The return of 1979

In one of my very first posts I wrote was about the concept of Jus ad Bellum or ‘Just War’, which are the instances laid out in Law of Nations by de Vattel (1758) of when a Nation State may go to war.  This I expanded upon in Where Angels fear to tread, because in our modern age we have glossed over and completely excised the differences between Public and Private war and what responses are appropriate to each.  Law of Nations is descriptive law that attempts to encapsulate unwritten law which was differentiate by Bracton on the Laws and Customs of England (circa 1250) as the law leges, as opposed to the jus scriptum or written law.  In fact Bracton describes Law of Nations as jus gentium:

What the jus gentium is.

[017] 33The jus gentium is the law which men of all nations use, which falls short of
[018] natural law since that is common to all animate things born on the earth in the
[019] sea or in the air. From it comes the union of man and woman, entered into by the
[020] mutual consent of both, which is called marriage. Mere physical union is [in the
[021] realm] of fact and cannot properly be called jus since it is corporeal and may be
[022] seen;34 all jura are incorporeal and cannot be seen. From that same law there
[023] also35 comes the procreation and rearing of children. The jus gentium is common
[024] to men alone, as religion observed toward God, the duty of submission to parents
[025] and country, or the right to repel violence and injuria. For it is by virtue of this
[026] law that whatever a man does in defence of his own person he is held to do lawfully;
[027] since nature makes us all in a sense akin to one another it follows that for one to
[028] attack another is forbidden.36

The Law of Nations, then, is universal to thinking beings  capable of having families and of defense of self and Nation, as Nation arrives from the union of thinking man and woman in families.  As the presence of families seeking to protect themselves and working with other families is universal in mankind, so are Nations, and yet the jus gentium does not come from Natural Law but from the application of reason and self-governance to our natural liberties and rights.  Thus law of nations is usually spoken of in the lower case, encompassing the entire unwritten part of mankind’s activities that fall into it, and in the larger case when citing an individual work within it.  As de Vattel had worked with Blackstone prior to the colonies separating from the Great Britain, that work is predominant and guiding not just in the thought of those Founding the Nation and Framing the Constitution, but actually has direct, upper case citation in the latter.

What Law of Nations describes is the outcome of what many civilizations have formed in the way of rules between Nations and while it concentrates on mostly European Nations, the form of interaction described is one that can be seen globally between all Nations and the States running them.  It doesn’t matter what period of history you search (ancient to modern) or where you look geographically (from Southern Africa to Northern Siberia to the Great Plains to the high coastal regions of South America, all of mankind works under law of nations.  de Vattel devotes an entire book (Book III) to warfare, which shows itself as a major part of the activities of mankind, but for the actions seen in Tehran in 1979 and today in Cairo and Benghazi, one must look to the norms and standards of diplomacy between Nations which comes in another book (Book IV).  Ideas presented in both books receive references earlier in the work, but their full fleshing out happens in them as these are major components of Nations.  To get an idea of how this works, here is paragraph 1 from Book IV:

§ l. What peace is.

PEACE is the reverse of war: it is that desirable state in which every one quietly enjoys his rights, or, if controverted, amicably discusses them by force of argument. Hobbes has had the boldness to assert, that war is the natural state of man. But if, by “the natural state of man,” we understand (as reason requires that we should) that state to which he is destined and called by his nature, peace should rather be termed his natural state. For, it is the part of a rational being to terminate his differences by rational methods; whereas, it is the characteristic of the brute creation to decide theirs by force.1 Man, as we have already observed (Prelim. § 10), alone and destitute of succours, would necessarily be a very wretched creature. He stands in need of the intercourse and assistance of his species, in order to enjoy the sweets of life, to develop his faculties, and live in a manner suitable to his nature. Now, it is in peace alone that all these advantages are to be found: it is in peace that men respect, assist, and love each other: nor would they ever depart from that happy state, if they were not hurried on by the impetuosity of their passions, and blinded by the gross deceptions of self-love. What little we have said of the effects will be sufficient to give some idea of its various calamities; and it is an unfortunate circumstance for the human race, that the injustice of unprincipled men should so often render it inevitable.

Peace, then, is amongst the civilized of the Earth and those Nations that wish to practice peace should have intercourse and discourse between them so as to iron out differences.  The brute man, the savage man, wishes no discourse and only force to be the way to settle things, to impose his will upon others without their consent.

You are, perhaps, seeing where this is going, no?  How discussions really weren’t present in1979 or today?  Is what we are seeing and did see the actions of peaceful, rational man in his Nations, or irrational, brutish man that is uncivilized?  If one cannot distinguish between these things, then one cannot properly distinguish between war and peace as peace is not just the absence of war.  It is not with emotional fervor that I call these actions barbarous, brutish, savage and wholly contrary to civilized intercourse amongst Nations for that is exactly what these actions are stripped of all emotional content but with the ability to judge what is civil discourse and what is attack to get one’s way and enforce one’s will.

Now what is the source of these actions?  Not the immediate ‘this anti-Islamic film inflamed individuals’ for it is possible to have heated passion without running riot, without damaging property of another Nation and without inflicting physical and lethal harm to others.  Thus comes the second paragraph of Book IV and the object is still Peace:

§ 2. Obligation of cultivating it.

Nations who are really impressed with sentiments of humanity, — who seriously attend to their duty, and are acquainted with their true and substantial interests, — will never seek to promote their own advantage at the expense and detriment of other nations: however intent they may be on their own happiness, they will ever be careful to combine it with that of others, and with justice and equity. Thus disposed, they will necessarily cultivate peace. If they do not live together in peace, how can they perform those mutual and sacred duties which nature enjoins them? And this state is found to be no less necessary to their happiness than to the discharge of their duties. Thus, the law of nature every way obliges them to seek and cultivate peace. That divine law has no other end in view than the welfare of mankind: to that object all its rules and all its precepts lend: they are alt deducible from this principle, that men should seek their own felicity; and morality is no more than the art of acquiring happiness. As this is true of individuals, it is equally so of nations, as must appear evident to any one who will but take the trouble of reflecting on what we have said of their common and reciprocal duties, in the first chapter of the second book.

Note the last part I put in boldface, and that the individual and nation are part of a scale-free phenomena called ‘peace’.  A moral people, seeking happiness, would criticize those who detract from their religion, perhaps seek to have some understanding of how such a thing could come to be made with it being so hurtful to them.  That is the realm of discourse, where passion can and must still play a part, but it also recognizes the rights of others to have their say and put such matters publicly for the benefit of all to hear and understand.  For such morality to be present it must, actually, manifest in peaceful activities that respect other individuals and nations.  Thus it can be said the activities taken in Tehran in 1979, Cairo and Benghazi in the last two days were not ones that were moral nor ones that respected the rights of other individuals or nations.

Of course as Nations have States to support them, those States fall under the sovereign power of the Nation.  There are responsibilities for those who are vested with such sovereign power and their activities are the ones in which nations interact with each other.  Responsibilities beget obligations and the sovereign has obligations as a manifestation of the power of the nation:

§ 3. The sovereign’s obligation to it.

This obligation of cultivating peace binds the sovereign by a double tie. He owes this attention to his people, on whom war would pour a torrent of evils; and he owes it in the most strict and indispensable manner, since it is solely for the advantage and welfare of the nation that he is intrusted with the government. (Book I. § 39.) He owes the same attention to foreign nations, whose happiness likewise is disturbed by war. The nation’s duty in this respect has been shown in the preceding chapter; and the sovereign, being invested with the public authority, is at the same time charged with all the duties of the society, or body of the nation. (Book I. § 41.)

If government is to have peace it must seek it not just for its people but for those nations it interacts with.  The obligation to peace is put in trust to a Nation’s government, and it is a grant of responsibility, obligation and power (although that will vary from Nation to Nation, the Nation as a sovereign power is said to have the whole power) by those in the Nation to that government.  It may not be a grant by consent, and thusly any government that takes up the sovereign power without consent is doubly responsible for its activities.

In the case of 1979 that was (and remains) the government of Iran, in Cairo it is the government of Egypt, and for Benghazi it is the government of Libya.  The outcomes of such activities are the responsibilities of the governments of each nation and what happens determines the course of that nation: are they to put forward the rule of law and diplomatic discourse or are they to endorse such activities?  And what are the outcomes of these courses of action?  Depending on which course is taken, the destination is set, and that is not by emotions but by the actions of the sovereigns involved.  In Iran and Egypt the governments did not decry such activities, nor did they offer up to have a rule of law applied to the individuals doing such actions.  In Libya, as far as can be discerned, there is a willingness to seek out the miscreants involved in murder of the US Ambassador and bring the proper laws involved into play (whatever they are).

Taking the last case first, as it is the closest we have come to expect from responsible actors as nations, even though the activities are horrific.  Much later, starting in paragraph 80, are how Ambassadors are to be treated, and this is important in the Libyan case:

§ 82. Particular protection due to them.(197)

This safety is particularly due to the minister, from the sovereign to whom he is sent. To admit a minister, to acknowledge him in such character, is engaging to grant him the most particular protection, and that he shall enjoy all possible safety. It is true, indeed, that the sovereign is bound to protect every person within his dominions, whether native or foreigner, and to shelter him from violence: but this attention is in a higher degree due to a foreign minister. An act of violence done to a private person is an ordinary transgression, which, according to circumstances, the prince may pardon: but if done to a public minister, it is a crime of state, an offence against the law of nations; and the power of pardoning, in such case, does not rest with the prince in whose dominions the crime has been committed, but with him who has been offended in the person of his representative. However, if the minister has been insulted by persons who were ignorant of his character, the offence is wholly unconnected with the law of nations, and falls within the class of ordinary transgressions. A company of young rakes, in a town of Switzerland, having, in the night-time, insulted the British minister’s house, without knowing who lived in it, the magistracy sent a message to the minister to know what satisfaction he required. He prudently answered, that it was the magistrates’ concern to provide for the public safety by such means as they thought best; but that, as to his own part, he required nothing, not thinking himself affronted by persons who could have had no design against him, as not knowing his house. Another particular circumstance, in the protection due to foreign ministers, is this: — according to the destructive maxims introduced by a false point of honour, a sovereign is under a necessity of showing indulgence to a person wearing a sword, who instantly revenges an affront done to him by a private individual: but violent proceedings against a public minister can never be allowed or excused, unless where the latter has himself been the aggressor, and, by using violence in the first instance, has reduced his opponent to the necessity of self-defence.

Libya can try such people, but the place they can, nay must, reach trial is in the domain of the sovereign offended.  If you kill the US Ambassador clemency, guilt or innocence cannot be determined in Libya but only by the US.  That is the normal, ordinary course of affairs between nations that have regularized diplomatic intercourse via the exchange of diplomats.  If the US recognizes such a government then that government has the obligation to seek out those who do such crimes and hand them over.  There can be initial trial in Libya, yes, but any sentence is held in abeyance until they can be tried in the US.

No matter how piss-poor the current Libyan government is, they at least are acting by civilized norms and must be worked with and supported in their actions to bring those individuals in for trial.  If they act in bad faith, seek to shield such miscreants or otherwise dissemble their intentions by their activities, then there are other means to go through to ensure compliance with the responsibilities and obligations of the sovereign power in Libya.

That now leaves the similar cases of Tehran 1979 and Cairo, in which the US Embassy grounds were invaded (twice in Tehran, once in Cairo to-date).  This requires a look at the Embassy, which are part of where the Ambassador does his work:

§ 110. The ambassador is exempt from the civil jurisdiction of the country where he resides.

SOME authors will have an ambassador to be subject, in civil cases, to the jurisdiction of the country where he resides. — at least in such cases as have arisen during the time of his embassy; and, in support of their opinion, they allege that this subjection is by no means derogatory to the ambassadorial character: “for,” say they, “however sacred a person may be, his inviolability is not affected by suing him in a civil action.” But it is not on account of the sacredness of their person that ambassadors cannot be sued: it is because they are independent of the jurisdiction of the country to which they are sent; and the substantial reasons on which that independency is grounded may be seen in a preceding part of this work (§ 92). Let us here add, that it is in every respect highly proper, and even necessary, that an ambassador should be exempt from judicial prosecution even in civil causes, in order that he may be free from molestation in the exercise of his functions. For a similar reason, it was not allowed, among the Romans, to summon a priest while he was employed in his sacred offices:1 but at other times he was open to the law. The reason which we have here alleged for the exemption is also assigned in the Roman law: “Ideo enim non datur actio (adversus legatum) ne ab officio suscepto legationis avocetur,2 ne impediatur legatio.”3 But there was an exception as to those transactions which had taken place during the embassy. This was reasonable with regard to those legati, or ministers, of whom the Roman law here speaks, who, being sent only by nations subject to the empire, could not lay claim to the independency enjoyed by a foreign minister. As they were subjects of the state, the legislature was at liberty to establish whatever regulations it thought most proper respecting them: but a sovereign has not the like power of obliging the minister of another sovereign to submit to his jurisdiction: and even if such power was vested in him by convention, or otherwise, the exercise of it would be highly improper: because, under that pretext, the ambassador might be often molested in his ministry, and the state involved in very disagreeable quarrels, for the trifling concerns of some private individuals, who might and ought to have taken better precautions for their own security. It is therefore, only in conformity to the mutual duties which states owe to each other, and in accordance with the grand principles of the law of nations, that an ambassador or public minister is at present, by the universal custom and consent of nations, independent of all jurisdiction in the country where he resides, either in civil or criminal cases. I know there have occurred some instances to the contrary: but a few facts do not establish a custom: on the contrary, those to which I allude, only contribute, by the censure passed on them, to prove the custom such as I have asserted it to be. In the year 1668, the Portuguese resident at the Hague was, by an order of the court of justice, arrested and imprisoned for debt. But an illustrious member of the same court4 very justly thinks that the procedure was unjustifiable, and contrary to the law of nations. In the year 1657, a resident of the elector of Brandenburg was also arrested for debt in England. But he was set at liberty, as having been illegally arrested; and even the creditors and officers of justice who had offered him that insult were punished.5

This is later reinforced in paragraph 113 and elsewhere in Law of Nations.  When the Embassy of another nation is broken into, that is not an act of civil invasions but one of law of nations contravention.  When it is private individuals doing such invasion, it is not civil trespass but a violation of the treaties between the nations involved which gives rise to an escalated tensions between the nations involved.  The government of those people doing the invasion is responsible for a response: is it the course of civil process by the course of law, or is it upholding the law breakers?  When it is the latter case it is giving backing to the action that then moves it from the realm of civil dispute to one of dispute between nations.  In other words it transforms from mere civil trespass, to be sorted out by diplomacy and civil proceedings, to one where an actual invasion is given backing which is a casus belli, a cause for war.

When the sacrosanct nature of agreements between Nations, in exchanging ambassadors or other public ministers in search of peace requires this as it is the civil, rational and natural movement of men to seek peace amongst themselves.  When that is transgressed and backed by the sovereign power of a Nation, peace can no longer be said to be the object of its desire.  There is always an opportunity for diplomacy, of course, but that must be taken by that nation backing the transgressors, not by those being invaded.

Those doing the invasion, not being in uniform, not adhering to the standards of law of nations or the rules of war, are now conducting a military operation outside of both.  This moves us back to Book III, the one on warfare and who gets to make it:

§ 4. It belongs only to the sovereign power.(137)

As nature has given men no right to employ force, unless when it becomes necessary for self defence and the preservation of their rights (Book II. § 49, &c.), the inference is manifest, that, since the establishment of political societies, a right, so dangerous in its exercise, no longer remains with private persons except in those encounters where society cannot protect or defend them. In the bosom of society, the public authority decides all the disputes of the citizens, represses violence, and checks every attempt to do ourselves justice with our own hands. If a private person intends to prosecute his right against the subject of a foreign power, he may apply to the sovereign of his adversary, or to the magistrates invested with the public authority: and if he is denied justice by them, he must have recourse to his own sovereign, who is obliged to protect him. It would be too dangerous to allow every citizen the liberty of doing himself justice against foreigners; as, in that case, there would not be a single member of the state who might not involve it in war. And how could peace be preserved between nations, if it were in the power of every private individual to disturb it? A right of so momentous a nature, — the right of judging whether the nation has real grounds of complaint, whether she is authorized to employ force, and justifiable in taking up arms, whether prudence will admit of such a step, and whether the welfare of the state requires it, — that right, I say, can belong only to the body of the nation, or to the sovereign, her representative. It is doubtless one of those rights, without which there can be no salutary government, and which are therefore called rights of majesty (Book I. § 45).

Thus the sovereign power alone is possessed of authority to make war. But, as the different rights which constitute this power, originally resident in the body of the nation, may be separated or limited according to the will of the nation (Book I. § 31 and 45), it is from the particular constitution of each state, that we are to learn where the power resides, that is authorized to make war in the name of the society at large. The kings of England, whose power is in other respects so limited, have the right of making war and peace.1 Those of Sweden have lost it. The brilliant but ruinous exploits of Charles XII. sufficiently warranted the states of that kingdom to reserve to themselves a right of such importance to their safety.

That step of saying that the citizens have acted in accordance with the sovereign power is one that changes the activities of those citizens and gives them military legitimacy.  They are not legitimate military actors, however, by any standard and any future actions by such non-military actors is one that comes under law of nations as well:

§ 34. Na-

Nations that are always ready to take up arms on any prospect of advantage, are lawless robbers: but those who seem to delight in the ravages of war, who spread it on all sides, without reasons or pretexts, and even without any other motive than their own ferocity, are monsters, unworthy the name of men. They should be considered as enemies to the human race, in the same manner as, in civil society, professed assassins and incendiaries are guilty, not only towards the particular victims of their nefarious deeds, but also towards the state, which therefore proclaims them public enemies. All nations have a right to join in a confederacy for the purpose of punishing and even exterminating those savage nations. Such were several German tribes mentioned by Tacitus — such those barbarians who destroyed the Roman empire: nor was it till long after their conversion to Christianity that this ferocity wore off. Such have been the Turks and other Tartars — Genghis Khan, Timur Bec or Tamerlane, who, like Attila, were scourges employed by the wrath of Heaven, and who made war only for the pleasure of making it. Such are, in polished ages and among the most civilized nations, those supposed heroes, whose supreme delight is a battle, and who make war from inclination purely, and not from love to their country.

That is what such nations are, are they not?  The ones that incite their people to kill not to protect society, not to protect territory or property, not to any sane reason and without justification.  These are so-called ‘rogue nations’, although getting modern man to understand that civilization is at threat from such nations has been difficult, if not impossible to do.  When private individuals take to war with no sovereign grant or oversight, no sovereign accountability, that is unlawful war:

§ 67. It is to be distinguished from informal and unlawful war.

Legitimate and formal warfare must be carefully distinguished from those illegitimate and informal wars, or rather predatory expeditions, undertaken either without lawful authority or without apparent cause, as likewise without the usual formalities, and solely with a view to plunder. Grotius relates several instances of the latter.⁵ Such were the enterprises of the grandes compagnies which had assembled in France during the wars with the English, — armies of banditti, who ranged about Europe, purely for spoil and plunder: such were the cruises of the buccaneers, without commission, and in time of peace; and such in general are the depredations of pirates. To the same class belong almost all the expeditions of the Barbary corsairs: though authorized by a sovereign, they are undertaken without any apparent cause, and from no other motive than the lust of plunder. These two species of war, I say, — the lawful and the illegitimate, — are to be carefully distinguished, as the effects and the rights arising from each are very different.

§ 68. Grounds of this distinction.

In order fully to conceive the grounds of this distinction, it is necessary to recollect the nature and object of lawful war. It is only as the last remedy against obstinate injustice that the law of nature allows of war. Hence arise the rights which it gives, as we shall explain in the sequel: hence, likewise, the rules to be observed in it. Since it is equally possible that either of the parties may have right on his side, — and since, in consequence of the independence of nations, that point is not to be decided by others (§ 40), — the condition of the two enemies is the same, while the war lasts. Thus, when a nation, or a sovereign, has declared war against another sovereign on account of a difference arisen between them, their war is what among nations is called a lawful and formal war; and its effects are, by the voluntary law of nations, the same on both sides, independently of the justice of the cause, as we shall more fully show in the sequel.⁶ Nothing of this kind is the case in an informal and illegitimate war, which is more properly called depredation. Undertaken without any right, without even an apparent cause, it can be productive of no lawful effect, nor give any right to the author of it. A nation attacked by such sort of enemies is not under any obligation to observe towards them the rules prescribed in formal warfare. She may treat them as robbers,^(146a) The inhabitants of Geneva, after defeating the famous attempt to take their city by escalade,⁷ caused all the prisoners whom they took from the Savoyards on that occasion to be hanged up as robbers, who had come to attack them without cause and without a declaration of war. Nor were the Genevese censured for this proceeding, which would have been detested in a formal war.

We call these modern day actors: terrorists.  They are in the same class as pirates as the objective of war when done by private individuals without sovereign grant is not material: power, lust, greed, or just wanting to see the world burn are all one and the same in Private War which is illegitimate in all circumstances.  A Nation condoning and sponsoring such is an enemy of all mankind.

Unfortunately the State of Iran and Egypt are now in that category and are abusing their sovereign power meant to protect their people and using that power to inspire the activity of war to no lawful effect and no good end for mankind.

I have no hatred for the people of Iran or Egypt.

Their governments are monsters as their actions now tell you that.

It is civilized to wish that the people of these Nations had governments worthy of them to seek peace for them amongst their fellow nations of the Earth.  Such is not the case and the remedy has already been stated, if one can but read and reason.

Brought to you by A Citizen of the Republic

Lack of doctrine, secrecy and the "kill list"

For a rarity the NY Times actually has a piece that will stimulate some discussion and it involves the “kill list” of President Obama.  This is the list of overseas terrorists that deserve to get attacked by our UCAVs (or drones in less precise terminology) and to get sudden death out of the skies.  This list was criticized by the Left during the term of President Bush (43) and then dropped off of the grievance list for the Left with the election of Obama.  Thus it is indicative of being a purely political grievance based who is in office and what their party affiliation is.

The way that President Obama makes this “kill list” up is that he is presented with baseball card sized pictures of individuals and their terror resume on the back and he gives a yea or nay on each one.  This is done in secret, so the actual methodology may vary, but that is the gist of it.  There is discussion about how much power a President has as Executive and what Constitutional protections one gets as a citizen working with terrorists while overseas.  Will Cain, talking on Real News from The Blaze (on GBTV) worried about the powers of a President in a war on terror that has no definitive end point to it (aka ‘perpetual war’ is the idea).

What has been missed is not is this doctrine effective (or short term effective but long term counter-productive as Buck Sexton puts it), which is to say is the ‘targeted killing’ doing ‘the job’, but is that a proper doctrine or just a tactic in this war?  Again as the Left loves to point out ‘terrorism is just a tactic and you can’t wage war on a tactic’.  That is, however, incorrect as terrorism is a methodology in search of founding principle and it is different than war fought with some terror techniques used by accountable actors: terrorists who fight under no flag are not accountable.  Will Cain has problems with al Qaeda in Yemen morphing into some anti-regime force that even has ideas of putting together some sort of government, and is it right to go after them in this process?

Thus we have a doctrine that may be a tactic, a tactic which is a methodology and soldiers who aren’t.

This is what you get after a century of twisting words and concepts around to fit political expediency: duckspeak.

From this you get the idea that both the Left and the Right have not one bit of a clue as to what they are talking about.

I cannot set matters straight on a large scale but can discuss what the actual principles are behind all of this (not the political twisting which is pure Progressivism/Liberalism/Socialism/Communism at work, and plain to see) but these matters of soldiers, war, methodology and tactics.  Those are dead simple to figure out, if you bother to study warfare.  What I will lay out is just practice of what I’ve written about before and following the path of what Nations are and what war is, and how it is waged, one can also discern powers granted to Nations via their citizens to conduct Public War both against Public and Private enemies of the Nation.

Lets start with the enemies since they are the simplest part to tease out.  Public Enemies to a Nation are other Nations and those working for them with the assent of that Nation.  They aren’t gangsters roaming around with Tommyguns, by and large, although if they are funded by another Nation to do so, then they are Public Enemies.  Criminals are an enemy to the private peace by disrespecting internal law and may be a threat to the public writ small, not the Nation writ large, and are thusly civil criminals.  A Public Enemy is a Nation that is waging war against our Nation and a Private Enemy is a citizen or group of citizens who act on their own accord against one Nation which is a threat to all Nations by trying to overturn the order of Nations.  Public Enemies you can make a peace treaty with and expect to have that respected.  Private Enemies you can deprive of property and their lives, no peace can be made with them as they respect no international law amongst Nations nor do they abide by the most primal of civilized behavior to set aside our ability to make Private War to have society and a Nation.

Pirates, terrorists, brigands and those who just seize power and consider themselves accountable to no one and to be a law unto themselves, those are Private Enemies and they make Private War.  What they cause is terror, and they are terrorists, and that is a part of what they are, not just what they do: it isn’t a tactic but is a characteristic trait of waging Private War that is unaccountable.  These ones are not soldiers as soldiers are part of an accountable military that has a structure, that has published codes and laws they adhere to and can be punished under, they wear uniforms, they do not wantonly attack civilians and other non-combatants and they adhere to standards set by a government of some sort.

The preceding paragraph answers the question of those who espouse wanting to overthrow a Nation: they can say as they wish, but do they actually put forth the accountability system by uniform, published codes and laws, people who publicly run them to be held accountable… that sort of thing makes them soldiers to a government that is trying to gain power by force of arms in a civil war.  They must do all of those things to get that status.  Even further their nascent government must be recognized as legitimate somewhere not just inside their country but by another Nation: they are seen as a legitimate brother Nation by some existing and established Nation.  Without these things you can talk about overthrowing regimes as much as you like, but you aren’t a soldier, just one causing terror on their own with no accountability, no cause and nothing you will adhere to so as to justify your activities.

As a recent example, the rebels in Libya at least managed to hint at putting some sort of governing board together along with some written rules, and even tried to form up into semi-discernable ranks.  They actually failed miserably at doing any of these things, but it was enough to garner support from other Nations (mostly in Europe) who were willing to back their cause (which they couldn’t figure out beyond ‘kill Gaddaffy’).  In a place like Syria, say, the population that has been going through an uprising really hasn’t gotten its act together, mostly because they have been killed by the regime, threatened by both al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and generally are coming to realize that this major struggle for power between these terror organizations is just getting a lot of people killed.  If you want to go after Asad for his murderous directions, then do not miss the other actors also doing a bit of murdering of civilians on their own in the coercive direction.  As one local in Homs said to the leaving Blue Helmets: while you are here no one is fighting.  Getting Asad is not really an end goal if you want to stop the fighting, as the terror organizations will then be left to do as they will in the power vacuum.  With no one to support there, you will get chaos and a possibly fracturing Nation State along ethnic and religious lines (which could become a reality if the Kurds decide to secede and join their cousins in Iraq and petition for that).  If you want to save the civil population in that scenario, then you are chasing a fairy tale unless you are looking at a major declaration of war against Syria for… no real reason at all as it is only a murderous regime without much in the way of natural resources beyond those phosphate mines that provide it with the basis for chem/bio/nuclear devices.

OK, maybe that is a good reason.  But someone at the National level must make it, tell why it is important and then be willing to send a few tens of thousands of troops in.  Russia already has a few thousand boots on the ground and they are doing doodly there.  Guess they go into the ‘well armed non-combatant category’: cowards with guns.  Lots of threats, no action.  Loverly.

Now to get back on course, it would seem, on its face, that President Obama is acting in a kinda-sorta terrorist way with those “kill list” things he plays solitaire with.  Should Deuce of Clubs Ahmed ‘The Weasel’ Mohammed be put on it?  *flip* Oooooo… Ace of Spades ‘Killer’ Karzawi shows up, so ‘The Weasel’ gets saved by bigger fish!  Perhaps it is done in a game of poker with each chip representing a UCAV and the ten spots being Hellfires.  I’m sure they have some logical way to do this involving a high degree of chance and waffling.  Be that as it may, the President is the head of a Nation and, thusly, accountable internally and externally to other Nations for his actions.  The people he is going after are terrorists making Private War (not that Public sort) and fall within the Executive power to defend the Nation (all enemies foreign an domestic).  Should American Citizens helping terrorists be put on cards to play with?  Maybe the next round will be Pinochle….

What the card game represents is not doctrine, but methodology and piss poor methodology at that.  A doctrine is a stated and set way of doing things to reach an objective, and drone strikes are just a means to that end, not an end in and of itself.  Apparently we have had a couple of Presidents treating it as an end in itself that churns out dead terrorists.  That isn’t good because you have no idea what it takes to make the card list.  And because no doctrine has been set by the President, the decision falls into his lap.  He shouldn’t have to figure it out on a case by case basis, just have the one or two iffy decisions cross his desk.  In other words: doctrine is the means to delegate authority and set up the goals and objectives and the objective qualifications for making the “kill list”.  Without a set criteria you are just playing cards.

This card playing isn’t disturbing because it is done in secret, per se, but that it has to be done at all by the President.  If there was a set doctrine with criteria that gets you on the list, then that would be PUBLIC and you wouldn’t need the secret card game.  Period.

That is what a President is supposed to do.

Are there objective things that can be cited that can get you on the “kill list”?

There sure are!

The State Dept. has a list of known terrorists.  Let them know they are all on the list and can be vaporized without notice any time, any where, by anyone the United States authorizes to do so.  That doesn’t matter if you are eating humus at your local falafel shop, spelunking in outer Uzbekistan, doing the disco in on vacay in Juarez.  You are a Private Enemy of the United States, you have caused us harm to get on that list and if we can get you we will.  Even better as you have caused monetary harm, we will seize your property as it is forfeit to the damages you have caused and since you aren’t going to pay up, your stuff will be taken to help defray the cost of damages you have inflicted upon the Nation.  That is called ‘taking’ and Congress can authorize that to civilians to do for it, or the President can have soldiers seize it from those we are at Private War with.

Who are those individuals?

They are on the Terror Watch List.

You make the list, your stuff can start vanishing around you.  Hope you didn’t like that BMW too much… its been airlifted to a US run chop-shop in LA.  Or Bengal, or wherever we want to run it.  Or it was sold at auction to the highest bidder in Moscow.  Good luck getting it back from the Red Mafia, you know?  Or do you want to be in debt to them?  Sucks being a terrorist, huh?  You could always turn yourself in, you know?

That last part is important as it helps to define just what other sort of people get to make that list.  Anyone who makes Private War on the United States, citizen or non-citizen.  You are no longer abiding by the Law of Nations, you are no longer considering yourself to be under any law, you are waging war on your lonesome and you only get Constitutional protection when you turn yourself in to the proper authorities.

There, that is two ways to do things and get the President less involved and the people who are much (much, much, much) better at making decisions into the loop.  These are called ‘subordinates’.  You delegate duty to them.  You give them well defined and set orders and they snap to attention and carry them out… sort of like what Valerie Jarrett expects of the Obamas.

To make it perfectly clear: it doesn’t matter where you come from, the moment you decide to wage war on your lonesome against the Nation, you have declared yourself to be its enemy.  Want your name cleared?  Turn yourself in.  Mind you where you end up next is under a court martial, not a civil trial, so the military can determine if you are a legal or illegal combatant or a civilian (that is the grand Choice #3 that they get in case you aren’t actually a bomb throwing nut, and by deciding that your chance of a civil trial is essentially nil).  Too bad that President Obama was so hot on closing Gitmo that he forgot (or never learned) that military law is its own beast and quite something different from civil law.  Sucks when you are a Progressive/Socialist/New Party/Democrat who can’t be bothered to learn the Constitution or history, isn’t it?

What is even better about such things defining a “kill list”?  You can put those who give material aid to terrorists on it, as well.  Or at least their material aid and point out that if good old Ahmed ‘The Weasel’ is having roast goat and rice over at your house, you can be summarily vaporized with him.  Oh, if he is going for a spin in Rolls Royce, it could also disappear into some lovely auction house in Singapore, too.  Sucks that.  Maybe you can authorize someone to get that sweet Beemer in Moscow for you, huh?

Such a list is self-delimiting: it has a limiting principle to it and requires next to no Presidential overhead beyond thinking up the criteria for the “kill list”.  Even that can be delegated to someone who knows what the hell they are doing… I would NOT suggest Eric Holder, as he is clueless and playing far too Fast & Loose with Fast & Furious.  Get someone who actually knows the Constitution and a bit of military history, who isn’t politicized to hell and gone, you know like the JCS, to do that thinking up for you.  Sign off on it.  Then you get an extra round of golf in every few weeks!  What a sweet deal!  You would get Transparency and the appearance of semi-competence or at least the ability to sign your name on a couple of things here and there and far less overhead to boot.  Boy, wouldn’t it be grand to have a semi-competent President?  I’m not holding my breath for one, btw.

Setting doctrine is public.

The decisions get delegated to competent subordinates.

They do their duty knowing they have a good and objective “kill list” and are allowed to go after targets of opportunity.

The troops can do a bit of taking, get it signed off and get a few sweet cars to drive around and maybe a villa or two to sell off.  Along with those crates of AKs and RPG rounds.  The $300 Nikes are just gravy.

See, all those dusty tomes and tracts I’ve gone on about, de Vattel, Grotius, Pufendorf, those guys we can’t bother to read any more, they actually told you what to do, why to do it, when to do it and how to do it, and left up methodology to operational concerns as they would vary over time.  What you do to get those put against you, that is invariant as it is all about human nature.  That hasn’t changed any from the beginning of time.  Remembering that it hasn’t… that’s the hard part.

The state of al Qaeda

Is al Qaeda about to go extinct?

The problem to answering this is multi-fold, in that we don’t have enough real information about al Qaeda to make that pronouncement.  Until recently, that is.

In yet another piece of commentary at Hot Air that I recycle into a post, I’ll use this morning’s bit to give an outlay to the problems that al Qaeda is having.  I’ve talked about this before elsewhere, but here it starts to show up from the OBL raid.  As always with such commentary, it is posted ‘as-is’ with all spelling, grammatical and other errors for the amusement of any reader:

The general feel-good program that Discovery Channel had about the captured material on the OBL raid was saying something other than what it wanted to say. The key graph they showed was how much OBL’s records show the pay breakout within the organization. Something a bit over 60% is dedicated to… payroll.

Yup, paying the people running al Qaeda.

A mere 10% is spent on terror operations, which includes supplies, travel, and doing such lovely things as accounting for car repairs of operatives. And the car repairs are done by make of vehicle, as well.

Now I do have some problems with releasing just how much data and how much detail it has as a National Security problem. With that said the outside analyst can see exactly why al Qaeda is failing.

aQ needs grand terror missions to do better recruitment. Apparently the stuff the West does that ‘infuriates’ the ‘Arab Street’ is more PR than actual recruitment material. OBL understood that getting a good PR battle was important, but sees declining recruiting numbers after aQ can’t pull off a spectacular raid.

So with money being eaten up by personnel, the overhead of the cell system plus the non-operational cells (those made to do INTEL, surveillance and clean-up post mission) what does aQ do to try and get better operational capability? Nothing. Stay the course and add more overhead to the organization while seeing personnel costs skyrocket and the major recruitment tool of terrorism decline.

Here is where a Western education in actual economics would have provided the answer on changing that around inside aQ. It is a very simple one for an all volunteer organization that is accumulating excess staff while putting its main mission into jeopardy: enforce a pay cut and cut staff.

Now cutting staff will have to be permanent, as in fatal, since you don’t want INTEL walking out the door, so it isn’t really an option.

After that, is a pay cut really so hard to do in a terrorist organization? And since you are getting so much free media from the West, why are you trying to put more into that? All the talk and lack of action at a large scale is showing you up to not just be liars but incompetent liars, at that. Very bad for PR to boast of what you will do and then be unable to do it. Might need some staff cutting there, you know?

Basically by getting in Marxist trained help from Leftist organizations, aQ is no longer the nimble, tactical heavy with grand strategic goal organization it started out to be. It is now a hide-bound, bureaucratic organization, wanting to track every expenditure (no matter how small) with high overhead and that eats up budget for terror ops… and some of that moves into medical expenses which, yes, aQ also pays for.

Yes it is a vicious terror organization, but it is a very organized organization to such a degree that it is losing its goal to become so well organized. It worked better as a loose, cross-supporting terror organization than a centralized, top-down organization. Basically it is mimicking its enemy, operationally, and finding that Western leftist economics and organizational systems are top heavy, overly bureaucratic, inefficient, put a great gloss on a decaying message, and otherwise trade sit-down PR for stand up operations.

If aQ doesn’t watch out it will factionate and that will spread into the rest of the radicalized Arab world and that will be the cause of a major internal conflict unlike any other we have seen because they are vying for the same population. And as OBL said, the people will know the difference between a strong horse and a weak horse…

Getting rid of such an overly organized organization is a very hard thing to do. Luckily, it starts to implode along the way and all that is required to eliminate it is continued pressure. The belief that organization is all that you need is a fatal flaw for aQ. And for OWS as well. And the Left as a whole. The more you attempt to organize, to control via power, the less and less capable you become until your system cracks apart. When power to control is the only ends, then the problems start to show up with those wanting to control as they ask for ever more, and can provide less and less in that doing.

ajacksonian on May 2, 2012 at 7:06 AM

Basically to get a jihadi of any sort to do a mission you have to: recruit them, train them, familiarize them with their operation, feed them or hand them a stipend, check up on them, and on and on and on.

When you have a small, compact and highly committed organization, this is easy to do.  Once you get past a thousand or so individuals on a global scale, you need infrastructure.  Utilizing sharia based economics and concepts, adulterated by their Western Marxist allies, al Qaeda may have some great technical expertise in bomb making, INTEL, etc. but their whole basis for economics is backwards.

Beyond that, and it is a multi-faceted affair, coming from a background of having grown up in a socialist leaning household, studying socialism and its various attempts at power, actually bothering to study warfare from our deep history all the way through the present (meaning I go beyond just the 20th or even mid-19th century forms of it), and then doing a review of what terrorism is and what sort of war it inculcates, I can look at this phenomena in a number of ways.  One of the defining characteristics of this small group to power organizations is that at some point they will face a factionation event.  Mostly this is over ideology, although in places like the USSR and China it was (and is in many ways) about pure power.  Having started out with a franchise style system, al Qaeda sought to centralize it and bring it under control.  That meant that INTEL could be easily gathered on aQ from a few key points instead of trying to do that at the franchise level.  For more control and power over this network, however, came centralized overhead and bureaucracy.

It may seem strange to talk about bureaucracy in a terror organization, but without it the organization can deviate from its original ideology and become just another criminal organization.  FARC, as an example, started out as a Marxist/Communist terror group in Colombia and is one of the oldest terror organizations around.  In the 1980’s it started picking up the Enforcer role for some of the drug cartels to ensure supply via terrorism applied to local communities, and when the cartels started to crumble FARC picked up on narco-terrorism as its main methodology.  Unfortunately that is no longer even close to being in the Marxist/Communist realm and FARC graduated from ideologically based terrorism to become a narco-terrorist organization which was also capitalist in its means.  FARC stopped being about anything, save for money and power.  The secretive Shining Path, on the other hand, continues its smoldering and pretty useless terror campaign by remaining ideologically pure.  The various Red organizations of the 1970’s that dabbled in terror started out from a few, central terror organizations, but then had internal ideological disputes so that Red factions and Red groups and militant interior designers all started to show up on the terror landscape.  Hezbollah remains largely an arm of the Iranian regime, but now has large external support bases so that it can work in ways that can often be at cross-purposes to Iran.  The PLO factionated when it sought to become semi-legitimate and some of its virulent off-shoots went out on their own and some allied with HAMAS, the military wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.  The Muslim Brotherhood solves this, to a degree, by spinning off new terror organization (Tunisia, Algeria, HAMAS, al Qaeda) but finds that some of these don’t really work to the overall benefit of the MB.  They give up control and get negative feedback.

To stem this bureaucracy is essential in that it tries to establish a system of accountability within an organization.  Yet that organization has overhead that is non-productive and only serves to keep actors inside the organization from being counter-productive.  This is the problem with any centralized system because it removes responsibility from lower levels and concentrates it distantly in a larger mechanism which isn’t all too efficient.  For examples of that just look at any program that has ‘socialized’ as part of its nomenclature and you will see a top-heavy bureaucracy unable to be flexible and only having a few negative things it can do to keep the worst stuff down. 

As I went over in looking at Creating an Army, al Qaeda has a problem in that it operates as it trains when not in combat.  Although having a number of low-level operational capabilities that are on-going, al Qaeda can’t really expect to see much of a return on suicide bombers: you can’t get a veteran corps of suicide bombers to make them more effective.  Because it now practices a high form of bureaucracy much of the time, its terror functions must reflect this as is seen in the minutia that is tracked at the highest levels.  If this is how you recruit, train, and then put operatives into place for long term missions, you have the problem of those operatives knowing no other way of doing things.  Getting skilled field operatives is essential and al Qaeda started out with a small cadre of that which is now down to Zawahiri, the Egyptian Doctor.  It must be noted that Zawahiri does not have skills in economics, he never was much of a ‘boots on the ground’ terrorist and is more a spiritual head than administrative head of aQ.  At this point the winning times in Afghanistan that he was not a part of are only a distant memory for the organization as the rest of the original cadre have been killed out.  There is no historical memory of those good times left in al Qaeda.

Functionally al Qaeda draws most of its operatives from the Arab world (although it has connections to many organizations globally) which means that the bulk of the sociology within al Qaeda is Arab.  In the Arabic world the top-down mentality has been present from its inception in the ancient hydraulic empires which inculcates a ‘yes-man’ mentality and one that seeks to shift blame from oneself to others.  As described in the program on the Discovery Channel, OBL demanded the absolute truth from his operatives because he wanted a clear idea of just what was going on out there.  That went against the grain of Arab culture and you do have to wonder just how much self-censorship and blame shifting was going on to distort OBL’s views of his own organization.  The US military relies more on its Non-Commissioned Officers to keep things running than its generals, as it is a distributed responsibility system that puts lower level responsibility at the lower levels.  al Qaeda did and continues to do just the opposite.

This sort of mentality and outlook has visible effects in how things work when such a terror organization hits a rough opponent.  There are tell-tale signs of an inefficient organization that is sacrificing boots on the ground for overhead.  I will return to my first internal link and pull this out from my 2006 article:

4) The entire insurgency is turning into a high-cost, low personnel affair. When you have lots of extra weapons, often 2:1 or 3:1 per individuals captured, and so much damn ammo, what you are seeing is pre-preparation in *hopes* of doing something to get lots more recruits. If any of these groups could get a major foothold in Iraq to do *that* the Nation *would* descend into chaos. And this is at a time when the new Iraqi Army has *proven* itself capable of independent operations and is capable of handling tricky situations on their own. That said that is only their battle-tested groups. Green troops probably are getting rotated through Baghdad and a couple of other hot spots and then rotated *out* to the provinces they control for more normal patrol duties. But with their skill, they are now catching the individuals that are acting like insurgents. After first-hand experience they are seeing things that untrained troops would overlook.

What do you spend your money on when personnel are expensive for operations?  Equipment.

What happens when you don’t have enough experienced personnel to watch over the equipment?  It is found.

Why does this happen?  People are the most expensive part of any organization, right up until you get to a nuclear aircraft carrier with all of its aircraft and equipment, and even then the long life utilization of such a vessel means that at some point the people that have been through it will represent a larger capital investment than the vessel itself.

If you are a terror organization having problems recruiting and training personnel and yet still have a budget line for terror expenditures, what do you buy?  Equipment.

To track all that equipment what do you need?  Bureaucrats.

Sociologically this then has a power described in Jerry Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representative who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.

Do note that this is for any organization of any sort that has a bureaucracy.  When your organization has no set org chart or it is set just as boxes and not as absolute numbers of personnel, the bureaucracy will expand.  An unbounded bureaucracy is the kiss of death to any organization as it will lose the goal of that organization and soon be run for the bureaucrats, alone.

The state of al Qaeda is that of a loosely run terror organization that tried to pull in and centralize its operations for some efficiencies but was unable to bounds on that overhead.  It isn’t that it will become a nice, bureaucratic organization: it won’t.  It is on the path towards increasing ineffectiveness, however, because of its bureaucracy.  The twin sociologies involved or Arabic culture and the culture of bureaucracy has been the downfall of every large scale organization in the Middle East.  That is because of the way that Arabs view their own people, their own culture and the requirement to keep both under control from any organization that starts up, large or small.

The final part of this is from the revolutionary side of things and is the axiom of such conflicts and their outcomes:

As they come to power, so shall they rule.

That one was much discussed in classes on socialist organizations, and it is also true for other conflicts from civil wars to revolutionary overthrows to such things as simple elections.  There is a deep and virulent strain of Islam that has never been tempered by a conflict that has so sickened its participants that they swear away from marrying the Mosque and State together.  That has helped such organizations to at least retain some cohesive internal system, but that system cannot address the myriads of bureaucrats necessary to run it.  If al Qaeda has had the bureaucratic disease spread to them, then they had to have it from somewhere else.  Many of the examples of Western Communist terror organizations points to a good set of roots in that culture.  Another set is put in place by the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliation with the NSDAP of Germany in the 1930’s which brought its own brand of efficient bureaucracy with it to emulate.  That system can be one of heartless and inhuman efficiency, to say the least.  And when the bureaucracy begins to re-order an organization to fit its desires and it is heartless, then the original causes the organization held begin to wane as the bureaucracy takes over to its own ends.  For now those ends still include the terrorist vision of OBL and the other founders of the organization, but at some point the last link to that past will be lost in the form of Zawahiri, and then the organization will be run by its bureaucrats.  So long as external operational pressure is kept up, al Qaeda is in a death spiral of bureaucracy: we won’t destroy it, as such, so much as it will run out of funds to keep the bureaucrats paid.

Only then will there be no al Qaeda.

You can’t kill them all out, but you can make them run out of funds because they spend them on the wrong objective.