Richard Jernigan -> RE: Building guitars - art or science??? (Sep. 26 2014 0:40:58)
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ORIGINAL: Ruphus quote:
ORIGINAL: Richard Jernigan From what I have seen, most of our mistakes have been bungling, not criminal conspiracy. It would be interesting to learn about this interpretation in view of examples like the overtrhowing of Mossadegh in Iran or of the Contra instigation against the Sandinista in Nicaragua, just to name two cases. How can those have been unsuspecting mistakings? Thank you in advance, Richard. Ruphus A poor choice of words on my part. I have little or no knowledge of international law, but I suspect both of your examples were illegal. However I have had a few conversations with my daughter on criminal law. For example, the crime of murder depends, in some jurisdictions at least, on the state of mind of the perpetrator. Absent a certain degree of malice, the crime of killing someone is manslaughter, even if done intentionally. It was a surprise to me to learn this. Texas notoriously imposes the death penalty. I am not in favor of it, because an error in the judicial process leads to irremediable harm of the worst kind. But I was surprised at the following conversation: Me: "So if I get really p1ssed off at some guy, get drunk and announce to the guys at the bar that I'm going to kill him, lie in the bushes across the road with my hunting rifle and shoot him when he comes out to get into his car to go to work, I don't get the death penalty?" My Daughter, a prosecutor at the time: "Premeditation and lying in wait are going to look bad for you, but you wouldn't get the death penalty. If he was a cop, or if you killed his kid on purpose, yes, you would get the death penalty." Me:"But if I missed the guy and hit the kid by accident?" My Daughter: "You would be facing an angry jury, and it would be nearly impossible to prove, but theoretically, if it was an accident, you would skate--I mean on the death penalty. You would definitely do some hard time, maybe life." When the Reagan administration decided to fund the Contras, they thought they were doing the right thing, trying to free the Nicaraguans from an evil communist regime. I know, I know, but bear in mind that Ollie North thought he had covered his financial tracks by using American Express Traveler's Cheques to fund the contras, and nobody checked up on him. It was beyond the comprehension of the Reagan administration that the Nicaraguans might actually want the Sandinistas in power. (Later they got tired of the Sandinistas, later still they got tired of the alternative and voted the Sandinistas back in, all with no help from the USA.) So in criminal law, the mental state of the Reagan administration, misguided as it may have been, would have been an extenuating circumstance, probably reducing the seriousness of the charge, almost certainly reducing the sentence if convicted. Furthermore, the Iran-Contra affair was a clear violation of a law passed by Congress expressly to prevent such an adventure. But this violates the over-arching policy of containing communism. The turf battles between Congress and the President over foreignd policy have been going on ever since the Constitution was ratified. The President has kept the upper hand, pretty much. I have to admit, though that the Iran-Contra episode was a criminal offense within the USA, violating a law passed by Congress, and I would be very surprised if it weren't a violation of international law. As hard as it might be for you to believe, I think Iran-Contra was not motivated by malicious intent--by the lights of the people who did it. I believe they thought they were helping the Nicagaguan people escape the oppressive and godless rule of communism. Personally, having participated in an earlier U.S. adventure in Latin America, and having come away from it feeling severely disillusioned, I thought the Reagan administration were a bunch of idiots to try to pull off Iran-Contra, and I thought Vice President George H. W. Bush was probably lying when he said he was "out of the loop", despite the fact that he was a friend of my father, and there had never been a whisper of scandal about him in Texas. After all, he was head of the CIA before he was Vice President. But maybe Bush's definition of being "in the loop" was as narrow as Clinton's definition of "having sex with that woman--Ms. Lewinsky." As far as any of our perceived adversaries bringing up the subject of Iran-Contra, the superpower status of the U.S. would have easily backed up a response of "You talking to me, buddy?" So yes, I think the U.S. committed criminal offenses. It probably continues to do so. Read "Good Hunting", the autobiography of Jack Devine, the former Associate Deputy Director for Operations of the CIA. He was in charge of all covert operations. He shows no compunction whatever about violating another country's sovereignty. He at least is sensible enough to point out that "covert" operations will inevitably come to light eventually, so they ought to be in the national interest, and politically supportable when they become public knowledge. You may be certain that the Soviets, their proxies the East Germans and the Bulgarians, as well as the Chinese on their own hook got up to their own skulduggeries during that period. I have found that for most people the moral implications of this depend largely on a their national loyalty. I am pretty loyal to my country. To the politicians? Not so much. An imaginative, but widely held view of the formulation of U.S. foreign policy: A less imaginative, and less widely held view of the formulation of U.S. foreign policy: (No disrespect is meant to the foreign policy establishment. My view is that we as a race are incapable of avoiding occasional disasters, no matter how hard and how intelligently we may plan to avoid them.) RNJ
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