me, the preponderance of evidence, and the typical patterns that occur when a military attempts to circumvent democratic processes to 'safeguard rule of law', would indicate that military norms around human rights tend to break down, in fact, much quicker than the norms of democratic civil procedure. I also have no good reason to believe the US military is exceptionally ahead of the curve in this regard.
Could there be a situation where military intervention prevents a democratic state from deteriorating further? Theoretically. Are military leaders, generally, excellent judges of when such intervention would be in the public interest? Most of the history of military coups seems to indicate 'no.'
Civil leadership defines policy, the military execute policy. This isn't just about explicit goals, but about rhetoric and tone.
Leadership normalises moral expectations. If those are perverse, the entire machinery of government will be perverse. Including the military.
Occasionally you get dissidents like Smedley Butler who call out moral shortcomings. But generally those kinds of ruminations are above the Pentagon's pay grade. The Bush admin painted military action and torture as legitimate responses to real external threats, and that's the narrative the footsoldiers bought into.
So it's very unlikely the military in the US will ever directly challenge the elected civilian leadership. There may be thoughts and even discussions, but direct action would split the military down the middle - even after today's West Point fiasco.
#5: conflict between ethnic groups is, IMO, our big blindspot. An amnesia regarding the story of modern politics. Some version of "Rwanda 1994," occurred in many places, at the transition to modern nation state from whatever came before.
Before nation states, the world wasn't as divided geographically into nations. It got to be that way through violent conflict.
Empires like Austria-Hungary, Russia or the Ottoman Empire were multicultural. Places like Poland, Czechoslovakia had communities of Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Jews, Hungarians, Roma. "German" ethnicity was spread out all over europe... and all the way to Kazakstan. The whole world was like this.
We "sorted" mostly through conflict... in the latter examples of transition to National democracies, or non-democratic nation states.
Ireland was partitioned along religious lines, in 1921. The world wars moved borders and people until strong majorities were created. When the Ottoman empire divided, Greeks and Turks kicked eachother out. When India gained independence Muslims and Hindus kicked eachother out.
Yugoslavia divided violently at a later date... as soon as totalitarianism ended. Cyprus divided in in 1974. Iraq divided internally into ethnic regions and neighbourhood after Sadaam. Syria is currently shedding its ethnic diversity. Conflicts in Sudan and Yemen are civil wars between different religions.
Democratic nation states with familiar features like left-right politics and a widely respected constitutional order... those generally appear post "sorting." The Military is always involved here.
We have some good ideas about defending an order. This text makes more sense in that context. Defending a democratic order. It doesn't tell us much about generating such an order. I think that a stronger narrative understanding of this history would serve an officer well. Allows a distinction between a defensive and offensive mission.
> When India gained independence Muslims and Hindus kicked eachother out.
My understanding is that partition was driven by the British, starting with the 1905 partition of Bengal and ultimately leading to the greater partition of (formerly) British India.
Had it not been for the British obsession with drawing lines on map both India and the middle east would be very different today with (possibly) considerably less inter ethnic group strife.
Here is how the partition of India happened. It was not entirely linear process.
> partition was driven by the British
The British absolutely had a role. One theory is the West needed a pliable state on India's west to guard the Arabian Sea from the Russians. A lot of Hindu politicians of the era were socialists. Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, was a Fabian Socialist. What if India allied with Russia? Pakistan soon became a CENTO treaty member.
The thousand year Hindu-Muslim rivalry is the main driver, however. During the 16-18th centuries, European expeditions started hitting Indian shores, initially nibbling around the edges, and Muslim power on the subcontinent was comprehensively demolished by the Maratha Empire. The British drove out other European claimants and managed to wrest control over the subcontinent piece-by-piece.
Muslim elites did not mind ruling over majority-Hindu provinces for centuries. But loss of power and membership of a numerical minority creates insecurities and the idea of a separate Muslim nation started post 1857.
People can quibble about the origin of the idea and who is to blame. But no one can deny the fact that repeated massive riots between these communities (which are separate communities/religions, not ethnicities) in the decades leading to the partition signaled the inevitable.
> People can quibble about the origin of the idea and who is to blame.
Look... I think there is a whole lot of extremely motivated reasoning. Even the British weren't that keen to defend British imperialism by the time of India's independence. The Brits being already responsible for so many sins, make an easy place to put "blame" that cannot be borne elsewhere.
The alternative is to "blame" nationalism, self determination, liberalism. republicanism, and/or democracy.
Everyone knew that India was going to civil war. It was a big factor delaying British decolonisation. Gandhi's whole ideology/rhetoric as independence loomed changed to try an prevent it. Naive in retrospect.
This has always been the sticking point, for modern nationalism. People have strong, inconvenient notions of who the "nation" is.
> My understanding is that partition was driven by the British, starting with the 1905 partition of Bengal.
So... this is why I said "blindspot."
There have even been socio-political theories claiming that British rule created the Indian caste system. The modern (and understandable) bias is to find imperialism, colonialism, monarchy and whatnot culpable. To absolve nationalism, self determination and democracy.
Circa 2000, the idea that Rwandan tribal divisions were actually created by colonial era racism. Both this and the colonial origin of caste dynamics were widely accepted on very little evidence and took mountains of very strong evidence to debunk... recently decided by genetics.
Sykes-Picot and the demarcation of Africa are other "lines on maps" that yielded conflict. But... "The Great Sorting Out" occurred regardless of great powers drawing lines. Nation states have borders, and there is no "correct line" that could have been drawn to make them neat. Identities that became nations were all jumbled up.
No great power drew lines in Yugoslavia, Cyprus or Turkey-Greece. Conflict and expulsion occurred regardless.
"Lines on maps" started in europe, and these were an attempt to mitigate occurrences like 1994 Rwanda in the 1800s. The idea was borders that represented a feasible "nation."
"Nation states" is a new concept. It had precursors, but the world was not divided into nation states until recently... by nationalism. Napoleon created French nationalism by creating it. Deleting all the local dialects and identities (including his own). Generating a standardized French language and identity. He did this through totalitarianism.
The Osmans tried to do something similar. An Ottoman nation with distinct hats and whatnot. It failed because they did not manage to achieve "totalitarian" control over culture. The USSR, also inspired by Napoleon tried to create a "Soviet Nation." Here the problem was that the middle ages were over, even in Russia. Napoleon had widespread ignorance and illiteracy to work with.
The idea that colonial era sins created postcolonial strife is national-liberal cope, IMO. Individual examples can be argued... but, these tend to be weak, hyper-local theories. The alternative is that nationalism is the cause of nationalist strife.
Most of the old world "nations" were mixed, and civic nationalism almost never emerged cleanly from this substrate.
Take Northern Ireland and Lebanon as examples. These countries cannot have "left and right wing" political dynamic, except as a euphemism for sect. In Lebanon, the political equivalent of "Democrat and Republican" is Sunni, Shite, Christian, etc. In NI, it's protestants and catholics. Alternatively (irish) nationalist and (british) unionists. They technically also adhere to left-right, but this is another euphemism.
A different line would have yielded a different conflict, different migration patterns and suchlike... but not sect-blind civic nationalism.
> There have even been socio-political theories claiming that British rule created the Indian caste system.
Can't say I ever ran across that in any serious context .. sounds more than a little fringe given the history of such systems pre-dating British rule.
> Circa 2000, the idea that Rwandan tribal divisions were actually created by colonial era racism.
More amplified by lingering colonial and post colonial influences .. but not created.
> No great power drew lines in Yugoslavia, Cyprus or Turkey-Greece. Conflict and expulsion occurred regardless.
The claim isn't that all divisions are created by great powers imposing arbitrary boundaries on third parties, the claim is that certain particular actions of that type had a significant impact on specific conflicts.
We appear to agree that exact national boundaries (and passports also ?) are a relatively recent occurrence in world history, things that have appeared more and more and carried greater and greater weight in the past few hundred years.
> The idea that colonial era sins created postcolonial strife is national-liberal cope,
Interesting. Not a view held by the now 90+ year old that taught me Ham Radio, handled antipodean comms for NASA back in the day, defused lingering aerial mines in the Boy Scouts post (and during) WWII and fought (on the British Colonial side) in the Mau Mau uprising .. his opinion was that colonial rule left a long shadow on many African former colonies.
Mind you, his opinion came from first hand experience rather than a modern anti-woke perspective.
Again, the claim is not that colonialism was the root of all evil that followed .. that's as ridiculous as the notion that colonial era sins created absolutely zero postcolonial issues in all former colonies.
> Take {X} and {Y} as examples.
Why not the Congo's and Vietnam? As there is no claim of one sweeping rule, specific "counter examples" (if applicable) neither prove nor refulte the notion that colonialism created issues that varied in impact and magnitude in different parts of the world.
> Can't say I ever ran across that in any serious context
It exists. Invaders do not necessarily invent things out of whole cloth. You widen existing fissures in society in order to control it. The gotra-jaati-varna system has a complex history but the caste system in place for the past century or so in Indian society and politics is a gift of the British. They were the ones who started recording it during the census. A 2011 census found that people claim to belong to 4,673,034 different castes/sub-castes/gotras/clans.[1] Which is absolute insanity.
Castes that are considered to be "upper" in one district/state move down the ladder in other districts/states. But all this complexity is thrown out of the window in ideological discussions.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Socio_Economic_and_Caste_...
> It exists.
Sure, no disagreement from me on that.
Flat Earth, Young Earth, Lysenkoism, Vaccines causing Autism, Alien Lizard People wearing Human Skin, et al are all examples of other beliefs that exist, have had books devoted to them, have true believers, etc.
These are also things that I don't come across in serious contexts.
> Invaders do not necessarily invent things out of whole cloth. You widen existing fissures in society in order to control it.
Sure, something seen in history often enough. This supports the notion of a caste system existing prior to the British.
> They were the ones who started recording it during the census.
If it didn't exist prior to the British "recording it during census" then what was it they were recording?
Something they made up whole that never existed prior?
> A 2011 census found that people claim to belong to 4,673,034 different castes/sub-castes/gotras/clans.
.. and this was the gift of the British? Sounds more like a home grown Indian expansion.
Not like flat earth. Something that would be discussed in academic contexts and the intellectual mainstream.
Articles of the last decade or two tend to be weaker in their claim, salvaging parts of the stronger version from the mid-century. The debate has since subsided.
I was speaking to the content of the article, and making a (relatively) specific point in that context: The pitfalls which may beset a democracy and the involvement of armies therein.
This piece seems to suggest Napoleon was a bad thing for France, when he gave them the civil code and the grand architecture. In contrast to "democratic" Britain, where Wellington's legacy was the poor law and the workhouse.
Wikipedia lists some downsides to Napoleon:
>He abolished the free press, ended directly elected representative government, exiled and jailed critics of his regime, reinstated slavery in France's colonies [...], banned the entry of blacks [...] reintroduced a hereditary monarchy and nobility, and violently repressed popular uprisings against his rule.
As a military professional how do you determine morality?
If morality is the letter of the law, that law can be changed by an unjust majority. If the majority of Americans think it is OK to put dog collars on prisoners in Abu Ghraib, who are you to deny them that?
What else do we have to base our morals off of, religion?
> What else do we have to base our morals off of, religion?
The American founding fathers understood the “rights” that constrain democracy to originate from God (“they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights”). That’s an internally consistent world view: divine or natural law can constrain man-made law.
If the people don’t recognize a shared higher law, then there is nothing higher—nothing more legitimate—than democratic law. If the people decide it’s okay to put dog collars on prisoners in Abu Ghraib, what legitimate authority can say they’re wrong? Some Harvard professors of moral philosophy?
The religious aspect there is a red herring - people of the same religion can easily disagree on what God's opinion is. What actually matters is the aggregate perspective of the people who control the military (particularly senior officers like generals). They can call it religious or they can call it something else, but it depends on what they agree justifies mobilising the troops.
International law. The US- and many other countries- have long held that enough countries joining make international laws binding on all countries, even if that country did not sign a particular treaty. (1) This doctrine sprang up after the great POW slaughters on the Eastern Front during WW2 (2) made it untenable to allow countries to avoid their responsibilities under the treaties by not signing or to invade a country that did not sign.
1: This is complicated on the Ottawa Treaty, where the US and a few other countries have held out- though at least under most administration's the US considers itself bound by Ottawa everywhere except on the Korean peninsula.
2: The USSR did not sign the Geneva Convention of 1929 (they wanted POW's to be explicitly allowed to form political organizations- e.g. Soviets, and to not be allowed to discriminate against POW's, while Article IX of the Convention mandated that POW's be racially segregated "as far as possible") and so the Nazi's technically did not break the convention in their horrible mistreatment of Soviet POW's that led to millions of deaths.
The US holds that to be true when they are on the side of the majority. It is less clear [0] that they hold that when they are in the minority. The US opinion seems to be that democratic law can overrule international law when there is a conflict as long as the democracy is governed to a certain standard.
International law certainly doesn't represent a higher moral standard for the US. When it was set up the USSR and the British Empire both had vetos on what could be international law - it is hard to claim they had any higher moral opinion to add on how countries should treat each other.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Service-Members'_Prot...
Rules for thee, but not for me.
Seems like the current international order is if the US thinks you are violating international law they will kick the shit out of you, but if the US is violating international law they will also kick the shit out of you.
That still doesn’t answer the question of what US generals do when given an order which violates international law.
Why must a human look outside themselves to determine what is right?
We're not very good at doing it ourselves, as every religion and culture has implicitly and strongly agreed.
Who says, 'everyone should determine for themselves what is right'? Maybe I think it's right to shoot you for stepping on my lawn, or looking me in the eye for too long.
Internal human morals are made up entirely of external influences. People are not born with morality.
I see no reason to believe that moral judgement is completely external. Hume and Adam Smith argued for an internally derived sense of morality.
> Hamas instead went to war with its coalition partner (Fatah, who remains in control of the West Bank) and took control of Gaza by a program of internal repression and political assassination.
One interesting note about the Hamas example is that it was the last election for the same reason a lot of countries have a last election: a powerful foreign imperialist nation intervened. In this case, Israel intervened directly to prop up Hamas in order to ensure Palestine destabilizion and prevent the election of a more leftist government. This was achieved through assassinations by the IDF of Palestinian politicians as well as directly funding Hamas.
Here is Benjamin Netanyahu quoted directly (https://m.maariv.co.il/journalists/opinions/Article-1008080), translated from Hebrew:
> Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas ... This is part of our strategy – to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.
Netanyahu's associate and a high ranking IDF member said: (https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-11/ty-article/.p...)
> Openly Hamas is an enemy. Covertly, it’s an ally.
To broaden the scope back to beyond just Israel and Palestine and focus more on globally the destabilization of democratic governments through the efforts of imperialist nations, perhaps the army's role may also include efforts against said imperialist nations or their local allies and representatives.
In the USA I wonder if that means there'll be USA military units operating against what are functionally proxy arms of the PRC "turncoat" (but in their minds supporting democracy) units of the USA military. Living in Taiwan I can't fathom ever finding myself on the same side as the PRC on anything... Unless the nightmare situation of a full American slide into hyper imperialist fascism happens and there's basically only a couple superpowers on Earth capable of resisting them. Their jokes about invading Greenland and Canada are really sounding less like jokes every day...
Which Palestinian politicians did the IDF assassinate?
It's true that Netanyahu likely wanted to divide and conquer so benefited somewhat from having the Hamas in Gaza and the Fatah/PA in the West Bank but really the alternative to Hamas in Gaza were other armed factions or chaos, it wasn't like the PA was going to retake it if Netanyahu prevented funds from getting into Gaza. There was also a lot of international pressure to allow those funds in to "rebuild" Gaza. So that story has a lot more nuance to it. So yes, the Israeli right benefited from the lack of a unified Palestinian government but that was not the sole reason why Israel did [not] try to forcibly remove Hamas and tighten the transfer of funds and aid to Gaza.
Also worth noting that all this calculus was after the Hamas took control that was a result of Israel's leaving. Sharon did not intend for this to happen, his intention was to try and prove that Israel can end the conflict by unilaterally withdrawing.
The main reason why there wasn't another election was because the PA didn't want to have one because it would have lost to Hamas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Assassinated_Palestin...
It is a new take to me that the party not in power was able to prevent elections happening because they were not popular enough.
You said "assassinations by the IDF", not just "assassinations".
You also mentioned "directly funding Hamas" which isn't accurate. You might be thinking of when Israel facilitated a transfer of funds from Qatar, ostensibly for some humanitarian projects in Gaza, not really for Hamas.
It was Hamas' decision to violently seize power, overthrowing the multi-party democracy that Gaza was intended to have; I don't really see how that could be Israel's fault.
You're confusing the two of us as being the same person.
You were provided a list of Palestinian politicians who have been assassinated, which is the first link on an incognito mode Google search for "Palestinian politicians assassinated by the IDF." If you click the names of the people in the list you can learn more, including who specifically have been assassinated by the IDF. Frankly I'm incredulous that the burden of proof for you requires us to click Wikipedia links for you... Surely on this website we can operate in better faith than that?
In any case the discussion was about the intervention of powerful imperialist nations. The Wobblies decided to seize power in the USA, overthrow democracy, and turn it into a communist state. America today remains not a communist state - clearly the desires of a given group are a simple baseline requirement for results, there needs to be a bit more stuff to actualize. Such as, in this case, the intervention of Israel to prop up Hamas to prevent an organized political identity between the West Bank and Gaza.
In the context of the article it makes me wonder about the role of an army both in defending an army but also how it could be leveraged to destabilize democracy - in this case on the one hand Hamas has an army that was used to destabilize Palestinian democracy, on the other it's now one of the only groups on earth taking military efforts to defend Palestine against Israel's genocide against Palestinians. I think it's an interesting thing to consider in the context of the USA - how might the military there, being the most powerful in Earth's history, be used to defend, or destabilize, that country?
The author has a quite narrow definition of democracy. I’d argue that any definition that makes checks and balances non democratic should be revised.
5 people, who were never elected, and who enjoy lifetime appointments can tell the elected representatives of the people "No, you can't pass that law." If that's not anti-democratic, I don't know what is.
Heck, much of the Bill of Rights is instructions on things the representatives of the people are disallowed from doing.
Supreme court judges are nominated by (theoretically) democratically elected presidents and (theoretically) confirmed by democratically elected senators. Their power is ultimately derived from a democratic mandate, even if it's insulated from direct accountability to the current electorate. And they can (theoretically) be removed via impeachment.
Certainly in the way they're manifested at the moment they're one of the less democratic elements of the state, but if you can't think of better examples of anti-democratic things then you lack imagination
There is a secret hack that empowers the American People to overrule the Supreme Court.
It is called “amending the Constitution”.
The SCOTUS strikes down unconstitutional laws and is appointed to interpret constitutionality, by the Constitution that was ratified by the American People.
But the American People are the ones who originally ratified the version of that thing that annoys you so much and the American People were the very people who said that’s what SCOTUS needs to look like. (There is a dead giveaway in the first three words! Damn!)
Maybe we can just call in RuPaul to redesign their robes or something. Queer Eye For the Judge Guys. That could do the trick.
If the American People decide that we need laws that conflict with the Constitution, or that we need to abolish/reform the Supreme Court, then we simply ratify Amendments to do what the American People need done. Easy peasy, bro!
What a fantastic example of using “democratic” as a synonym for good and “not democratic” as bad. Thank you for illustrating the author’s point so well.
By the way, the term of art for what you’re doing, of defining democracy I like as real democracy and democracy I don’t like as not democracy is to call democracy I like “liberal democracy”.
I spend the last 40 minutes revisiting definitions of democracy, to figure out if your point was valid. If have to conclude that I disagree with you.
As probably most words that are used for complex concepts, the word democracy was used to label a wide range of different definitions.
There might be a cultural divide here, but a an European and in particular as a German I use the definition of the democracy advocated by the EU, its courts, and most of European political scholars.
The EU defines democracy as a system of government where citizens participate in decision-making, either directly or through elected representatives, and where there are safeguards against the abuse of power, including a strong rule of law, protection of human rights, and an independent judiciary.
This might sound academic, but it has important implications in how we deal with member states such as Hungary that slowly erode the rule of law through actions taken elected leaders.
As said, there are many possible definitions of democracy, but I’d still call those that fail to contain a system of checks and balances less suitable.
That's interesting. I suspect that this is a difference in continental usage vs American (I am unsure about the UK).
The first Wiktionary definition of democracy is fairly close to what I learned in school as an American:
> Rule by the people, especially as a form of government; either directly or through elected representatives[1]
The first half of the EU definition is much weaker ("participate in" vs "rule") and the second half directly contradicts the Wiktionary definition:
> ...where there are safeguards against the abuse of power, including a strong rule of law, protection of human rights, and an independent judiciary.
To the extent that the majority want to destroy the rule of law, violate human rights, and capture the judiciary, those things are antidemocratic. Now I think it's a good thing that (for example) an AfD majority in the Bundestag would be limited in its ability to dismantle those 3 things, but it's certainly not "Rule by the people."
> Having won the largest block of legislative seats, it was to govern in coalition with other political parties. Hamas instead went to war with its coalition partner (Fatah, who remains in control of the West Bank) and took control of Gaza by a program of internal repression and political assassination.
As with anything involving Israel/Palestine, the article takes an extremely simplistic view of the conflict between Hamas and Fatah. Anyone who followed the events in 2006/2007 after the election knows that both parties were equally to blame.
Hamas had good reason to believe Fatah was planning a violent takeover, and there were assassination attempts on Hamas's leader, widely believed to be by Fatah members. At the same time, Hamas committed their own crimes against Fatah.
There isn't a clean "They instigated, and we responded" event here by either side. They had been in conflict since prior to the election.
(Somewhat unrelated, but supporters of Hamas do correctly point out that "playing nice" hasn't worked out well for the Palestinians in the West Bank).
I pretty much stopped reading the article after this statement. It stinks strongly of "I have a thesis and let me bend reality to convince you of it".
> supporters of Hamas do correctly point out that "playing nice" hasn't worked out well for the Palestinians in the West Bank
This is not an attempt at a broader commentary on anything else about this conflict, but the sociological and psychological explanations that only ever get deployed one direction do in fact run both ways.
That’s not a counterpoint. That’s an argument that violent attacks have also not worked out well for the Palestinians. To counter the original comment, you would need to give an example of Palestinian quiescence producing actual gains.
It's an argument that violent attacks have worked out significantly less well compared to where things were headed in the early 1990s during the Oslo Accords when there was reduced security paranoia among Israel's populace which allowed the political left to actually exist. Whether it was on the path to "working well" is probably a more subjective and loaded question.
I thought that the Oslo Accords floundered when a nutty Israeli shot the Israeli Prime Minister dead in an assassination
Is that not correct?
No, this is often repeated and too simplistic, see for example Taba Summit after Rabin's assassination and Arab Peace Initiative. one of the main problems seems to be that Palestinians insist on full return and the Israeli don't trust them enough (Of course actions like the second intifada and oct7 only make them trust them less)
In the west bank the Palestinians have been able to live reasonable peacefully and Gaza could have been similar.
The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000_Camp_David_Summit stuff could have gone through.
(1/2, continued in reply along with footnotes)
I do tend to associate military coups with democratic regimes that get too democratic.
Post note: after writing this I might go too hard on the admittedly widespread (but stupid) practice of using “democracy” in two senses: real democratic practice and calling governments that we like[0] democratic if they use that name (nominative democracy) and in turn saying that every action was “by the democratic government” or “by democracy”. But the article does go into the point about using “democracy” for propaganda:
> Indeed, in the present moment we now call anything we favor “democratic” and anything we oppose “un-democratic.”
So it still seems relevant.
[0] Long-standing democracies including, as we shall see, Myanmnar.
-----
> (“When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest, both the public good and the rights of other citizens”).
Just on the face of it without context this doesn’t say anything. Except maybe something like: when you include people outside our own circle of friends and associates, all kinds of shit can happen.
On the rights of other citizens: the democracy envisioned by the American founders was supposed to protect the rights of the opulent.[1]
> The allure of democracy is simple: by allowing people to collectively express their collective will, a representative government should be entitled to rely on their support in carrying out its political agenda.
The allure to who? The founders who wanted to protect their own rights?
Do you need popular support? There’s a Princeton study that showed that for 70% percent of Americans, their own policy preferences have no correlation with what is implemented.[2]
A modern democratic theory is that elites govern with the occassional input from regular people. Those are election cycles. But the input of regular people is more to do with settling inta-elite disputes. With a well-oiled smoke-filled room you don’t need their input that much.[3
> Nevertheless, in the 20th Century, as the memory of monarchies faded and the threats of fascism and communism blossomed, Americans have gradually come to believe that democracy embodied the American project. Despite America’s traditional suspicion of pure democracy (and James Madison’s plea for a government run by enlightened delegates), “democracy” came to stand for all that is good and holy in a world threatened by godless collectivism and/or authoritarianism. Beginning with President Wilson’s exhortation to “make the world safe for democracy” our Founders’ strong philosophical misgivings about mob rule appear to have been discarded as part of America’s search for common ground with allies against authoritarian alternatives. Unlike the Founders, 20th Century Americans weren’t trying to rise above the shortcomings of western European governments in such as those in France or Britain, but rather trying to find common cause with them.
Let’s talk about communism. Italy was dealing fine with getting rid of fascism. They worked against it towards the end of the war (lynching people like Mussolini) and they didn’t go home at the end of the war either. But these were socialists. So the CIA intervened in Operation Gladio, where they empowered fascists in order to get rid of the socialist influence.
Democracy? The US would rather Italy have fascism.
The rest of that paragraph is just political science buzzwords.
> Indeed, in the present moment we now call anything we favor “democratic” and anything we oppose “un-democratic.”
Indeed, the author just takes utterances at face value without thought.
Democracy for most people is good. That’s why they say it. Do they (the politicians, the pundits, the propagandists) mean it? Well do they mean it when they say they love peace, freedom, equality? Democracy to them is another propaganda word. Don’t overthink it.
> We do this even when the problem we are concerned with is itself an inherently democratic one, only reluctantly acknowledging the very significant role played by the pervasive (and anti-democratic) “checks and balances” built into our own federal constitution.
Don’t worry. Democracy that you don’t like can just be called “mob rule”. See previous sloganeering.
Or populism.
> The fault lines inherent in democracies—so well known to the Founders—can be showcased by (mostly) contemporary examples.
People who quote the Federalist Papers tend to think that whatever the founders said is the eternal truth, ipso facto they said it. So what are they?
> The problem of having the “last” election – electing anti-democratic government.
This is as much of a problem with democracy as an absolute monarch abolishing monarch. In other words it isn’t. Nothing is permanent. Nothing can be protected forever and flawlessly with the impeccable foresight of some founders.
(2/2, continued)
> The 2006 election of Hamas to govern the Gaza strip is instructive.
Let’s get a lecture on the problems with democracy by that most democratic and free of occupation entity. Gaza.
> There were insufficient state institutions (or committed outside forces) to ensure that the rules—rules which would have ensured Hamas’ legitimacy as the primary political force in Gaza, at least for that election cycle—were respected. [...]
Ugh, how technical. All too technical when the people of Gaza aren’t even free. That’s much more of a prerequisite then any of this.
> Mob rule and orgies of violence.
The problem with democracy is that it takes violence to overthrow a monarchy. That’s what this paragraph is about. That’s a problem with democracy.
Another problem is that a revolution can lead into a dictatorship. This is the fault of the bourgeoisie revolution and not the repression under the monarchy.
> Dependence on extremist support for political survival.
Again not special to democratic entities.
> As the political balance of their government changes, one might consider what proportion of the limited Lithuanian Land Forces (a division-sized element) may be re-allocated to internal security missions and away from US-led NATO priorities.
Lithuania might need their army for internal security rather than US-led NATO stuff, says US officer.
> Pretextual assertion of emergency powers to extinguish civil liberties.
Ditto.
Just a repetition of the democracy-can-abolish-democracy truism.
> Repression of minority groups.
Is this part about Palestine?
> Inherent in majority rule is that the majority makes the rules.
Again only truisms. Inherent in an absolute monarchy is that one person makes the rules. Inherent in a rule-of-a-thousand is that the thousand makes the rule.
This rule-of-a-thousand is likely to be alike in many respects. What if none of them are of some ethnic minority? What if all the others live in the slums? What do the thosands have to care about them?
This is less of a problem the more spread out the power is. Democracy in other words.
And the process of a “pure democracy” isn’t dictated by the founders or anyone to mean “must have 51% votes on every matter”. You can have consensus processes on some matters where you need to find a consensus that all have to agree to. And you can have a constitution. Amazing stuff.
Having said all that. The “flaw” of democracy was that it didn’t protect the minority of the opulent.[1] But even Federalist Papers devotees apparently think that the founders were woke and wanted to protect the sociological minorities.
> That said, majority rule can involve the use of state power to oppress minority groups. America has easily recalled examples.
The “but America is not a democracy (founding fathers)” fans snap right back to America being a pure democracy when the state did something wrong. But you can’t have it both ways.
> More contemporary examples also often involve conflict between ethnic groups.
> https://www.crisisgroup.org/asia/south-east-asia/myanmar/312...
Myamnar was apparently a military dictatorship for fifty years after independence.[4] And Derek Mitchell, 2012–2016 US ambassdor to Myamnar,[5] blames the military for things like persecution of minorities.
And the very link that the author used:
> Mistrustful of the Burman elite who control most levers of power, scores of minority groups have taken up arms since independence.
So is it such a strong democracy that you can blame the democratic part[5] for the persecution of Myanmnar minorities? Of course you can. Because again, in this two-faced worldview, a nominal democracy becomes a pure democracy when something bad happens.
> Redefining conduct to skirt mandatory prohibitions.
Abuse by the military at the executive branch’ order in Abu Ghraib but I would assume Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as well. So democratic. Does anything even need to be said here?
> In this instance, the political leadership’s call to unlawful and illegitimate action was largely and steadfastly resisted by the military leadership (particularly the military legal community) based on the baked-in values inherent in Army doctrine. Ultimately, that resistance (as well as the statutory prohibition and related obligations in international law) were overcome by the determination of the political leadership of the day and the primacy of civilian control of the military. #+end_quote
That is honestly the first time I’ve ever heard of that. What a resounding success, too.
And (I wouldn’t bring this up except for this paragraph) how proud the servicepeople must be to protect America by invading the Middle East.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5pJR45HNEM&pp=ygUcY2hvbXNre...
[2] Apparently it is: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
[3] See Robert Dahl and others
[4] https://www.npr.org/2024/12/30/g-s1-38848/myanmar-democracy-...
[5] I vaguely recall something by the author about democratic systems not being pure democracies? Well, I guess that especially holds when the military likes to assert their power and do coups.
I would argue that the social contract is a useful fiction, the same as 'divine right.'
You are not making an argument. You are making a statement.
> I would argue that the social contract is a useful fiction, the same as 'divine right.'
What argument are you making?
What do you think the social contract is?
E.g: I am interested if you believe that the government derives its power from the consent of the governed?
"for I have not only grown gray, but almost blind in the service of my country."
Useful in what way? Usefulness presumes value.
Social contract per se is a construct of liberalism.
Divine right, not a notion ever endorsed by the Catholic Church, was certainly one embraced by Protestant rulers as it legitimated kings who now claimed both temporal and spiritual authority [0].
Which is to say, I don't think we have any need for fictions, and not fictions like these.
What fictions?