Qaddafi Killed

[KrazyHorse]

No, I act like an adult talking to a child, you ****ing twit. When people with adult arguments disagree with me I argue with them like adults.

EDIT: 2nd xpost

[giblets]

Sorry, I must have missed the part where society decided that it was okay to slaughter thousands for blatant personal gain.

Great, now just prove that Qaddafi did that in a trial. I don't see why there should be a class of people who don't have a right to a trial.

[Hauldren Collider]

You have no idea what the words you're using even mean.

That's lovely. Are you going to address my point, which is that we've shown leaders that even if they back down peacefully, like Mubarak, they run a great chance of death, and they should fight to the last man?

[KrazyHorse]

That's not what society decided. Society implicitly decides, by practicing kangaroo courts for "crimes against humanity", that we can invent crimes punishable by death for leaders who have lost favor in a dramatic way. So far we have never seen it applied to people who are not obviously atrocious men, but that is not a guarantor of future responsible use of institutions like the ICC. As an example, all those people who wanted to stick Bush up in the ICC for "war crimes".

I don't recognize anything holy about the ICC, you twit That was the original point I made: this act was as legitimate in my eyes as anything the ICC has done, or as any of the kangaroo courts convened after revolutions or wars.

They're simply less convenient means of doing the right thing, i.e. killing mass murderers.

[Hauldren Collider]

Regardless, I think we should have offered Gaddafi a way out, maybe exile him in a place like Sudan or something, where he wouldn't get killed. The reason is not for his sake, it's for the sake of Syrians and Yemenis.

[Kuciwalker]

That's lovely. Are you going to address my point, which is that we've shown leaders that even if they back down peacefully, like Mubarak, they run a great chance of death, and they should fight to the last man?

Your post was Not Even Wrong.

[KrazyHorse]

Great, now just prove that Qaddafi did that in a trial. I don't see why there should be a class of people who don't have a right to a trial.

You two both have the morality of children.

[giblets]

Oh, if only I had the grown up morals where you kill someone without a trial because you're darn sure they deserve it.

[Hauldren Collider]

Oh, if only I had the grown up morals where you kill someone without a trial because you're darn sure they deserve it.

Clearly your momma made some mistakes when you was growin' up. Bet she never even taught you manners!

[Kuciwalker]

The idolization of trials is actually kind of weird. Trials aren't some sacrament in which divine will reveals the truth.

[Hauldren Collider]

If you have a better system, propose an amendment to the constitution. Trials are the traditional means of determining guilt, and you obviously can't hold a trial for someone like a dictator and expect it to be reasonable.

No one believes they are perfect. Obviously, many people get very angry at trial outcomes. OJ. Casey Anthony. But trials are how civilized, liberal societies issue justice.

[KrazyHorse]

Anybody who thinks it's meaningful to talk about the "rights" of a dictator whose regime has just been toppled is a ****ing idiot.

"Rights" exist in the context of a civil ****ing society. Rights do not exist for somebody who wrote all the rules for 40 years and then fell from power.

We safeguard rights like the right to a fair trial because we have a society which functions according to the rule of law, we see the need to protect individuals from unchecked state power and we've balanced this against social interests. The Libyans have no rule of law, this is in no way, shape or form an act which will lead to unchecked state power, and the social interest lies in having ghadaffi very dead very ****ing quickly.

International courts are meaningless because their jurisdiction applies only in the short aftermath of revolutions or wars in which sovereign power is absent, or where the sovereign power sees fit to allow them to operate; in no sense do they constrain the will of sovereigns. Without the power to constrain the will of the sovereign in a civil society they are merely shallow imitations of the forms of civil authority created to assuage childish sensibilities like those of gribby.

[Kuciwalker]

If you have a better system, propose an amendment to the constitution. Trials are the traditional means of determining guilt, and you obviously can't hold a trial for someone like a dictator and expect it to be reasonable.

None of that suggests that trials should be an inalienable right in every possible context.

The right to a trial, and its general structure make plenty of sense in a normal civil society. They don't always elsewhere.

[regexcellent]

Killing Gaddafi is a mistake which has been made many times in the past. You should never kill leaders; only exile them. The reason people like Gaddafi fight tooth and nail to hold onto power and are willing to spill the blood of thousands of people over their own thrones is because their lives are on the line the whole time. Mubarak even willingly stepped down eventually and he's probably going to go Nicholas II style anyway. He wasn't even that bad a guy, by the region's standards; certainly he's better than the Muslim Brotherhood could hope to be. What is Assad in Syria going to do now that he basically knows for certain he's screwed six ways from Sunday if at any point he loses power, for any reason?

KrazyHorse, from reading your posts for the past two years or so, I know you understand incentives. The idea of justice here is way less important than not creating incentives for people to slaughter thousands of civilians.

edit: crap this has been mentioned

[Kuciwalker]

Wow, could you possibly be more idiotically patronizing?