Category Archives: Military

In a Perverse Way, Afghan Justice Is Less Perverse

Christianity, Crime, Justice, Law, Middle East, Military, Morality, Natural Law

“As a Christian,” reasons Thomas Fleming, in his highly recommended Mail-Online blog, “I can say plainly that Afghans have a truer sense of justice than the catechisms of most Christian churches today. As post-Christian savages without a sense of justice, we were quite wrong to conquer this primitive people.”

“The Afghans do not pretend to see beyond the end of their nose or outside the limits of their settlement. Their simple and wholesome ethic is: You kill my people, I kill you. They are demanding nothing less than the transfer of the killer to Afghan jurisdiction. After a speedy trial and conviction, he will be turned over to the relatives of the victims to kill in whatever way they see fit.”

“Americans may pretend to understand this demand as a temporary outburst of grief and rage, but, when they do not relent, in a few weeks we can expect to hear condemnations of the primitive Afghan understanding of justice. We shall be reminded of the Talibans’ mass executions in sports stadiums. ‘They don’t want justice,’ we shall cry, ‘only vengeance,’ and no one will spend half a minute explaining what the difference is.”

“Here in the enlightened West,

we know that the purpose of a criminal justice system is two-fold: to rehabilitate the criminal and protect the public. It was not always so. The ancients believed that a criminal act–murder, assault, robbery, rape–put the universe out of joint. The purpose of punishment was to put it right again. Killers are killed, robbers robbed, beaters beaten.
It was not always so simple as “an eye for an eye,” and Roman and Christian law made allowances for motives, circumstances, and appropriateness of punishment, but they never forgot the primary purpose of punishment was retribution or, to use a simpler word, vengeance.
Leftist Christians will howl in protest, citing, “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord,” little understanding that the same Lord, according to St. Paul, delegates the power to punish evil to the rulers of the world. Not in vain, Paul declared in an authoritative chapter of Romans, does the ruler hold the sword, nor is it a terror to the good but only to the wicked. It follows that a ruler who casts away the sword on a humanitarian whim is no longer a legitimate ruler. The Church always begged for mercy in specific cases, but never disputed the right and duty of kings and parliaments to execute criminals.
Even Imanuel Kant, who got most things wrong, saw through the lies of all the liberal theories of punishment:
“Judicial punishment can never be used solely as a means to promote some other good for the criminal himself or for society, but instead must in all cases be imposed on a person solely on the ground that he has committed a crime….woe to him who rummages around in the winding paths of a theory of happiness looking for some advantage to be gained by releasing the criminal from punishment or by reducing the amount of it….

MORE.

Bully Power Vs. Balance of Power: Russians in Syria

Foreign Policy, Middle East, Military, Russia

Al Arabiya News is reporting that “Russian special forces have arrived in the Syrian Mediterranean port city of Tartus.” The news agency’s website front-page features an image of western-looking soldiers under which this caption appears: “A Russian ship carrying a unit of ‘anti-terrorist marines’ is reportedly docked at the Syrian port city of Tartus.”

DEBKAfile, the “Israeli-based open source military intelligence website,” confirms the information, running it as «Breaking News.»:

A Russian ship carrying marines anchors at Tartus, Syria
DEBKAfile March 19, 2012, 6:00 PM (GMT+02:00)
Two Russian naval vessels have anchored at the Syrian port of Tartus, Russian Black Sea headquarters at Sevastopol reports. Their mission and identifies were not disclosed, excepting that one was carrying a unit of “anti-terrorist marines” and the other, a military tanker which joined “a Russian naval reconnaissance and surveillance ship already tied up in Tartus.”

In “Onward to Iran!” I commented that the US uses the world as its combat canvas, “a bully’s universe.” Essentially, the US operates upon the premise “that American men and matériel should be capable of reaching [and controlling] all corners of the world.”

Perhaps this intervention is a Russian attempt to restore a balance of powers, and thus prevent more Libyas, which the US and its NATO subsidiary used for regime-change practice.

Grunts: Gladiators in the Emperor’s Colosseum

Barack Obama, Bush, Crime, Foreign Policy, Military, The State

America’s military men are losing their minds, penned as they are like gladiators, condemned criminals, slaves and wild animals, in the Colosseum, destined to murder or die for the benefit of the craven Emperor and his comitatus.

Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, the accused in the massacre of 16 civilians in the Panjwai district of Kandahar Province, is from Washington state, my state. According to a KiroTV.com, he is 38-years-old and has spent 11 years in the Army. FoxNews provides a better report, telling of a “very mild-mannered” father to children aged 3 and 4.

Bales had been on three tours of duty to Iraq since 2003, military officials say, before being dispatched to Afghanistan, and had lost part of one foot in a “battle-related injury.”

“He wasn’t thrilled about going on another deployment,” said John Henry Browne, a defense attorney from Seattle. “He was told he wasn’t going back, and then he was told he was going.”

Onward to Iran!

Foreign Policy, Intelligence, Iran, Iraq, Military, War, WMD

The following is from this week’s column, “Onward to Iran!”:

That acts of war and elections often coincide should come as no surprise. It’s unfortunate, but electability in fin de siècle America still hinges on projecting bully power around the world—an American leader has to aspire to “protect” borders and people not his own, and if they refuse his advances, he should be prepared to bomb them to kingdom come.

Having used the American military to particularly great political effect—the barefaced Barack Obama may be preparing to blast Iranians with something even “better” than the BLU-82, Bush’s weapon of choice.

Elections are not the only cause for war.

Perverse as this may seem, in its ongoing, reflexive efforts to maintain power and metastasize, the media-military-industrial-congressional complex can’t help but motivate for war.

Thus, out of the blue, in January of 2012, before things had heated up with Teheran, the Anglo-American press reported a military milepost. The Pentagon was working on a “13.6 ton Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP).” It “is the deepest penetrating ‘bunker buster’ currently in the U.S. arsenal,” swanked the DailyMail Online, “designed to take out fortifications built by Iran to hide their alleged nuclear weapons.”

Correlation is not causation, but the case for hitting Iranian installations has since hardened into dogma.

According to the MailOnline, the work on this big boy began because the Pentagon had “identified” a deficit in the US’s military capabilities: “officials believe [the current arsenal] is not capable of destroying Iran’s fortified underground facilities.”

Essentially, the premise for the MOP project was that American men and matériel should be capable of reaching all corners of the world.

Since the president’s reign of terror abroad began, the Iranian currency had lost 65 percent of its value. Or so boasted Fareed Zakaria, CNN’s inane, wishy-washy correspondent, who represents the media’s voice of moderation in the ramp-up to war with Iran.

Like all fixtures of mainstream media, the Zombie Zakaria has an appetite for destruction. …”

The complete column is “Onward to Iran!”

If you’d like to feature this column in or on your publication (paper pr pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

Support this writer’s work by clicking to “Recommend,” “Tweet” and “Share” the “Paleolibertarian Column” on RT and “Return To Reason” on WND.