Views on Women

Men and women are morally and intellectually equal. There are obvious physical differences between the sexes in terms of size and strength. Likewise, there are psychological differences, due to sexual roles, childbearing, etc. However, the point is both men and women survive on earth primarily by their minds i.e. their rational faculty.

In cultures, there is a direct correlation between the culture’s quality of life, including general prosperity, political freedom, and the status of women. The abject poverty, political tyrannies, and general miserable conditions and attitudes in the Islamic world and Africa go hand in glove with the miserable status of women, including beatings, forced marriages, “honor killings”, genital mutilations, foot binding, etc. At the same time, the prosperity and general quality of life in the Western world, especially the United States, correlate with the infinitely higher status of women.

Norman E. Hill
www.noralyn.com

War Crimes

The concept war crimes is a very dangerous one, contrary to the U.S. Constitution and American legal codes. It is a non-objective, undefined term, and can be used by anyone to condemn and prosecute anyone he chooses.

Trials for war crimes arose against the Nazis and Japanese after World War II. There was no question that the leaders of these two governments were responsible for many atrocities and deserved to be tried as criminals. However, any moral force of the Nuremberg war crimes trials against the Nazis was doomed from the start. One of the trying nations was Soviet Russia-whose government was responsible for even more murders and atrocities against its citizens than the Nazis had committed.

Today, with this fatal precedent for war crimes, we see demands for war crimes arrests and trials against a country like Israel. This nation has been under attack for almost 60 years, through devices such as suicide bombers and terrorists who knowingly use innocent (relatively) women and children as shields. Then, when Israeli attacks against the terrorists result in deaths of women and children, wails and moans of unjustified homicide and war crimes are heard. Even officials of the U.S., such as Bush and Rumsfeld, have been accused to some extent of committing war crimes in Iraq. Our jailing of enemy terrorists in the Guantanamo prison has sometimes been alleged as an incident of war crimes.

Of course, we should not forget Hanoi Jane Fonda. In the late 1960s, her well-publicized characterization of U.S. airmen, doing their job of bombing enemy combatants, as war criminals, gave great comfort to our enemy, the North Vietnamese.

After World War II, there was a rational way, consistent with U.S. and Western criminal codes, for trying Nazis and Japanese. Japanese leaders, all the way up through Hirohito, had been responsible for atrocities against American prisoners of war. Similar accusations of murder could have been brought by British, Australian, and Nationalist Chinese leaders.

With the Nazis, the situation is a little more complicated. French authorities, for example, could have brought charges against Nazis for atrocities against Resistance and underground leaders. Similar charges could have been brought by other countries occupied by Nazis, such as Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, The Netherlands, Yugoslavia, and Greece. Two other countries who suffered greatly at Nazi hands were Poland and the Soviet Union. However, by the time of Nuremberg, Poland was already in Soviet hands. Since Soviet Union had its own barbarous government, this fact should have morally disqualified both countries from participating in any trials against Nazis.

The British suffered from indiscriminate Nazi bombing against civilians during the Blitz. This would have qualified them from participating in murder trials against Nazis.

Israel as a nation did not exist until 1948. When people thus became Israeli citizens, they could make a strong case that Nazis surviving at that time had murdered millions of people who would have become Israeli citizens if they had been allowed to emigrate.

The U.S. situation is a little more complicated. I am not aware of U.S. citizens who were murdered by Nazis, except for a few captured airmen. The latter would have justified trials at least against local SS instigators, although possibly against Nazi higher ups as well.

Many U.S. citizens of Jewish ancestry lost close relatives during the Nazi holocaust. Unfortunately, the latter were not American citizens. Even so, the argument can be made that many Jews who were later massacred had petitioned the U.S. government for asylum. These requests during the early 1940s were shamefully denied by that great “humanitarian”, Franklin Roosevelt. It might represent a stretch, but a good argument could be made that the Nazis thus murdered many would-be U.S.citizens.

Through the above arguments, many nations could have and should have brought criminal charges against Nazi and Japanese leaders. Both mass murder, rape and torture were all legitimate charges under legal codes of most of these nations, especially the U.S

Later on, the U.S. could have brought criminal charges against North Korea and North Vietnam for atrocities against American prisoners of war. Similar murder charges can be brought against any terrorists who were complicit in the 9 11 attacks. Enemy combatants captured in Iraq, Afghanistan (or even the 1982 Lebanese bombing of our Marines) can legitimately be held indefinitely as prisoners of war.

Under this approach, the U.S. does not seem able to bring criminal charges against Serbs, Somalis, Arab Sudanese, or Hutus for their atrocities. However, if it is determined to be in our nation’s self interest, we could certainly attack these groups, to whatever degree seems appropriate.

In summary, the concept of war crimes itself should be condemned by the U.S. and should never be the basis for trying anyone, no matter how despicable he is

Thoughts on Charlie Wilson's War and the Cold War in General

General Review

First, as a movie, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Hanks and Hoffman, in particular, gave outstanding performances. Their real life counterparts deserve credit for working hard and, on a required behind the scenes basis, to start a counteroffensive against the Communist thugs.

Some broad implications can and already have been drawn from the movie. To do these justice, some moral points and historical analysis are both necessary.

Primary Moral Point

The forthright, honorable US approach in Afghanistan would have been our open, direct military aid (no troops, except possibly some advisors) to the rebels. Of course, this would have "provoked" the Soviets. But, it would have been a welcome contrast to the convoluted, clandestine way in which arms were shipped to the Afghans. Apparently, there was some sucking up to the Saudis, to enlist their cooperation with the Israelis.

The Soviets were completely open about their overthrow of the existing government and invasion. They were equally open about using Castro's troops for Angola and other military operations. If our government was morally armed, there would have been no qualms about direct US military aid, which would have been in our self interest.

Other Moral Points

Once the Soviets pulled out of the country, it was also in our interest to push for formation of a pro US government. It may have been an autocratic one, since, before the Communist invasion, a monarchy was in place. This type of government could have been acceptable to us, as long as it did not seek overthrows of other governments.

Therefore, some limited aid to Afghanistan, to help it rebuild, would have been in our self interest. The political alternative was not the Soviets or the Taliban.

If the US turned its back on the country, as the movie claims, it was a mistake.

Historical Analysis

By any measure, the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan, while important and morally uplifting, could not possibly have caused the fall of the Berlin wall, the freeing of the satellite nations of Europe, or the apparent implosion of the Soviet government over to the Yeltsin regime. Other causes had to have played a role.

In many quarters today, Reagan is given credit for ending the Cold War. Supposedly, he forced the Soviets into a competitive military buildup with us for which they lacked the funds to sustain. By trying to keep up with the US, they supposedly bankrupted themselves and their government with all its totalitarian apparatus collapsed.

This arms race probably played a role here, more than Afghanistan. However, in an arms race, supposedly, the Soviets and their satellites would rely on their own factories (plus whatever technology they could steal from the West). If the goal was to produce more or to divert more workers from, say, agriculture, the government could have done so by force. Since workers in the Soviet Union were apparently paid some wages, the government could print more money, if gold funds were short. Even with the low Soviet standard of living, unless the population was starving, the KGB seemed able to enforce order for some years.

In short, I believe still other factors had to have played a role in the Soviet implosion. The country had a sizable nuclear arsenal, albeit probably not as much as reported (while the US media positively relished stories about the Soviet’s achieving nuclear superiority over us, I always had considerable skepticism about this). One possibility is that, somehow, their delivery system ie the apparatus for loading and firing all their ballistic nuclear-armed missiles could have been dismantled or thrown off kilter. Maybe, for once, the CIA pulled off an espionage coup. We’ll probably never know.

My point is Reagan may not deserve much credit here. Alternatively, he may deserve credit in a way not publicized that served to overthrow the Soviet regime.

When Reagan took office in 1980, he inherited the Carter mess. No doubt, he was concentrating on an overall US arms buildup. Even so, he had to have known about the military aid program, already underway, for the Afghan rebels. He could have killed it if he chose. Much more likely, he gave it his support.

It would be interesting to see what the mind of Congress was at this point. Since it was so committed to US preclusion from aiding anti-Ortega forces in Nicaragua, Congress probably would not have wanted to go “overboard” in allowing an anti-Communist pro US alternative in Afghanistan.

Liberals, of course, would like to reap the credit for winning the Cold War and for Reagan to receive absolutely no credit. As long as the limited scope of the Afghanistan victory is understood, this movie won’t do it for them.

William Buckley-A Critique

Recent accolades heaped on William Buckley, at the time of his death, provide grim confirmation of the adage: A bad argument FOR something is much, much worse than a direct attack on the something. It provides antagonists of the something with the mistaken notion that they possess the high moral/intellectual ground in their attacks on the something.

In this case, the something, of course, the victim of the bad argument from William Buckley, is capitalism. Buckley is considered by many as the intellectual spokesman, if not for capitalism, then for its alleged equivalent, conservatism. Actually, Buckley never claimed that he was defending capitalism. In his Wall Street Journal piece, "To Preserve What We Have", and elsewhere, he merely called for stopping at the current point of welfare state expansion and going no further. At each point he would say that this political apparatus, the welfare state, should expand no further. From the next point, and the next, he'd cry stop-no more expansion. Many who call themselves conservatives hold this position, which is completely futile. The welfare state, by its nature, must expand, and keep restricting freedom-if there is no philosophical opposition.

Several times, Buckley did call for protection of freedom, which, in the sense of individual rights, goes hand in hand with laissez faire capitalism. But, he never came close to answering: What ethical code supports individual rights to life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, and capitalism; what is the nature of man and human knowledge that in turn supports this ethical code; and what is the fundamental nature of reality that supports all the above portions that depend on it? No one can really be a proponent of individual rights and capitalism without articulating a philosophy of: Ethics-rational self interest; epistemology-reason and logic; and metaphysics-objective reality.

To the extent Buckley offered any defense of freedom or capitalism, it was based on religious faith, which really means-on altruism, sacrificing oneself for others. This lethal combination is completely incompatible with capitalism. Many of capitalism's alleged defenders are silent on this contradiction, but Buckley fully advocated it-to the extent he advocated any position-as his basis for freedom.

The most disgraceful and inconsistent aspect of his posturing as a defender of freedom lay in Buckley's militant stand against abortion-a woman's right to choose and to her own body. He fully advocated the dark religious superstition that life begins at conception, rather than the scientific position that human life, unlike the preliminary parasitical fetus, begins at birth or its equivalent. No defender of individual rights could advocate forcing women into lives of unwanted pregnancies.

Buckley could employ a wide variety of words, many not widely used. He could utter many witty, sarcastic, snide comments, usually without context or as part of a complete position. This ability is not enough to classify him as an intellectual or a defender of capitalism or individual freedom, much less as a defender of any consistent political or philosophical position.

Norman E. Hill
www.noralyn.com