Ardee—the law is just something people do.  It does not have independent life.  It seems to me the important question is, is what I have said true?  If it is true it has has at least moral significance, and probably practical significance as well.

As for “destructive”, one can argue that either way, I suppose.  States killed about 200 million people in the 20th century, and enslaved many more for various periods of time, but maybe pre-civil societies killed and enslaved more, proportionally speaking.  I don’t know; nobody was counting, and the pre-civil societies of humanity were almost totally and universally obliterated (which might tell you something about states).  In any case, I am not arguing for the restoration of tribal conditions.

I think it is also reasonable for me to ask people to confront not only the history and the present, but the future of state power—the prospects of continued warfare with ever more advanced weapons.  As I see it, is your view which is utopian, and not mine; you postulate some ideal state which does no harm, and I point to material facts.  I recommend considering the weapons which have recently been deployed, and those which are in development and will appear in the field in the near future, in case you think the end of the Cold War slowed this sort of project down.

Anarcissie, November 25 at 11:30 am #

Ardee—If the state can’t threaten its subjects with arbitrary force, it is certain that some of them will do as they please and, for instance, refuse to pay taxes or otherwise fail to observe state requirements.  No force, no government, no state.  Is that idea so difficult to grasp?  It seems fairly simple to me.

Some people, me for instance, call your “use of force” rule of law. Your case is simply utopianism taken to its most destructive end. The law lives and breaths, it is subject to evolution as our society evolves. Like it or not ,accept it or not, twist it any way you choose.

Ardee—If the state can’t threaten its subjects with arbitrary force, it is certain that some of them will do as they please and, for instance, refuse to pay taxes or otherwise fail to observe state requirements.  No force, no government, no state.  Is that idea so difficult to grasp?  It seems fairly simple to me.

So then you have to balance the good works of the state with the use of force which is its necessary basis.

Anarcissie, November 24 at 10:18 pm #

ardee—To justify your view, you have to rationalize the moment when one person points a loaded gun at another’s head, not because the other is a danger to him, but because orders is orders.  If the officers and agents of the state don’t do it, the state inevitably falls apart.  Anything and everything the state does must be worth that moment.  Give it some thought.

********************

I certainly would if I had the foggiest notion of what you are saying…Govt cannot exist if it doesnt threaten its citizenry with “a loaded gun”...sorry charlie.

ardee—To justify your view, you have to rationalize the moment when one person points a loaded gun at another’s head, not because the other is a danger to him, but because orders is orders.  If the officers and agents of the state don’t do it, the state inevitably falls apart.  Anything and everything the state does must be worth that moment.  Give it some thought.

Outraged, November 24 at 8:29 pm:
‘Re: Anarcissie
Your comment:  “Getting institutions based on evil (coercion) to do good—that’s pretty tricky.”

What I ascertain from your comment is that government (as an institution) is evil.  If so, why….throughout history…. have cities, city-states, nations, empires, communities….. etc, which by extension are The People or citizens, always set up differing forms of government? ...’

They haven’t.  It’s generally hypothesized (by, for instance, Jared Diamond) that states appear when communities reach a certain size.  I’d suggest that the crucial factor is the invention of slavery, which leads to rapid population growth and the foundation of cities.  There is no reason why pre-civil hunter-gatherers or subsistence farmers would want to work extra hours to supply the surpluses necessary to build cities.  However, if they’re enslaved, no one cares what they want and the cities get built.

However, this is pretty much hypothesized, because no one has observed a tribe of hunter-gatherers evolve a state.  Since anthropologists belong to advanced state culture, by the time they’re out observing hunter-gatherers the hunter-gatherers are already in the gravitational field of the state, so to speak, if not completely subjugated by it.  As the Nazi philosopher Carl Schmitt observed, states are inherently totalitarian because they demand absolute power, not only over their own people and territories, but adjoining ones as well, when these are not already organized into state.  (For examples, look at the “Manifest Destiny” of the U.S. and similar operations in South America.)

But even though humans have not always organized themselves into states, enough of them have so that today the state is universal and ubiquitous and we might ask your question anyway:  why have humans evolved the state?  What does it do for them?

I’d say it is the most effective way humans have discovered of organizing violence and thereby contributing to the survival of themselves and their fellow citizens (subjects, inmates).  Humans seem to be naturally rather violent, some of them extraordinarily so.  In a sense it’s rather clever to collect the most violent ones and discipline them into an army, a police force, a government.  The system breaks down quite often and we have wars and crimes, of course.  But it is the only one people have come up with so far, at least on a large scale.

This arrangement was all very well when humans knew only sticks and stones, or swords and spears.  There was only so much damage they could do to the world.  However, we now have advanced technologies which have made it possible to destroy whole cities, and perhaps the whole world, in the twinkling of an eye.  It seems that something new is called for.

In any case, even if you disagree and think that the state will serve, like those who wrote the Constitution I recommend that no one forget that a necessary evil is still evil, that all the good works of the state are based on one man pointing a gun at others’ heads and occasionally pulling the trigger.  And that is why, in spite of all the good works and good words and mighty heroes, we continue to observee war, imperialism, murder, torture, terror, not perpetrated by some sort of aliens but by our very own exceptional republic.

Wow!  That’s quite a rant!

Re: Anarcissie

Your comment:  “Getting institutions based on evil (coercion) to do good—that’s pretty tricky.”

What I ascertain from your comment is that government (as an institution) is evil.  If so, why….throughout history…. have cities, city-states, nations, empires, communities….. etc, which by extension are The People or citizens, always set up differing forms of government?

Historically or currently where will you go, what place or culture can you give as an example of one without laws, systems of government or what you (and others) consistently dub “power structures”?

Yes, there is power in governments but this is not new.  If you consider the first immigrants to America, ones who SPECIFICALLY left their native countries because of what they saw as persecution by their government.  These same set about creating a system of government, including hierarchies and laws.  Invoking persecution as a premise, they all but immediately constructed and instituted laws in their settlements which persecuted anyone NOT of their religious mores!  At that time, various settlements instituted various laws or systems of government.  Native Americans, historically and currently also have a system of government, laws and social mores, they just aren’t based upon the same tenets.

It seems you’re always attempting to argue this “power system structure of evil” and that we should have no laws and no system of government.  Attempting to paint anarchy as “freedom” is a spurious position to take.
 
Our system (a representative democracy) does have checks instituted to control the balance of power and give voice and opportunity to the people to change law or hold officials accountable.  It does not always work perfectly (I know…understatement of the year) but it does work.  Its taken quite the beating in these last few years, but it is not dead.  It needs to be brought back to a healthy condition. 

Corruption and by extension abuse of power is the problem, we know this.  Anarchy however, is not the solution… anarchy will expand and accelerate the problem.

Now we have a situation in which the people have repeatedly turned out the party in power and have gotten the same results, the same policies, even the same personnel.  I attribute this problem to the coercive basis of the state, which seems to me like a reasonable theory given the evidence.

I agree that the solution is not the cycling and recycling of two parties to seats of power. I attribute this to the lack of viable alternatives heretofore and not to any such negativity of the State mechanisms themselves. The Constitution is a fine document, but ,as Hamilton noted,people are not angels, thus ( this is me not he) governance is subject to such less than angelic motive. This does not make government inherently bad, only abused.

I suppose if you insist that government is a necessary evil, you could become a fan of severely limited government, a “libertarian”, but I think these folks are barking up the wrong tree—a tree with the same old anaconda hiding in its branches.

I believe libertarianism to be a white only club, inspired by the desire of the haves to hold onto what they have stolen, and live in fear of “others” taking what belongs by right of birth to them only….Yup I am no fan. Those who worship at the altar of Ron Paul never stoop to explain his Stormfront connections..

Getting institutions based on evil (coercion) to do good—that’s pretty tricky.  He that sups with the Devil should carry a long spoon. An extremely long spoon.  We can observe the alternative—that’s what the neo-con article we’re commenting on is.  Most progs seem to me to have carried too short a spoon and wound up being on the menu.

I got plenty of spoons, and of differing lengths as well, but I cook with them, not vote. I refuse your contention of a basic evil that lies within the mechanism of all government . That people are weak and subject to temptation is fact, that govt is an invention of people is obvious, thus one sees, all too often, corrupted officials and the power of money holding sway.

I think it a dangerous notion to reject govt, all govt on this basis. I think reforms are certainly in order, reforms that would take away the power of money and thus reform our governance. I see no other alternative.

ardee: November 24 at 8:35 am:
‘A: “the function of the state is to serve the interests of its ruling class through a system of institutions ultimately based on force and fear.”

Anarcissie,you conflate what is with what was intended. I understand your position that all government is bad, but that precludes any attempts to reform what I think is a necessary institution. ...

I’m stating the problem.  I agree that the founders of the U.S. were suspicious of government and tried to set something up which could be restrained by the people, but it is pretty clear that many of the mechanisms they put in place, like the separation of powers and the Bill of Rights, have been broken in the cause of imperial war and other ruling-class amusements.  Now we have a situation in which the people have repeatedly turned out the party in power and have gotten the same results, the same policies, even the same personnel.  I attribute this problem to the coercive basis of the state, which seems to me like a reasonable theory given the evidence.

I suppose if you insist that government is a necessary evil, you could become a fan of severely limited government, a “libertarian”, but I think these folks are barking up the wrong tree—a tree with the same old anaconda hiding in its branches.

Getting institutions based on evil (coercion) to do good—that’s pretty tricky.  He that sups with the Devil should carry a long spoon. An extremely long spoon.  We can observe the alternative—that’s what the neo-con article we’re commenting on is.  Most progs seem to me to have carried too short a spoon and wound up being on the menu.

ardee—the function of the state is to serve the interests of its ruling class through a system of institutions ultimately based on force and fear. 

Anarcissie,you conflate what is with what was intended. I understand your position that all government is bad, but that precludes any attempts to reform what I think is a necessary institution.

montanawildhack, November 23 at 10:53 am

Aside from that fact that you are boring as hell with your incessant drivel about Zionists under your bed, you cannot even seem to remain on topic…Guess which finger I’m holding up?

If we add that Thirty percent to our resident trolls…

Far, far too often the words “resident trolls” actually mean those whose politics or solutions differ from ones own…pity, and an excuse for some to make up bullshit about those whose opinions happen to differ.

Let’s see…. so far 16 comments, 5 unregistered comments (all against what they perceive the Pres. will do, of course not a one actually KNOWS), which is about 30 Percent.  Thirty percent….hmmmm, thirty percent…. why does that number ring a bell?

If we add that Thirty percent to our resident trolls, what would be the actual percent?  No… of course that’s just “crazy talk”.  Funny how the numbers “add up” though, isn’t it?

The only intelligent resolution is also the simplest. Order all commanders to cease
combat operations immediately and prepare to report to an assembly area for
transport back to the states. Then airlift every one of them out of there as quickly
as possible. That is the only plan that will work, and the only plan that will
guarantee Obama’s reelection in 2012.

I was always told that ‘not making a decision” was making a decision.

Is the idea of “get the frick out” not even mentionable?

President Barack Obama . . .  is soon likely to settle on something closest to the third approach. This will make no one very happy. Yet it might be the least dangerous choice.

No, it’s not.  Obama is about to engage in a complete colonic cleansing by drinking hemlock.

It is hard to be civil to this smacked ass repeating the scary tewwowist hiding-under-the-bed mantra.
  Moyers recent program followed the taped discussions of Johnson agonizing over Vietnam, replete with references to the oft repeated battlecry of the commie threat—countries that would fall like dominos. No one buys that now, so why do we unquestioning allow this demonization to go on…christian?

“Those with the greatest political stake in the debate reject the middle ground and doubt the president can think his way around the all-in-or-all-out dilemma. Yet this is exactly the kind of thinking Obama promised last year, and he’s right to try to make it work.”
  One of the worst things about war as policy is that it necessarily limits choices to “in” or “out.”  Yet real situations with which human beings must cope are seldom that simple and therefore are not “well-served” (for want of a better word) by yes/no decisions.
  The simple-minded choice was made in 2002-3—war.
Win?  or Lose?  Yet now reality hits—What if that is not the question? 
  What if there are more complex decisions, answers, inventions, ideas, possibilities? Such complexities never occur to the “military mind” and non-military people have had little or no experience with alternative thinking and therefore have little patience with it. 
  Let’s have a decision here! they say. You are dithering! The simple-minded clamor drowns out new possibilities.
  Could this be where we are—forced by an obviously complex, bad situation to come up with something different?  Something maybe more complex, more all-encompassing, newer that in/out?  And will ordinary people “buy into” it?  Will non-ordinary people “buy into"it? Will “fundamentalists” of all types buy into it?
  If not, what then?  Can people really change their ingrained habits of thinking?  If so, how long does it take?  What prevents it? What will speed up the process?  Not to mention, will it succeed? And what would success look like?
  Even though we may be on the edges of some more creative answer, the pull of the simple-minded past of history and experience drags us back to the superficial good/evil, black/white, all or nothing pattern.  Try selling “alternatives” (the idea that there might be more than one answer) to people already trapped in a violent situation.  And yet . . . and yet . . . something new and different is out there, waiting, hoping, wanting to be born.

Al Qaeda is CIA.  Karzai is CIA.  The United States, the world’s leading terror state, not only supports “terrorists,” it harbors them. Florida is chock full of them, as is Washington, DC.  Where in this supposed list of “options” is the one the majority of Americans, indeed the citizens of the world, support, namely complete withdrawal?  How easily is democracy abandoned!  The ruling elite want very much to get their hands on the oil, control the pipelines, encircle China, provide a testing-ground for the latest in tax-payer-funded weaponry, ensure the flow of opium and heroin dollars to Wall Street banksters, and have it known that the US can and will invade any country, and the weaker the better, that shows any sign of being the least bit uncooperative with US corporate hegemony.  Never is there any question within the circles of the ruling elite or their whores in the press that the election fraud of the CIA asset and UnoCal employee Karzai which the US so hypocritically and cynically supports as the legitimate ruler of Pipeline-istan should be subject to examination.  The US is demonstrably guilty of massive war crimes, and the lack of any moral principle exhibited by both the ruling elite, and the lap-dog press, who both regard the costs of US aggression only as concerns the costs to us, is morally and ethically reprehensible, and not at all worthy of a nation that repeatedly insists that it is a great nation, as if saying so ever made such a claim true.  Well, actions speak louder than words, and it’s far past time we began acting like the great nation we are endlessly told that we are.  Getting out of Iraq, Afghanistan, stopping the belligerent attitude toward Iran (among many, many others), the unquestioned support for Israel and other terror states, would be a very good start in this direction.  What ought to be the subject of debate is not how to prosecute the US war of terror, but how quickly we can remove all troops, when apologies ought to be issued to the numerous countries we have bombed and starved, and how large the war reparations to Iraq and Afghanistan should be.
“Our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment… People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers ... do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of Defense. Nor do they want to.”  (William Blum)
“The media are a pitiful lot. They don’t give us any history, they don’t give us any analysis, they don’t tell us anything. They don’t raise the most basic questions: Who has the most weapons of mass destruction in the world by far? Who has used weapons of mass destruction more than any other nation? Who has killed more people in this world with weapons of mass destruction than any other nation? The answer: the United States.”
(Howard Zinn)
“Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind and is punishing so many innocent people is intolerable. And so the evidence has to be internally denied.”
(Arthur Miller)

E.J. Dionne:
’... One of these is the weariness over a truth that Andrew Bacevich, the hardheaded foreign policy analyst, put more plainly than most: “that permanent war has become the de facto policy of the United States.” ...’

Oh, goodness.  Well, if a “hardheaded foreign policy analyst” says it, and it’s reported in the neo-con Washington Post, it must be so; but more plainly than most?  The Left has been saying the same thing quite plainly for generations.  It’s nice that Mr. Bacevich, Mr. Dionne, and the other neo-cons are catching up, though.

ardee—the function of the state is to serve the interests of its ruling class through a system of institutions ultimately based on force and fear.  “Serving the best interests of the people” is not on the menu, although pretending to serve the best interests of the people often pops up when something more engaging, like a fresh war, isn’t at hand.  Mr. O is probably doing the best he can; the ruling class of the U.S. has been on a downward spiral for many years, and its descent will not be easily reversed or even arrested.  As witness the present story, where the simple option of retiring from the imperialist role isn’t even considered; this is how our rulers think.

The Pathans will eagerly seek out new or remaining American targets as they have the Brits, the Macedonians, the Russians in their defense of their homeland.

“When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plain, and the women come out to cut up what remains, just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains … An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.” — Rudyard Kipling

Are not our soldiers, all of whom know both wars to be based on lies, also war criminals, since they volunteered to fight in two wars of aggression?
Or are they just pawns?
Obama: They used to die for Bush’s lies;
Now they die for yours.
You lie; another sucker dies.
It is the way of wars.

Every U.S. fatality from Iraq and Afghanistan should have on his/her memorial stone:  “Here lies another sucker who died for lies—for NOTHING.”

Yet another article that ended up being a total waste of my precious time….

Hey Ardee…. Hows come you can’t admit the obvious????  You say that Old Uncle Barack cannot serve two masters: the American people and the military industrial complex…. Well….... you’re half right….  It’s not the Miiitary Industrial Complex but the Zionists he’s serving…  Do you honestly think that Obama or anyone of the pimps in Congress are afraid of the Military????....PLEASE…  The military isn’t going to ruin them financially or kill them…  Obama and the trench whores in Congress know exactly how powerful the Zionists are and kow-tow to their every whim….  And the Zionists want us in Afghanistan and Iraq FOREVER!!!!  As to what the American people think: F__KEM!!!!!!!!!

There are none so blind and those who will not see….

Outrageous Our country’s Foreign Policy is supposed to hinge off the myopic perspective of Military Brass.
there is a Reason we have 3 Branches of Gov’t, various Cabinet posts..Well above the Ranks of any General. And it is that way for a Reason. We were never to be lead by the nose by the aspirations or egos of those in uniform. We are not a military dictatorship!
McCrystal, and not even Gates have a full view of this country’s overall interests. Because we are not purely an Imperialistic empire like Roman.
Everytime one of these idiots in Public office says the Pres has to listen to the Generals they are admitting they have absolutely no Regard for our Form of Governance. They are handing Our country over to a military Coupe!
Don’t tell me you’re an ‘American’ and then claim the Miltiary has the power of Decision making over the other Branches and Dept, let alone the Lives and money of the People of this country!
Repugs keep flaunting their Red Coats, and yet no one is bothering to Point it out.
In fact having been unduly (Illegally )influenced politically by the Military “intellegence” is what created Bin laden, fortified Saddams reign of power and got this country into two cluster fuck wars!
I don’t give a FUCK what the Generals, The DoD or the Pentagon thinks about SHIT!!!!
Their Job is to carry out the Orders of our President and Congress, as willed by the People of this country. Americans have been screaming ‘Get the Hell out of there’ for years now.
Next Politico who states ‘WE Have to listen to the Generals’ should be arrested as a traitor conspiring to facilitate a Military Coup.

You cannot serve two masters. President Obama was elected to serve the best interests of the people of these United States, yet he struggles precisely because he seeks to serve the military industrial complex as well as we the people.

It simply cannot be done.