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Phanatic posted:Nobody tried at Nuremberg was charged with violating the Hague Convention of 1899. That Convention is an agreement between signatories. It makes no conduct illegal, does not prohibit waging wars of aggression, doesn't prescribe any sentences for violating it, and it certainly doesn't set up any courts. And it certainly doesn't touch on the issue of a country rounding up *its own citizens* and executing them en masse. According to Hague and Geneva, the only war crimes committed by anyone tried at Nuremberg were the treatment of POWs and the populations of other countries. There were other international agreements that formed the basis of war crimes, including the London Naval Treaty, and Prize Rules and I am sure there are others.
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Jul 28, 2016 07:24
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Xerxes17 posted:The Army Museum Žižkov, Aviation Museum Kbely and Military Technical Museum Lešany. Missing that one because of train and train station shenanigans is why I wish that 30yw would happen again
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Jul 28, 2016 08:11
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Alchenar posted:When people (historians) describe the Nazi regime as 'criminal', it isn't so much a moral judgement as an observation that even within the terms the Nazis set for themselves as rulers of a totalitarian state there was nothing approaching a rule of law. The Nazi state was very much a free-for-all of corruption, violence, and power-plays. Well kind of but Nazis involved in committing many of the worst atrocities definitely know they're going to be punished for them if they lose and that some level of secrecy is prudent. So I think you can argue that even in that cloudy moral universe there's an awareness of ethical standards held by others being violated (as well as the laws of the German state, often knowingly violated). BattleMoose posted:There were other international agreements that formed the basis of war crimes, including the London Naval Treaty, and Prize Rules and I am sure there are others. International lawyers principally make arguments from Roman legal concepts based on accepted evolving norms of conduct for nations.
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Jul 28, 2016 08:43
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Disinterested posted:International lawyers principally make arguments from Roman legal concepts based on accepted evolving norms of conduct for nations. You seem to be deliberately ignoring the fact, that there were explicit international agreements regarding the conduct of war, that countries signed, and did not adhere to which formed the basis of many of the war crime charges.
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Jul 28, 2016 08:45
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BattleMoose posted:You seem to be deliberately ignoring the fact, that there were explicit international agreements regarding the conduct of war, that countries signed, and did not adhere to which formed the basis of many of the war crime charges. No, I'm not, but they're viewed by international lawyers as part of a continuum of law and not as magical gamechangers. The trial of Charles I was also influential as an example of a head of state being held accountable to conduct to the people.
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Jul 28, 2016 08:50
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bewbies posted:If you're referring to the Civil War that really isn't what happened. 'whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States' - 18 US Code 2381. How does this not describe every single man who served in the Confederate Army? Regardless of what you think of their morality or the reasons for the actions, in law this is what they did. I'm not saying actually shooting them all was a good idea or even an option, but you can't simultaneously claim the CSA was never a legitimate state and that they didn't commit a crime against US law.
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Jul 28, 2016 09:02
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feedmegin posted:'whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States' - 18 US Code 2381. Choosing to secede from a union, that was voluntarily entered into, doesn't in my mind constitute an act of war. Wasn't it the Federates who declared war on the confederates?
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Jul 28, 2016 09:26
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BattleMoose posted:Choosing to secede from a union, that was voluntarily entered into, doesn't in my mind constitute an act of war. Wasn't it the Federates who declared war on the confederates? This is, uh, kind of the crux of the matter. If you believe this then you believe the Confederacy was a legitimate state and that the Union launched a war of aggression against it, but then you're putting yourself into some pretty dubious company. The Union held that states could not voluntarily secede from said Union - Lincoln specifically said at his inauguration that secession was legally void - and the Union won the war, so it's their view on the matter which prevailed.
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Jul 28, 2016 09:38
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Alchenar posted:When people (historians) describe the Nazi regime as 'criminal', it isn't so much a moral judgement as an observation that even within the terms the Nazis set for themselves as rulers of a totalitarian state there was nothing approaching a rule of law. The Nazi state was very much a free-for-all of corruption, violence, and power-plays. I rewatched the HBO movie Conspiracy the other day and I was struck by Stuckart, the bureaucrat responsible for writing the Nuremberg laws, who was portrayed as furious that the plan was apparently just to willy-nilly and clandestinely kill Jews instead of formulating any kind of legal doctrine for doing it and the mess it would cause in the bureaucracy. From the real minutes of the Wannsee Conference: quote:State Secretary Dr. Stuckart maintains that carrying out in practice of the just mentioned possibilities for solving the problem of mixed marriages and persons of mixed blood will create endless administrative work. In the second place, as the biological facts cannot be disregarded in any case, State Secretary Dr. Stuckart proposed proceeding to forced sterilization. Furthermore, to simplify the problem of mixed marriages possibilities must be considered with the goal of the legislator saying something like: "These marriages have been dissolved." The actual minutes are quite terse so the film takes some liberties in elaborating Stuckart's position as the Man of Law. Don't get me wrong, the man was still a horrible piece of poo poo and he buckled under pressure, but it does seem he tried to hold onto a certain legal rationale that, as you say, the Nazis themselves wound up breaking anyway.
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Jul 28, 2016 09:42
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BattleMoose posted:Choosing to secede from a union, that was voluntarily entered into, doesn't in my mind constitute an act of war. Wasn't it the Federates who declared war on the confederates?
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Jul 28, 2016 09:45
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Squalid posted:I read a good paper on the subject of contagious dishonor/pollution amongst the vlax Roma which argued that it is probably an adaptive trait by which groups can more rigorously enforce social norms and laws.
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Jul 28, 2016 10:05
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feedmegin posted:This is, uh, kind of the crux of the matter. If you believe this then you believe the Confederacy was a legitimate state and that the Union launched a war of aggression against it, but then you're putting yourself into some pretty dubious company. The Union held that states could not voluntarily secede from said Union - Lincoln specifically said at his inauguration that secession was legally void - and the Union won the war, so it's their view on the matter which prevailed. IIRC, none of the states that chose to secede voted for Lincoln as president. He did not represent their views or interests. There is the legal aspect of it and there is also the ethical aspect too, they often don't align. Legally there should have been an explicit mechanism for leaving the union. That there wasn't, doesn't mean secession wasn't illegal. It was effectively some guy that no one voted for, told them they couldn't secede, that's never going to go down well. There was probably a much better way of handling the situation than the catastrophic war they got.
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Jul 28, 2016 10:09
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BattleMoose posted:Choosing to secede from a union, that was voluntarily entered into, doesn't in my mind constitute an act of war. Wasn't it the Federates who declared war on the confederates? Oh, also, note it doesn't say anything about acts of war, nor does it care in the least who started what. Levying war on the United States as a US citizen, i.e. by shooting up US troops, is treason, end of. Edit: 'Legally there should have been an explicit mechanism for leaving the union. That there wasn't, doesn't mean secession wasn't illegal.' Yes, actually it does. If you cannot do something legally it is by definition illegal. That's how laws work. feedmegin fucked around with this message at 10:24 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 10:21
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The south didn't vote 100% Breckinridge. They might have in the electoral college, but only the southiest of southern counties were over 80% Breckinridge. Also plenty of people in the south (and north, of course) who didn't get to vote at all. And it kinda always seems to get forgotten that the platform Lincoln ran in 1860 was against the expansion of slavery, not an abolitionist platform. It might have lead to abolitionism down the line, sure. Lincoln in 1860 was going to take away your slaves as much as Obama in 2008 was going to take away your guns.
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Jul 28, 2016 10:23
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feedmegin posted:Levying war on the United States as a US citizen, i.e. by shooting up US troops, is treason, end of. Its a really simplistic interpretation and I wonder about the context of it. I really cannot get behind this interpretation for a secessionist movement. Is the secession really considered treasonous? Did they not cease being US citizens once they seceded?
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Jul 28, 2016 10:25
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JcDent posted:Missing that one because of train and train station shenanigans is why I wish that 30yw would happen again I'm going to miss it too as I'm going to Berlin tomorrow and I won't be here for when it opens on the weekend 
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Jul 28, 2016 10:28
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Xerxes17 posted:I'm going to miss it too as I'm going to Berlin tomorrow and I won't be here for when it opens on the weekend
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Jul 28, 2016 10:31
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feedmegin posted:Edit: 'Legally there should have been an explicit mechanism for leaving the union. That there wasn't, doesn't mean secession wasn't illegal.' Yes, actually it does. If you cannot do something legally it is by definition illegal. That's how laws work. This is not how law works in the slightest. Something is illegal when the law explicitly says it so.
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Jul 28, 2016 10:31
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:This is not how law works in the slightest. Something is illegal when the law explicitly says it so. Constitutional law in actuality doesn't really work that way at all though. In any event, the legal aspects of the ACW aren't that important and I feel like we're getting unduly hung up on them.
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Jul 28, 2016 10:36
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Slim Jim Pickens posted:This is not how law works in the slightest. Something is illegal when the law explicitly says it so. It does in this case. If you've explicitly signed up for a union knowing there is no exit clause, you don't get to just say 'nope! there's nothing saying we have to be here any more see ya'. What you do instead to get out of it legally is get a majority in Congress and change the law so that you now have an exit clause, then exercise it.
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Jul 28, 2016 10:38
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BattleMoose posted:IIRC, none of the states that chose to secede voted for Lincoln as president. He did not represent their views or interests. There is the legal aspect of it and there is also the ethical aspect too, they often don't align. Legally there should have been an explicit mechanism for leaving the union. That there wasn't, doesn't mean secession wasn't illegal. It was effectively some guy that no one voted for, told them they couldn't secede, that's never going to go down well. failing to win an election is not ethical justification to ignore an election, and it's certainly not a legal one. all elections, functionally by definition, will wind up with some large fraction (sometimes a majority) not getting the outcome they desire. if you draw an arbitrary line within the results (a state within 50 voted for X!) to achieve your desired result you're violating both the spirit and letter of the vote: there will be regions within your arbitrary line that voted the other way (cities, counties etc) that would be as valid then yours: ie, not. and no one participated in the vote under the conditions you are applying after the fact, maybe people who didn't vote for Lincoln would have if the implied terms you are projecting were on the ballot. they didn't, they couldn't, they didn't take part in a "presidential election but also if the guy we dislike gets in we're staring a war" they took part in a presidential election. and while I can sympathise to a certain degree with the ethical argument in the abstract (if we weren't discussing a slaver nation) there sort of is precedent in America for leaving a legally binding union, and it's "win a war".
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Jul 28, 2016 11:04
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feedmegin posted:It does in this case. If you've explicitly signed up for a union knowing there is no exit clause, you don't get to just say 'nope! there's nothing saying we have to be here any more see ya'. What you do instead to get out of it legally is get a majority in Congress and change the law so that you now have an exit clause, then exercise it. This sounds like a ridiculous troll question, but it's being genuinely asked in good faith: do you think the American colonies did wrong in taking up arms against the British crown? I am not drawing a parallel between Lincoln and King George III, or any other horrible parallels. I'm not asking that question rhetorically. Do you think the colonists were wrong in not working through the process? Teriyaki Hairpiece fucked around with this message at 11:20 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 11:07
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CoolCab posted:this is an argument against democracy No, its an argument against the "tyranny of the majority". When a portion of the population, through majority public vote, force their will on the "minority". It is democratic in the strictest sense of the term but its an awful idea, because it leaves the "minority" angry and feeling repressed and without representation. Unsurprisingly this can result in conflict. Its not "undemocratic" to appreciate this and that its not a good idea to force one's value onto others. Even if they are lovely values. There are better ways than through force. EDIT: I mean, it can be done, but its an awfully good way of starting a war. BattleMoose fucked around with this message at 11:20 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 11:17
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BattleMoose posted:No, its an argument against the "tyranny of the majority". When a portion of the population, through majority public vote, force their will on the "minority". It is democratic in the strictest sense of the term but its an awful idea, because it leaves the "minority" angry and feeling repressed and without representation. Unsurprisingly this can result in conflict. Its not "undemocratic" to appreciate this and that its not a good idea to force one's value onto others. Even if they are lovely values. There are better ways than through force. If the South's elite had been liquidated we wouldn't be having problems with them. The foreign policy advocated by the power bloc represented by the states that seceded was much much more aggressive toward other countries than their opponents. The Confederate politicians had eyes on Cuba and Mexico as expansion aims after they won the war.
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Jul 28, 2016 11:21
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Panzeh posted:If the South's elite had been liquidated we wouldn't be having problems with them. :stalinsay: Seriously though, large-scale executions would have been necessary to get rid of the "elite" (how do you get the right people? You need to take away heirs as well), and it tends to have side effects, like a lack of skilled administrators and a terrorized populace willing to fight back.
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Jul 28, 2016 11:22
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Panzeh posted:If the South's elite had been liquidated we wouldn't be having problems with them. Completely failing to see the relevance of this.
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Jul 28, 2016 11:34
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cheerfullydrab posted:This sounds like a ridiculous troll question, but it's being genuinely asked in good faith: do you think the American colonies did wrong in taking up arms against the British crown? I think they did something that was illegal and treasonous according to British law and if they had lost they would no doubt have legally been treated as treasonous British subjects, according to British law. 'We shall all hang separately' and all that. This isn't a statement of morality or what I would have liked to have happened or anything, it's the legal facts on the ground at the conclusion of the war. If the Confederacy had won and been recognised as a new state by a treaty with the defeated USA that would be a different matter too, but Washington won and they didn't.
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Jul 28, 2016 11:46
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BattleMoose posted:No, its an argument against the "tyranny of the majority". When a portion of the population, through majority public vote, force their will on the "minority". It is democratic in the strictest sense of the term but its an awful idea, because it leaves the "minority" angry and feeling repressed and without representation. Unsurprisingly this can result in conflict. Its not "undemocratic" to appreciate this and that its not a good idea to force one's value onto others. Even if they are lovely values. There are better ways than through force. I will point out that the 'South' is not some uniform block. Though the majority did not vote for Lincoln in the south, some did, and even more voted for Douglas or Bell's anti-seccessionist platform. If you were making an argument against the tyranny of the majority, then it would seem that about half the confederacy ought to have immediately secceded back to the Union because it seemed like their views weren't being represented. And that's ignoring all the slaves that can't vote. EDIT: Anyway I was disagreeing with the notion that "the concept of war crimes was invented after the fact in 1945", which I don't think is true at all. International enforcement was certainly changed after WWII, and the Nuremberg trials put it into a more legalistic framework, but it's not like the concept was entirely alien. The general non-legalistic concept of 'this guy did bad poo poo and shall be punished' goes back further still, probably to at least the fall of Assyria. Fangz fucked around with this message at 12:01 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 11:52
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Fangz posted:EDIT: Anyway I was disagreeing with the notion that "the concept of war crimes was invented after the fact in 1945", which I don't think is true at all. International enforcement was certainly changed after WWII, and the Nuremberg trials put it into a more legalistic framework, but it's not like the concept was entirely alien. The general non-legalistic concept of 'this guy did bad poo poo and shall be punished' goes back further still, probably to at least the fall of Assyria. The concept of that there's poo poo you don't do in war was recognized at least during the 17th century, maybe even before that. I think HEY GAL had some examples. Nürnberg was more or less the big shift, but stepping away from the Westphalian system could have been said to have happened with the Helsinki Accords in 1975. That sort of opened the door for humanitarian interventions in general, for better or for worse.
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Jul 28, 2016 12:10
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Kemper Boyd posted:The concept of that there's poo poo you don't do in war was recognized at least during the 17th century, maybe even before that. I think HEY GAL had some examples. this is apropos of nothing, but speaking of "the Westphalian system" have any of you guys read the actual text of the Treaty of Westphalia? it's all about the land disputes of the Margravine-Regent of Hesse-Kassel, this woman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countess_Amalie_Elisabeth_of_Hanau-M%C3%BCnzenberg hesse-kassel and hesse-darmstadt had a war within the 30yw and Amalie Elizabeth won. due to her skillful leadership Hesse-Kassel was one of the few places to make out unambiguously well from the 30yw. (Speaking of rad nicknames, her bio is entitled The Iron Princess.) which is good for her, but is there anything more German than the two parts of a territory fighting a war within a war? is the HRE actually a fractal? what happens if Amalie-Elizabeth's living room decides to secede HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:22 on Jul 28, 2016 |
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Jul 28, 2016 12:15
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feedmegin posted:I think they did something that was illegal and treasonous according to British law and if they had lost they would no doubt have legally been treated as treasonous British subjects, according to British law. 'We shall all hang separately' and all that. This isn't a statement of morality or what I would have liked to have happened or anything, it's the legal facts on the ground at the conclusion of the war. If the Confederacy had won and been recognised as a new state by a treaty with the defeated USA that would be a different matter too, but Washington won and they didn't. But do you think it was wrong for the Americans to secede, and do you think it was wrong for the Southerners to secede? I'm asking your personal opinions here to get some insight into a post you made.
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Jul 28, 2016 12:30
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Tias posted::stalinsay: Of course there would have to be large scale executions. It would've been worth it, though. BattleMoose posted:Completely failing to see the relevance of this. It kinda puts lie to the notion that these were just states looking to secede from some tyrannical majority goverment when their goal is to impose their will on others. Also, they did not allow counties to secede from states which meant that there was no idelogical basis behind secession as a right as such.
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Jul 28, 2016 12:31
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cheerfullydrab posted:But do you think it was wrong for the Americans to secede, and do you think it was wrong for the Southerners to secede? I'm asking your personal opinions here to get some insight into a post you made. I don't hold any particular moral view on American independence; I think there are pros and cons. On the one hand, yes, I can see the issue with no taxation without representation and I approve of a lot of the views of the people behind it. On the other hand one reason the colonists rebelled was they wanted to expand west (and, as it turned out in the event, genocide a whole bunch of Native Americans) and the British government was trying to stop them. There were a lot of reasons (some) Americans rebelled, and they certainly weren't all morally impeccable. That said, lest it not be clear, while I would view it as legal for Britain to have strung up all the Founding Fathers if they'd lost the war, that doesn't mean it's something I personally would view as, y'know, something good or to be celebrated from our vantage point here in the 21st century. I do think it was wrong for the South to secede, because it did so primarily in order to preserve slavery, and I would hope it's not a controversial position in this thread that slavery is wrong and should not be preserved. None of this has much relevance to the legal position though.
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Jul 28, 2016 12:39
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Hey Gal, I believe there was a vague procedure in the HRE after the TYW that allowed people to apply to the imperial court for a local power to intervene in a neighbouring state to prevent the mistreatment of subjects for confessional reasons in exchange for tax receipts, and I think it happened on a number of occasions (it's a vague recollection, it was a friend's PhD thesis). Ring a bell?
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Jul 28, 2016 12:41
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Disinterested posted:Hey Gal, I believe there was a vague procedure in the HRE after the TYW that allowed people to apply to the imperial court for a local power to intervene in a neighbouring state to prevent the mistreatment of subjects for confessional reasons in exchange for tax receipts, and I think it happened on a number of occasions (it's a vague recollection, it was a friend's PhD thesis). Ring a bell?
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Jul 28, 2016 12:45
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feedmegin posted:I do think it was wrong for the South to secede, because it did so primarily in order to preserve slavery, and I would hope it's not a controversial position in this thread that slavery is wrong and should not be preserved. You have conflated secession with slavery. Secession is fine. Preservation of slavery is not fine. The motives for secession do not define whether secession is morally fine or not fine, at least in my mind.
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Jul 28, 2016 12:54
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BattleMoose posted:You have conflated secession with slavery. Secession is fine. Preservation of slavery is not fine. The motives for secession do not define whether secession is morally fine or not fine, at least in my mind.  This is what I mean by saying you're entering into dodgy company when you take this line of argument, because I disagree with you entirely here and I'm just going to leave it at that. Taking the viewpoint that secession was illegal, as I have done; whether it is morally good to break the law depends very much on why you are breaking it.
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Jul 28, 2016 12:59
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BattleMoose posted:No, its an argument against the "tyranny of the majority". what argument against democracy isn't quote:When a portion of the population, through majority public vote, force their will on the "minority". It is democratic in the strictest sense of the term but its an awful idea, because it leaves the "minority" angry and feeling repressed and without representation. Unsurprisingly this can result in conflict. Its not "undemocratic" to appreciate this and that its not a good idea to force one's value onto others. Even if they are lovely values. There are better ways than through force. this is circular as poo poo, either we live in a democracy, where the majority rules, and it's our obligation as a moral majority to steer it away from tyranny, or we don't. your scenario reaches the same conclusion either way, if the majority enforces it's will on the minority, the minority is justified in taking up force (this is the majority's fault somehow) and do what they want, or the compromise, which is "the minority does what they want". in your framework there is no ethical way for america to decide that human beings aren't chattel (or any other horrendously unethical thing), because voting for it is unethical and invites force, and using force is unethical, presumably because the force required to keep the institution of slavery functioning (see, the fugitive slave act) doesn't count for some reason. and while i hate to appeal to ethics in this way, it's the only reasonable way to approach the problem: a big part about avoiding the tyranny of the majority is by appealing to the majority's sense of justice, decency and morality. the majority was becoming increasingly unwilling to put up with the moral compromises required to maintain the institution of slavery in america. the minority disagreed, and applied every democratic means they could, including eventually diplomacy through other means, to combat this. it failed.
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Jul 28, 2016 13:00
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BattleMoose posted:You have conflated secession with slavery. Secession is fine. Preservation of slavery is not fine. The motives for secession do not define whether secession is morally fine or not fine, at least in my mind. Well, then you're of a different mind than the Confederate States, who immediately promulgated a Constitution that was exactly the same as the Constitution of the United States of America, except for six-year one-term Presidencies, line-item vetos, and various provisions saying SLAVERY FOREVER NO ONE WILL EVER RESTRICT SLAVERY. Also something about riverine improvements? Can't remember.
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Jul 28, 2016 13:01
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cheerfullydrab posted:Well, then you're of a different mind than the Confederate States, I would certainly hope so.
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Jul 28, 2016 13:05
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