Random_Taffer on 6/7/2006 at 19:45

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Several years ago some dumbass was lighting fireworks out of the back of his van on the football field of my home town for the 4th. The whole town watched as one of his rockets whipped back around and flew into the van amidst his stockpile.
The next few seconds was a melange of swearing, laughing, and flying bodies interrupted by an early grand finally. No one was seriously injured, (the guy had minor burns) but it made for an unforgettable holiday!

:thumb:

Rogue Keeper on 7/7/2006 at 12:00

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A rogue state is a state which grew tired of being an obedient sheep and started to behave erratically.

demagogue on 7/7/2006 at 16:39

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For the record here, I said something much more modest than I think is being interpreted. One thing, I was talking about legal categories in my previous post ... not really the politics behind them, which may be the lawyer coming out of me, but it's useful to distinguish the two kinds of statements; the first being a fact (is there some document that says X) another an opinion (is it good).

With the Japan security situation, all I'm saying is there is a treaty arrangement between the US and Japan giving the US a legal basis in securing J's national defense, including under UN law. That's not an opinion, it's a document. It's true that the arrangement is generating a lot of political friction in Japan with US soldiers raping, pillaging, and plundering, and the Japanese want to change their constitution to build an offensive armed forces, etc, but the law hasn't changed yet. But anyway, I wasn't saying anything about the politics of it, and won't disagree there are big issues there because of course there are.

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As for Iranian democracy ... You know, sometimes you have to look past what the law says on paper and what's really going on the ground, in cases - unlike the above situation - where the law is a dead letter. I mean, I don't know what formal status the English Monarch has re: absolute power to press an agenda over Parlaiment and the courts, but she doesn't exercise it. As a form of representative gov't, UK's parlaiment system is of course one of the paradigm examples. In Iran's case, the function of parlaiment and the courts is only an advisory role to the unelected Ayatollah's decisionmaking. Who cares what it's constitution says, that's what happens on the ground. Also, "democratic" is as much about culture as it is formal institutions; does a politician really know what the concept of "legal authority" means? In many traditionally non-democratic countries, no, not in the West's understanding; it's something they have to learn slowly, with experience. It doesn't help either the Iranian people or the security of other States to delude one's self about the real source of power in Iran. I actually didn't state an opinion on whether it was good or bad. If you are a radical muslim you may think it's great. But it still isn't democratic. I mean, you can try to rest your laurals on the Iranian constitution saying: the Ayatollah was installed into power "through the affirmative vote of a majority of 98.2% of eligible voters, held after the victorious Islamic Revolution led by the eminent marji' al-taqlid, Ayatullah al-Uzma Imam Khumayni." But there are sooo many reasons to distrust that number (limited "eligibility", at gun point, not blind, decision to throw out votes at A's discreition, and after all that the number is still invented) to say nothing of the questionable ability of a majority of people to democratically overthrow a democracy (a la Hitler).

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As for what constitutes a "rogue" state. There is the definition the US State Dept uses, regarding State sponsored terrorism, but there are more general ways to think about it too. Actually, before that, I should add this:

Iran supports terrorism to this day; no doubts there. It has long supported Hezbollah, and just in the last few weeks sent $50 million to Hamas, which just conducted another terrorist bombing it took credit for this morning. A few months ago Iranian terrorists did some operations in Egypt, bombing a resort hotel, trying as always to incite Islamic Revolution in the surrounding Arab States. If anything, given the shift towards radical Islam in the last decade, Iran's terrorist meddling in surrounding States has only increased, not decreased. The primary area of concern is, of course, Iraq, where Iran is financing almost daily terrorist operations, road-side bombs, etc, and self-consciously wants to install an Islamic Republic through violent means. You don't read about it in the papers much here, but a primary concern of many Iraqi politicians is less internally-driven sectarian violence and more Iranian interference and terrorism inflaming sectarianism (if you read Iraqi journalism).

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OK, on "rogue" State. Maybe too much to say for now. It's more than just sponsoring terrorism. It's a State really self-consciously trying to take itself out of the int'l system and attacking other States with no regard for any int'l order or normative restraint, like an outlaw. Of course, it's hard not to be tempted by the knee-jerk cynical response that this sounds a lot like the US. Superpowers and rogue States both get treated differently in the system, in what ends up not looking too differently, like a special status. What's at the root of it? One thing is the troubled fiction of "sovereign equality" that is indispensible for any int'l order. Anyway, as before, I am not trying to make any judgment here whether rogue states or the US actually deserve the special treatment they are given by other states or demand themselves ... just that it happens, and there is a reason why it happens. I really don't have time to go into it now; I can cite two books that try to explain what it is for some States to be "rogue" and others "superpowers"... Simpson's (http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521827612) Great Powers and Outlaw States: Unequal Sovereigns in the International Legal Order and Rawls' (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674005422/102-6167217-7796123?v=glance&n=283155) the Law of Peoples.

demagogue on 8/7/2006 at 04:52

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Yeah, I saw that too, and spoke too soon on where the missles landed.
Also Russia came out yesterday saying NK has a sovereign right to test its missles ... which of course it does.
Whether Japan is "asking for it", I mean, the current gov't notoriously has all the sensitivity of a toilet seat, but there are degrees of provocation here that should be kept in mind, too ... the kind that riles people up versus the kind that creates real uncertainty, destabalizes stock markets and military planning.

It's really a situation from hell because there's only so much any other country can do when NK gets an idea in its head, esp if the US won't get China and Russia on board for economic sanctions, it can only toss around some angry sounding language that NK will roll its eyes at anyway ... which isn't necessarily a bad thing, either. For the most part the US is content with letting NK waste away if it wants to, from what I've read. But when NK starts purposely throwing these stunts to get attention ... it's like the US holds its breath and hopes it can get back to a status quo everybody can live with. That's what I feel like will happen here once again. As long as NK doesn't care that it's being left out of the global network -- it's tragic for the population, maybe -- but everyone can deal with a little go-nowhere provocative behavior now and then.

On this note, I think the US has smartly chosen to stick with the 6 party approach (from its perspective anyway) because I honestly think it doesn't *want* a solution, it wants to keep the status quo. And with 6 parties that are on such different planes, there will always be someone else to blame for things "not moving forward" ... AND it gets the aura of multilateralism, so it doesn't look like the US is screwing things up by going-it-alone. It will make it hard for the usual critics to press the US, because they'll be uncomfortable pushing for it to be more unilateral.

TheGreatGodPan on 11/7/2006 at 23:56

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Actually, that day wasn't considered all that important by the Brits. The Americans still had plenty of ass-whomping ahead of them before real independence was achieved.