Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky, a student at Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson Center has an exceptionally intriguing piece on conservatism and international law as a method of obtaining world peace. The question of international law today is somewhat muddled. The UN is an ineffectual organization that often serves more as the mouthpiece for terrorism rather than an organization dedicated to stability and cooperation. However, the principle of international law itself is based on noble principles.
However, the trick is always ensuring that noble principles do not conflict with the need for self-protection in a frequently less than noble world. As Mr. Ramos-Mrosovsky states:
Why does modern international law fail its most important tests? The simple answer is that it has tried to do too much too soon. Legal societies, whether international or otherwise, develop over time and in phases. Our own legal system developed over many centuries — with roots as far back as medieval England and even ancient Rome. The 50 years that the U.N.-based international system has been in existence looks paltry by comparison.
International legalists are frustrated that international institutions seem to work in only unglamorous fields where all parties have an interest in cooperating — e.g., fisheries, trade, and communications. In fact, that the effectiveness of international law is limited to these smaller matters does not signal failure; it merely shows that the international legal system has only begun to evolve and can better digest smaller issues.
In expecting a decent, liberal international order to burst, full-grown, from the forehead of history, defenders of the current legal system have things backwards. They promulgate an extensive and idealistic set of rules while lacking a central authority that is serious or sincere about enforcing them. International law requires a preexisting authority to define and punish unacceptable behavior, just as our own common law once required a strong monarchy able to enforce its will and judgments. Until such an order exists — not on paper but in reality — the legalists in New York and The Hague should slow down and meditate on Edmund Burke’s maxim that "good order is the foundation of all great things."
The UN can never be such an organization because it is built badly from the ground up. Good governments create good order only when they are restrained from involving themselves in every situation. That is the basis of conservatism.
Only until there is an international body that is more concerned with protecting security and supporting freedom than acting out of the self-interest of a few can international law live up to its standards. Until groups such as the UN stop acting as restraints on the powerful and free in favor of the small and totalitarian can there be real progress on creating a more stable world order.
The American military appears on the verge of discovering just how wonderful it is to be giving the rest of the world the one-finger salute since we’re running out of soldiers to put in front of rifles and tanks. Having pissed off the rest of the world and making them unwilling to send in troops of their own to cover our backs, we’re almost entirely dependent on our own supply of young men to try socially engineering world peace through a rifle barrel.
I wonder if we’ll ever see Private Jay Reding, drafted into actual duty rather than just armchair service, sprinting in military garb in 120 degree desert weather lugging around a rifle on his shoulder as he proclaims the irrelevance of world diplomacy and the supremacy of cowboy diplomacy. Naw, we could never be that lucky I suppose. As long as it’s always the kid across the tracks taking his bullet for him, unilateral war will always seem like a perfectly swell idea.
LOL!
Of course, we could go the other way and just leave the bloody status quo as it is. We could just put the blinders on our eyes and pretend like we can just shut out the seething sea of hatred in the Middle East.
Actually, we did for nearly all of the 90s.
The price: over 3,000 dead in New York. Dozens more in the Khobar Towers, our embassies in Africa, and the USS Cole.
Next time, the attack won’t be with planes or crude explosive devices. It will be with germs, chemical agents, or a nuclear device. Instead of an entire city trying to save 3,000, it could very well be the other way around.
Europe didn’t face September 11. Europe has its blinders on and wants to live with the naive illusion that it wouldn’t happen to them as long as they compromised and capitulated. Then again, if they’d only look back at their own history they’d easily see the horrible folly of such an idea.
This is a battle that must be won, because the cost of not fighting it is far greater than the cost of fighting radical Islamists before they acquire some of the deadliest weapons on Earth.
No matter how the white-flag waving left and the cowardly Eurocrats want to sacrifice millions on the altar of constraining American power, our soldiers understand what they’re fighting for. The threat is real, and thankfully there are people with integrity of guts in the White House willing to fight this battle before it rages out of control.
History will thank them just as history owes a debt of gratitude to those who fought against the spread of Communism in the Cold War. The rest of the appeasers can whine and cry and harp all they want about "unilateral" wars and accuse people of being "chickenhawks" and all the other slurs of the reactionary left. The rest of us have a job to do, and we’re not going to quit because some of us don’t have the guts and the moral courage to even recognize the threat.
Jay,
Actually, we did for nearly all of the 90s.
Yep. If we really went after them after the bombing of WTC in 1993 – 9/11 would’ve never happened.
Do you have any idea how much of a hypocrite you are when you proclaim “the rest of us have a job to do” when your interpretation of “us” is really “them”? If you had “guts and moral courage” you profess to, you wouldn’t depend on better people than yourself to fight these battles you deem so necessary to the preservation of liberty. No matter how much you run from the term chickenhawk, the bottom line is that you are no different than the French you deem as cowards. They don’t want to fight in a war….and you don’t want fight in a war.
In most countries of the world, and in the United States in the past, simply hiding behind the American flag while embracing your peers go fight a war was an option for young, able-bodies males. There are consequences to compulsory military service, but also advantages. Given the nation’s increasingly bellicose mood when it comes to other people fighting their battles for them, perhaps at least the potential of a draft resurrection wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Furthermore, all the finger-pointing of how 9-11 could have been prevented is futile and silly after the fact. Perhaps we should have responded more forcefully to previous al-Qaida attacks, but neither Clinton or the opposition party was actively advocating doing so at the time. In fact, George W. ran in 2000 on an America-first platform that suggested the US was TOO MUCH involved in nation-building and foreign diplomacy…a mindset he acted upon in his first eight months in office.
Well, if you want to live in a state where only those who serve in the military can speak out on policy, then you’re perfectly welcome to immigrate to North Korea.
I will tell you one thing: I am trained as a first responder for emergencies. I’ve had triage training, and have done disaster drills. I know that some day I might get a page, and when I get that page it means several thousand people have just died. I know that when I get in the scene I’ll have to make decisions about who lives and who dies. I don’t ever want to get that call.
Those people fighting in the Gulf are fighting so that I never do get that call.
Furthermore, I support our soldiers by giving blood, working on relief efforts, and helping with families whose loved ones are overseas. I’ve talked to our fighting men and women on numerous occasions, and the thing that saps their moral the most are people like you. The ones who put domestic partisan politics over the mission, who don’t see the threat, and do nothing but snipe at those who do.
No matter how much you attack the messenger, the truth is that we are at war. No matter how much you and the rest of the lunatic fringe of the Democratic Party want to use the troops you and your leadership loathe as political tools only to be forgotten and neglected when they no longer serve their purpose, that truth remains the same.
@Monkey
Yeah, who knows what might have popped up in Al Qaeda’s place in this neverending game of terrorist whack-a-mole we’re playing. For all we know the next attack may have been even worse. Of course a simpler solution for 9/11 and any future threats would be having a remotely competent immigration service and perhaps a little cooperation or perhaps consolidation of our intelligence agencies, but making new world orders is a lot more fun, as Mark said, so long as you’re not the grunt in the desert in the middle of the summer being shot at.
Private Reding… ROFL. Probably no worse than a Private Beverage, however it would be quite a sad state of affairs for the military if guys like us were on the front lines. 🙂
"Of course a simpler solution for 9/11 and any future threats would be having a remotely competent immigration service and perhaps a little cooperation or perhaps consolidation of our intelligence agencies"
On the first point, I heartily agree. On the second, that’s why we have the Department of Homeland Security. Which incidentally was an idea of the bipartisan Hart-Rudman Commission on National Security all the way back in 1999. Had their suggestions been made policy before September 11, it is entirely possible the attacks could have been prevented. Then again, hindsight is always 20/20.
I am hardly suggesting that anyone who isn’t in the military isn’t qualified to opine on the war. However, normal people’s conscience would prevent them from spouting warrior bravado when they have no intention of ever being in an military uniform. To suggest that because I’m challenging your “guts and moral courage” for insisting others fight in the war you proclaim as the salvation of liberty makes me one and the same with the North Korean political hierarchy is outrageous hyperbole. At worst, it makes me one and the same with Richard Nixon, who sent out draft notices to young men so they could fight in the wars they advocated, present Republican political leadership excluded of course.
Likewise, the troops that you’re “boosting morale for” are far better served with dissent than collective flag-waving. It’s their ass that’s on the line in military combat, and they deserve to have alternative viewpoints floating around to that of the Commander in Chief, whom you apparently believe should have limitless power to wage and conduct war without dissent so as not to “weaken troop morale”. This sounds a lot more like something North Korean dictators would want than me saying we should look at reinstating the draft.
I know a couple troops over in Iraq. They are not “lunatic fringe liberals” by any stretch of the imagination, but they are far more upset by the deceptions of the Army in regards to the length of their tours and the favortism showed during their deployment than they are about my non-support for the cause. Saying that people like me “loathe” American soldiers because we don’t support the reckless mindset of their military leadership is like saying I hate Wal-Mart and IBP employees just because I deplore those sleazy companies. On the contrary, helping improve the conditions the soldiers are performing their duties under rather than providing blind allegiance to the will of the Pentagon is a much better contribution to the war effort on my part than “lending morale” is on yours.
Why would anyone take seriously the adaptation of a Homeland Security Department before 9-11 when all the GOP ever talks about is how terrible government and how we should be eliminating current departments rather than adding new ones, which nobody was even discussing? I guess I don’t understand how adding this Department fits in with your “public employees are the enemy” worldview.
I am hardly suggesting that anyone who isn’t in the military isn’t qualified to opine on the war. However, normal people’s conscience would prevent them from spouting warrior bravado when they have no intention of ever being in an military uniform. To suggest that because I’m challenging your “guts and moral courage” for insisting others fight in the war you proclaim as the salvation of liberty makes me one and the same with the North Korean political hierarchy is outrageous hyperbole. At worst, it makes me one and the same with Richard Nixon, who sent out draft notices to young men so they could fight in the wars they advocated, present Republican political leadership excluded of course.
Likewise, the troops that you’re “boosting morale for” are far better served with dissent than collective flag-waving. It’s their ass that’s on the line in military combat, and they deserve to have alternative viewpoints floating around to that of the Commander in Chief, whom you apparently believe should have limitless power to wage and conduct war without dissent so as not to “weaken troop morale”. This sounds a lot more like something North Korean dictators would want than me saying we should look at reinstating the draft.
I know a couple troops over in Iraq. They are not “lunatic fringe liberals” by any stretch of the imagination, but they are far more upset by the deceptions of the Army in regards to the length of their tours and the favortism showed during their deployment than they are about my non-support for the cause. Saying that people like me “loathe” American soldiers because we don’t support the reckless mindset of their military leadership is like saying I hate Wal-Mart and IBP employees just because I deplore those sleazy companies. On the contrary, helping improve the conditions the soldiers are performing their duties under rather than providing blind allegiance to the will of the Pentagon is a much better contribution to the war effort on my part than “lending morale” is on yours.
Why would anyone take seriously the adaptation of a Homeland Security Department before 9-11 when all the GOP ever talks about is how terrible government and how we should be eliminating current departments rather than adding new ones, which nobody was even discussing? I guess I don’t understand how adding this Department fits in with your “public employees are the enemy” worldview.