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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   27214 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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Culture War nexuses

This isn't exactly some thought-out post, more just a culture war observation. Every now and then there happens an event that feels like a CW "nexus" where it is the intersection of like five different hot topics in one moment. I had this thought while walking yesterday and wondered if someone else had any other examples. Here's two of mine:

A couple of weeks ago in Toronto a group of Indian immigrants, presumably in a gang of some sort, robbed a government-owned liquor store. They pulled a knife on an off-duty cop there. When they left, they were pursued by the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and regional cops. In a rented van the thieves went the wrong way down the 401, the busiest highway in the world; the OPP stopped pursuit and told the regional cops to do the same, but they continued to follow. The getaway van hit a car going the opposite way. The other car's inhabitants was also a family of Indian immigrants: new parents, a baby, and their newly-arrived grandparents (via family reunification presumably). The getaway driver, the grandparents, and the baby were killed. The getaway driver was out on bail on weapon's charges, had a suspended license, and was under court order not to drive.

If you've been paying attention to any political issues in Canada you can see how this neatly ties together a bunch of hot topics into one incident. I have another:

In late 2022 a cement mixer in Berlin hit a female cyclist. The driver got out of his truck to check on the cyclist and was stabbed by a mentally ill homeless refugee. An ambulance arrived to transport the critically injured woman to the hospital, but on the way was stopped by climate protestors who had glued themselves to the road. The cyclist died but the truck driver survived.

I think there's a simpler option here. If you get popped with an illegal weapon on you (and you haven't somehow victimized a Canadian in the process), just instant deportation. Why put them in prison? Just kick them out of the country, done.

Maybe there’s a problem with repatriation? I don’t actually know if countries have to accept criminals if they’re originally citizens.

When I was a young SWO on deployment to the Horn of Africa for anti-piracy operations, we regularly came upon skiffs in open waters with a dozen Somalis crammed on. We'd drive our big warship close, then our VBSS team would take a RHIB over to see what they were doing. They always had one or two fishing poles and a few rotten fish aboard, having jettisoned their weapons as soon as they saw our big warship approaching. "We're fishermen" they'd tell us through a translator, in open ocean on a 12-foot boat with 20 men onboard. Well, one day one group of Somalis decided that they were not going to jettison their weapons, and instead opened fire on one of the ships in our ARG. They launched at least one RPG and somehow completely missed the giant, boxy, unmoving ship that was right next to them. The VBSS team shot them until they surrendered. We zip tied the Somalis, brought them onboard, and gave them a fair bit of medical care (and not just for the holes we'd seen fit to add to a few of them). So now we had these Somalis onboard, locked in our medical spaces (because while the US Navy apparently takes inspiration from jails when designing their berthing, they don't actually make any of those rooms secure for holding criminals). This was back when the US didn't recognize Somalia as a country, so our State Department was having the darndest time figuring out what to do with these guys. We drove around for a week, maybe more, before a deal was brokered to give them to Yemen. They were dropped off and (according to the scuttlebutt) promptly executed.

This was almost 20 years ago, and I still think about it regularly. Should it have gone different, from the moment the Somalis surrendered? Would have been a lot cheaper and easier to have just shot them all there and sunk their skiff, with the same outcome. But that's morally wrong, and not in keeping with the rules of war. We shouldn't've given them to Somalia; they're not a real country (still aren't, IMO) and they government would most likely use the pirates' lives to extort bribes from whatever warlords or families they could, and then free or execute them (flip a coin). We shouldn't've put them into an American jail or Gitmo because they weren't worth it.

The conclusion I keep reaching is that the Somalis (and, to bring it back to the point at hand, immigrant criminals) are a time when "don't flip the switch in the trolley problem" is the best answer. We can know that the "justice" they'll face in their homeland (or Yemen) will probably be unjust, but it's not us doing it and that absolves us of some of the moral responsibility - enough to make it the least shitty of a bunch of shitty choices. We remove them from our control and return them to a place where a government will claim jurisdiction over them, and if that government doesn't afford all the legal protections that we do for our citizens, well... that's on their government. And I know there would be extreme cases when we shouldn't give them over to the other government, like shipping our Jews off to the Nazis or our Lienz Cossacks to the Soviets (oops). But those seem like the extreme cases. As a rule, I think "make the other country deal with their citizens" is the right answer. Our State Department has the power to make every country on Earth do that, assuming we have the political willpower. I worked closely with the State Department later in my career, and there is no doubt in my mind that they're capable of brokering that deal. If the US is ever told by another country that they won't take possession of their citizens who have committed crimes in the US, it is only because the US State Department has decided against spending the effort/money to convince the other country.

I mean, to put the greatest possible stress on this policy... returning escaped German Jews to Nazi Germany: moral? I mean, sure you have to say that "actually, the Holocaust is morally wrong --" but then you get into hot water along the lines of - well, is killing pirates morally wrong? If yes, what's the difference? If no, why not do it yourself? I guess one would have to say that killing criminals is wrong, but it's the sort of wrong that states may disagree about, as opposed to genociding innocents?

We can know that the "justice" they'll face in their homeland (or Yemen) will probably be unjust,

Why is executing pirates unjust?

Se my other comment for specifics on this particular incident, but in that sentence I was trying to speak more generally about how another country's court would rule compared to the US courts. I was thinking of things like death penalties for non-capital crimes, lack of due process, punishment for political or religious crimes, etc.

Would have been a lot cheaper and easier to have just shot them all there and sunk their skiff, with the same outcome. But that's morally wrong, and not in keeping with the rules of war.

Wait, what? Summary execution is what you do to pirates; that's been universally true for centuries!

I'm not saying that the piracy example necessarily extends to other crimes (usually no), but piracy is the worst example possible for this case, because of the very very long history of it being first on the list of scenarios justifying summary execution.

You raise good points (here and below), and I'm sorry I glossed over that part. I tried not to let the real story get too much in the way of the one I was telling, but I forgot that this is the sort of forum where I can't get away with that.

This occurred back in 2005-2006: hunting Somali pirates before hunting Somali pirates was cool. Our ARG was initially deployed for OPLAT (oil platform) Defense over by the Gulf of Oman, but there were a few hijackings and we were redirected to the East coast of Somalia. Back then Somali piracy was in its infancy, and the world hadn't really reacted. International Maritime Law on piracy wasn't prepared for their tactics, and our JAG plus his more senior lawyer bosses ashore gave us some pretty shitty conclusions about what we could and couldn't do legally. We couldn't do anything to the skiffs while they were just driving around because as much as we knew they were pirates, the JAGs didn't believe the USA could prove it. They always claimed they were fishermen. After a hijacking, it was a civil issue between the ship owners and the pirates. We were only able to actually treat them like pirates if we caught them in the act of piracy, which of course we never did because, see ref A, we were a big warship that could be seen from 15 nautical miles away. Anyways, we had at least 1 large maritime vessel hijacked while we were in the area, and we couldn't do anything about it other than watch. I heard that got the ball rolling on actually updating the international laws (or, perhaps, the US Military's creative interpretation of those laws) so the US could actually do something about the pirates, but I never did much followup to check because I was never out on anti-piracy operations again. The Navy did send me back to the Horn of Africa for other stuff (such a shitty part of the world), but that's completely unrelated.

So who we caught, according to our JAG, was not a group of pirates. They were a group of fishermen who fired small arms and an RPG at a US Naval Vessel. Maybe I was wrong to mention "rules of war" since they weren't uniformed combatants, but we don't kill people who have surrendered and don't pose any more threat to us. After lots (lots) of training on the lawful use of deadly force, my gut tells me that shooting them all and sinking their skiff after they threw down their weapons would have gotten everyone a court martial. I can't cite which specific way they'd be charged, though. It's been too long, and at the time I was a lowly JO who wasn't privy to the actual JAG opinions or conversations about it.

Captains get a lot of leeway in judicial decisions on their ships, but they are generally smart enough to listen to their JAG, and JAG said no keelhauling. So the fishermen/pirates got about 10 days of excellent medical care, good food, comfortable beds, (relative to Somalia) and then were promptly executed by Yemen.

Indeed, I don't doubt that your general understanding of the situation was on point; I just wanted to clarify that the rules you were following were immediately based in the UCMJ and the relevant ROEs for your situation, not the international treaties and conventions concerning actions in war.

I think this is an important distinction because I've found that many people think the Convention-based laws of war are vastly more restrictive than they actually are, and this sometimes undermines the persuasive authority of those agreements. In actual fact, they are much more modest and practical documents that drew a great deal from the brutal lessons taught in the World Wars.

Relatedly, I think a lot of people don't understand just how much more constraining the UCMJ and many ROEs are compared to the international Conventions, in terms of permissible actions by members of the US armed forces. US military discipline is due nearly entirely to internal controls, and those controls could be relaxed a great deal before running afoul of those international agreements. I'd prefer it if we didn't need to explore that space, but it is available.

I think it's a good idea not to execute surrendering combants because otherwise they'd be incentivized to keep fighting until their last breath. I'd be happy to see all pirates executed, but you have to consider the incentives involved. Similar to how if a terrorist holds an innocent hostage and demands a $10k ransom, even if you very much think the hostage's life is worth $10k, you might want to "not negotiate with terrorists" because the terrorist will just keep taking hostages as long as you pay for hostages.

I should probably clarify my argument; what you're offering here is policy reasons against the summary execution of pirates--which is fair enough, but not completely on point to my objection.

@ares claimed that summarily executing the pirates would have been 1) morally wrong, and 2) not in keeping with the rules of war. These are two distinct claims.

In response to 1), I am pointing out that summary execution of pirates was historically a universal practice. That doesn't make it right--slavery was also universally practiced, and also wrong--but you need to show your work in dismissing it. Your own arguments about incentives would be relevant to a consequentialist moral analysis, but not to other systems. Even in a consequentialist frame, @ares makes several good points about the thorny issues of how to handle pirates otherwise.

In response to 2), the laws of war, expressed in documents like the Geneva or Hague Conventions, don't apply. Pirates are by tradition "outlaw," and may be exterminated wherever found, in time of peace or war alike. They are by definition non-state actors, as distinct from privateers, who have an official state patron (generally via a letter of marque and reprisal) but are not a part of that state's uniformed military.

Executing pirates may well be contrary to US military policy, expressed through the UCMJ and various theater rules of engagement, but those judgments should not be confused with unsupported moral claims or general appeals to "the rules of war."

I'd agree to all that.

A warship almost certainly had the ability to sink their crappy wooden boat before they could surrender.

Generally agreed. We certainly have the ability. I assume there is some sort of treaty with each (functional) country. It’s devilishly hard to search, though.

Good story, by the way.

Thanks. A military career is good for, if nothing else, giving you a good story or two to tell.

Hard to search if you want to get it right. I can imagine a State Department convincing some Central or South American country to accept all immigrant criminals of uncertain Hispanic nationality in exchange for a few hundred million dollars of "humanitarian aid", or whatever euphemism we want to use. "Oh, my dear illegal immigrant rapist, you refuse to tell us your citizenship? Off to an El Salvadorian jail, then." A State Department (under the Executive branch, remember) that is not doing this must think it's not worth doing. I've had this thought in the back of my mind during all the politicking on immigration.

We don't have any obligation to keep them from being executed by their home country under other circumstances. Requiring that we keep them from being executed if they commit crimes against us is Copenhagen ethics.

I don't disagree with you, but I feel like you're glossing over the parts that make this a complicated issue. Extradition treaties are complex, and don't exist between all countries. In many cases I'm glad that the more-free West can be a sanctuary for political "criminals" from the East. If Yeonmi Park jay walks, I don't want her sent back to North Korea to be executed, and I'd go so far as to say that yes, we do have an obligation to not send her back. But if she murdered someone in a State without the death penalty, should we put her in jail for life? What if it's reckless homicide? Or a refuge whose political persecution is less clear? I don't know where the lines should be drawn, and would love a good mistake-theory discussion about it. What we seem to get from the US government, though, is conflict-theory soundbites arguing for all-or-nothing solutions.

They’re sometimes bound to do so by treaty, but they frequently don’t IIRC. Nobody actually wants criminals hanging around their country, after all. I think there’s been cases of the US paying big bucks to convince various foreignstans to accept their own citizens back.

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