States are not people

It seems that we cannot go a day without someone, somewhere, talking about sending a message or punishment to some country. They talk about it as if the country is a person. Even if you pretend that punishment is an effective way to guide the behavior of individuals, does that translate to punishment affecting states?

In the case of a representative government it is conceivable that a punishment actually hits the wrongdoers. If the majority voted fora  particular policy or representative, then the punishment, usually in the form of bombing, would then seem to be hitting those responsible: the people themselves. In other words, a representative state may not truly have civilians, because the civilians are the ones who decide to commit the crimes.

This is obviously ridiculous. Even in a perfectly ideal representative system there will be dissenters, yet bombs do not distinguish. Therefore the punishment is harming the innocent.

If the system is imperfectly representative, perhaps with some members holding more power than others, then the problem of innocents being harmed is increased further. Then there is the issue of the unknowable. While representatives can be elected or voted out, they have a great deal of freedom of action. Some actions may not be noticed, or even actively covered up (such as the time-capsuled tax recommendations). Representatives may act in ways that we not expected. For example, even those who opposed the selection of President Bush wouldn't have known that the US would be attacked on such a larger scale that a large war became inevitable. No one voted for his war or human rights record, yet as a representative of the people, he was allowed to do so.

Moving along this continuum of representation, we eventually get to the dictator. He dictates, as the name implies. While he may have some support, it would be absurd to suggest that his actions are sanctioned by even a plurality of citizens. In this context, punishment that does not directly target the dictator, or rogue elements (as I suspect are part of the cause of the brutality in the Syrian crisis), will be targeted.

There is no state to punish. There are instead individuals. Yet we somehow never manage to go after them. We instead cling to the notion that leaders are to be revered, held above the masses, even as those masses are slaughtered in their name. This isn't to suggest that something like the Syrian crisis could be resolved by killing Assad & Co. There are wider forces at play and a few deaths won't fix that. Yet killing even more people, civilians or military, won't fix it either.

It often feels as if we're living in some sort of awful Bond parody, where the villain is displeased with a subordinate and expresses it by glaring at him until he quakes in fear, and then kills someone else. Terrifying...

Arbitrary mercy is still arbitrary justice

I think Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden both did the right thing.  Maybe the execution was imperfect, but the general notion of disclosing illegal or unethical activity is good.  I think we should hold them up as models of behavior.

I also think the government should put them on trial.  I know Manning already is, but the phrasing gets awkward.  They both broke the law.  I'm open to being convinced otherwise, and perhaps I will be, but for now, I believe that the laws they broke were not unjust.  Certainly if you break an unjust law then the law should be changed and the person pardoned.

In the meantime, why the contradiction?  Because there is none.  Rule of law matters.  The idea that we create laws and enforce them, evenly and fairly, is critical to a functioning society and government.  Letting people go because we decided that they had good intentions is dangerous.  It sets a precedent that can easily go the wrong way.

Good intentions are unlimited in scope and variety, running the gamut from stealing a loaf of bread for a hungry family to killing a person because you thought they were dishonorable.  To give greater weight to good intentions than to the law is to give greater weight to chaos.  Worse, it opens the door to arbitrary punishment or lack thereof, in which one person is judged to have had good intentions and another not.  But what means would we measure them?

Enforcing the law also acts as a safety mechanism.  While I think people should defy the system if they think it is unjust, it should not be costless.  The threat of imprisonment forces would-be rule breakers to be more careful in their actions.  They gather more evidence and look for context, to ensure that what they may be imprisoned for is actually worth the punishment.

However, I would not apply this to whistle-blowers, as defined by law.  If someone is legally forbidden from reporting illegal behavior, then that law in unjust and therefore there should be no prosecution.  And of course, if someone reports illegal behavior and broke no laws in the process, they should face no penalty.  Disclosing illegal activities should be encouraged at every opportunity.

How arming the rebels may win the war for Assad

It's a common refrain, to hear how we should arm the right rebels in Syria.  These are apparently the rebels who do not commit war crimes, are not Islamic terrorists, are not criminals, are not going to set up their own dictatorship, and are not sectarian extremists.  They're not only well-intentioned, but also capable of implementing their good intentions.  So we're down to about ten people that we can safely give weapons.

See the problem yet?

There is already in-fighting among the rebels.  Some groups are just trying to seize territory for themselves rather than actually free their country from Assad.  They'll attack others, even other opponents of the regime.  As with any civil war or resistance movement, there is the war against the regime and the war to be the faction that wins.  Look at China where even the Japanese invasion and occupation caused the civil war to be given ever so slightly lower priority.

What happens when we give arms to particular groups?  They may be stolen or sold off, since even if the group overall or its leaders are good people, they are not filled with perfect people.  The groups that we arm may be attacked more heavily by the regime, thereby making the less savory groups relatively safer and more powerful.  They may be attacked by other factions that seek to steal their weapons.  They may be more desirable for infiltration by extremists.

The overall result is that giving arms to the right rebels is not a guarantee that the Assad regime will fall or that its replacement will be significantly better.  If the new government isn't going to be any better than the old, then what's the point?  Assad may as well have been allowed to win if that's the case.  We shouldn't be so quick to forget what happened in Afghanistan.