Jeroen wrote:
At 12:49 23-8-01 -0400, Gautum Mukunda wrote:
>If you're going to accuse a country of something as drastic as crimes
>against humanity, then support your arguments with the contention that it
>can predict everything, it behooves you to know something this basic, it
>seems to me.
>Those were two different arguments, Gautam (as I have pointed out in a
previous post). And because I'm such a nice guy, I'll save you the trouble
of having to find that particular post: I'll quote the relevant section of
it.>
At 11:19 20-8-01 +0200, I wrote:
>You (plural) have mixed up two separate arguments. I made two of them:
>
>1. Refusing to sign the Landmine Ban Treaty should be considered a crime
>against humanity.
>2. Using landmines is a bad idea, and here are some sources <insert URL's>
>that show you why.
>According to you, I said "Military Intelligence should be able to predict
an invasion" to prove that the US is guilty of crimes against humanity. It
should be quite obvious that such an argument can't be used as prove of
crimes against humanity -- it doesn't make sense. How could such an
argument be evidence of said crime?
Please explain how the expected performance of a Military Intelligence
service can be used to prove that a country has committed a crime against
humanity.
Jeroen<
Jeroen, these arguments aren't separable - not and leave any logic at all
behind your statements. The US refused to sign the treaty for very
specific reasons. These reasons were publicly stated. You stated your
belief that the failure to sign the treaty was a crime against humanity.
That is a remarkable statement. It states your belief that the leaders of
the United States who made and concurred in that decision are on a
remarkably low moral plane, populated largely by people convicted at
Nuremberg. That statement only makes sense (if it does) if the reason that
the United States government articulated for refusing to sign the treaty
cannot be believed by reasonable people. If the arguments are reasonable,
then the people who made that decision cannot conceivable be guilty of a
crime against humanity. You can't separate those two arguments at all.
The United States (and Korean - and you still haven't explained why the
South Korean government is not the entity that should make the decision
about the u
se of landmines in South Korea. You waxed eloquent about national
sovereignty with regards to North Korea. I assume that your belief in
national sovereignty extends to democracies, not just totalitarian
dictatorships) chose not to sign the treaty because it believed it needed
to use landmines to defend South Korea from North Korean aggression. You
believe that that decision was a crime against humanity. You cannot
believe this without believing that the United States was wrong (and
maliciously wrong, in fact, as malice is surely a component of something as
serious as crimes against humanity - it doesn't seem like a simple mistake
could possibly be enough) in believing that it needed landmines to defend
South Korea. One of your reasons for believing that the United States was
wrong was your apparent belief in the omniscience of American intelligence
- you stated (IIRC - that addendum being enough under American law to
protect me from slander accusations :-) that the United States would be
able to predict
a North Korean attack and defeat it. Were that the case, it would lend
some plausibility to your contention that the United States does not need
landmines to defend South Korea. But, in fact, given its history of
intelligence failures and the pervasive secrecy of the North Korean regime,
it seems to me unlikely that we would predict an invasion. By using your
belief in American military intelligence to support the second argument,
you use it to support the first.
You cannot separate the two arguments. If the United States _did_ need
landmines to defend South Korea, it cannot possibly have been a crime
against humanity to fail to sign a treaty that prevented us from doing so.
If it was even reasonable to think that - and I repeat that the two groups
most capable of making that decision, the American and South Korean
military leaderships, both believe that they are necessary - then it cannot
be a crime against humanity to fail to sign the treaty. To even render
your first argument reasonable, you must demonstrate the second beyond any
reasonable doubt.
Gautam
