Have charges been brought in UK courts? What UK law has he broken?
Even if Mugabe had broken UK law, the international law principles of diplomatic and sovereign immunity would mean that Mugabe, as chief of state of Zimbabwe, cannot be arrested.
So it is not a false dilemna. To arrest Mugabe would violate either UK or international law. And we cannot violate international law without the UNSC’s blessing, right? And odds are the UNSC would never give blessing to the arrest of Mugabe, much less an invasion of Zimbabwe to remove him from power.
So you are stuck where you started out with - you think the UK is at fault because it has not violated international law and arrested and tried Mugabe.
In your mind, is it OK to violate international law so long as you do not use force? If so, what if Mugabe’s bodyguards draw their weapons as the UK constable goes to arrest him?
As for your “war is always bad” theorem,
Two points.
One, prove that.
Two, in the hypothetical you provided, persons D, E, and F have been deprived of their intellectual freedom, which you ascribe as the paramount right. Using a simple utilitarian approach, it is accordingly appropriate to sacrifice the life of B, depriving him of his paramount right, in order to restore that paramount right to an greater number of individuals.
Milum,
Your OP and an editorial in Thursday’s NY Post by Mark Goldblatt of FIT under the headline “Anti-War: Movement or Cult?” make similar points and ask a similar question.
Further addition: The main round used by US tanks is an inert discarding-sabot anti-tank round made of depleted uranium. Has been for over a decade, and will probably continue to be for many, many years, due to their effectiveness.
I don’t believe that there is such a thing as “international law.” There are a series of agreements that serve as a kangaroo pseudolegality, equivalent to everyone on a street agreeing to not rob houses, as long as your house remains unrobbed. But that’s not law. There’s no court, no police force, no overseeing body, none of the characteristics which classify a “law” of, for example, the UK or the US. The fact that it’s referred to as “international law” is disingenuous, and gives people a false sense of security in something which is a very fragile and pathetic excuse to get away with murder.
We “violate international law” nearly every day in the west, and get away with it too. We could go through the Commonwealth and apply pressure on the other African nations to support his arrest, for example. We restrict trade, we rewrite the law to suit us, as it suits us, because we carry the big stick and have the loud voice. Given that International Law is a sham that offers no protection for the victims of dictators, but every protection for dictators themselves (national sovereignty serves nobody but the leaders of a country), breaking it in favour of people with no voice and no protection is perfectly acceptable, yes.
Why is this different to the war in Iraq? Because you didn’t break international law, you merely stretched it, and because you acted in accordance with your own national interests, with the unprotected, unrepresentated people’s interests a purely secondary consideration, from a legal point of view.
It’s about time some Sacred Cows got burned, frankly.
The “use of force” is also a category error. Killing a civilian =/= killing a security guard/solider (not that either is desirable), because someone in that position who draws a gun is making a decision for themselves to take that risk. Additionally, if Mugabe was in London, and his bodyguards drew guns, they’d end up being in violation of UK law themselves.
You want the whole lot? It’ll take much more time than I have here. My most recent blog entry has a more detailed overview than here, but it would take a long time to go back to first principles, which is where I always like to start from. Hell, I normally take “cogito ergo sum” as my starting point for everything, and on this board I’d not even be able to get away with that much.
Yeah, but there are a number of problems with simple utilitarian approaches, not least of which is exactly what you describe. That’s what’s known as “tyranny of the majority,” and I seem to recall it being viewed as A Bad Thing in most enlightened circles.
Of course, the problem with that philosophy is that it doesn’t let you play the numbers game. Numbers games are for sociologists, I don’t have that luxury. Killing one man to save ten is not an option, because I’d have to kill one man. If that one man is me, however, I can do whatever I like for anyone else. I can’t, by the nature of the philosophy, consider a number bigger than one without having it outweighed by its component pieces.
You don’t have to agree with me if you think I’m wrong. No skin off my nose. I was merely pointing out that sometimes we simple minded hippy peacenik lefty liberal pacifists (hanging too good blah blah) have much more complicated reasons than we are given credit for. It’s not easy having to say that one person is just as important as the other ten people, but that’s the way it goes. For me to say otherwise would be to say something I do not think is right.