A License to License to Kill

Matthew Yglesias has this crazy idea that Clash lyrics explain all. At least about Iraq. This does bring the following to mind:

This is England We can chain you to the rail This is England We can kill you in a jail

Yes, she didn't kill anyone, just rode him around for four to six hours. Alright, you've got me. This, then, from "Something About England":

All the photos in the wallets on the battlefield

Digital, that is. On a CD, no less. Thousands, apparently.

Lately I've been waxing utilitarian about how I think the benefits can't possibly outweigh the costs. A certain Benthamic coldness may seem to attach to this sentiment. But in foreign policy - in fact, regarding most gatherings of more than ten - I have strongly utilitarian instincts. But never mind about making sure there's enough booze. I also have principles. I think that if there are more than two grains of truth to Sy Hersh's latest, every American citizen has a moral duty to vote against Bush. Because it's Rumsfeld's baby. He admits he's responsible. And Bush hasn't fired him. That means that the moral responsibility passes to Bush. And (as the indispensible Yglesias points out) the Bush administration has stood, legally no less, on the ground that it is the job of Eddie Punchballot and Suzy Absentee Voter to right moral wrongs in this area. We can't vote Rummy out. At any rate, someone MUST be responsible for something this wrong. And if no one is, then someone must be responsible for the very fact that no one is responsible.

This toxic spread of what apparently started as a tidy little earner of a black op reminds me of a debate I had with a friend in high school. If James Bond has a license to kill, and if that license in effect allows him to do whatever is necessary in pursuit of success on his missions, then he has a license to license [others] to kill. (Have you ever seen an accomplice Bond girl with blood on her hands arraigned for her crimes?) But a license to license to kill makes a mockery of the fact that there are so few double-0 agents, doesn't it? Maybe it's just a license to license people to behave in an abusively licentious manner, as suggested by pfc. England's sorry example.

Seriously, I always knew there was some downside to that 'license to kill' thing.

Yes, I know. We don't know yet whether a significant number of Iraqi prisoners died from this stuff. But I take it you apprehend the structure of my point. Inserting people who have the right to break the rules into groups of people who most definitely do not produces trouble when the former start loosing the latter. And what is to stop them? Someone MUST be held responsible, on behalf of the Republic. If not Rummy, who?

Comments

[Jacob T. Levy]

Wasn't with you on the utilitarian calculus thread, but am decidedly with you on this one...

if that license in effect allows him to do whatever is necessary in pursuit of success on his missions Hmm. That's the key step, and I never remember seeing it before. "Kill" =/= "take any action whatsoever." Discretion on a certain set of means delegated from the sovereign does not include the discretion to set oneself up as a sovereign...

[jholbo]

I should probably qualify: I'm not actually a utilitarian about international relations - war, that stuff. I just don't think anything makes moral sense except utilitarianism. From which (assuming the manifest falsity of utilitarianism as a major premise) I actually deduce that international relations makes no moral sense. (Lots of other sorts of sense to make, naturally.)

It all comes down to: if it's OK to blow innocent people up (and what are enemy soldiers if not innocent people?) then all is permitted, or else it's some sort of exquisite balancing act against not having lots of other people blown up.

Yes, not quite. Too simple. But I mostly just despair of making strategically deep - as opposed to tactically effective - moral sense of relations between nations. I am unable to hallucinate that they are transcendental subjects with rights, and that just kills all my usual buzzes, from which I am normally able to derive sober, sensible principles and so forth.

[Ray]

The key to the Bush administration (its successes as well as its disasters) has always been the clear line its members draw between those to whom laws apply and those for whom laws are made. Rumsfeld couldn't play a central position in the administration if he thought any other way.

[Chun the Unavoidable]

That is a very perceptive entry.

I would like to invite all John & Belle readers to participate in the Chun the Unavoidable fundraising drive. Every dollar makes a difference.

[Hudson]

Yglesias (born 1981) appears to be unaware of any Clash songs pre-London Calling. He should try "I'm So Bored With the U.S.A.," "Tommy Gun," "English Civil War," et al.

I'm also surprised that no one has mentioned Elvis Costello's "Oliver's Army," which is all about the British use of mercenaries. I'd like to hear a new version ("W's Army") with Churchill's name replaced with Cheney's...

[Tom Grey]

General Karpinski is the one who should be fired.
She was.
In January.
Right person, general responsible.
Right action, relieved of her command.