Oh, I didn't mean that killing people was the only way to make laws. Locking them up or taking their stuff away works too. But upholding a law against people who don't want to comply always requires the use of force.
You missed the point. The United States has not ratified the Geneva Protocols. The first step in upholding international law in this case should be ratifying those agreements.
I am in favor of those responsible for these atrocities being tried in court. But if the United States does not believe this law applies to itself, it is hardly the appropriate agent for enforcing it on other countries which have not ratified it, especially since its solution (killing) is as morally problematic as the original crimes.
Okay, so agreed that the US is being hypocritical here. My point was only ever that regardless of morality, the use of force is always legal, and synonymous with establishing law, unless there is a greater force making it illegal. There is nobody that will punish the US for punishing Syria, so therefore the US gets to make the law.
If legality is nothing more than the will of the strong then the concept of "law" is meaningless as nothing can be illegal by definition. It is also senseless to argue that force "establishes" law, since you have already claimed that legality is at all times subject to the whims of the powerful.
Quite seriously, you might want to read The Republic if you haven't yet. Thrasymachus and Socrates have an exchange somewhat along these lines over whether might makes right, and Thrasymachus does not end up the better for it.
I don't really understand. Why can nothing be illegal by definition? The use of force is only illegal if there is somebody stronger stopping me. Can you point to an instance where this is untrue? If there isn't such a person, I'm creating a law. For example, if I spank my children for swearing, I'm making a law against swearing, and if there's no local, state, or federal law prohibiting it, then nobody will initiate force against me. Depending on how a law is made, it may be inconsistent, unjust, totalitarian, etc.
I also don't understand why it is senseless to say that force establishes law. That's what law enforcement officers do, they use force to establish / enforce the law. Of course legality is subject to the whims of the powerful; in a democracy, "whims of the powerful" approximates majority rule.
A "law" is just a rule that is punished when broken. If there is no punishment, it is a guideline or moral.
By definition, if the actions of the powerful determine what is legal, then the acquiescence of the powerful to the status quo defines legality as much as their embrace of force. And that leads you into Panglossian absurdity: there is nothing in the world which is illegal because everything which happens has been implicitly permitted to happen.
You can get around this by saying that sometimes the powerful do not act in their own interest (perhaps they lack foresight to take preemptive action, or misperceive their own interest), but this puts you in the same paradox that Thrasymachus found himself in his debate with Socrates.
The core problem is that you are making a very cynical argument that there is no law or morality which can or should prevent us from killing other people, but then use words like "legal" and "law" to try to disguise the moral bankruptcy of this position. Yet you cannot have it both ways. Either law and morality exist or they do not. And if law does not exist as anything except the interests of the powerful, then you are either trapped in Thrasymachus' paradox, or forced to the conclusion that this is the best of all possible worlds and nothing is by definition ever illegal.
It feels like you're taking what I'm saying and trying to shoehorn it into an old story you know. What you're saying about Socrates doesn't really match what I'm saying, as far as I can tell. I also don't see how my arguments are cynical, morally bankrupt, paradoxical, deceitful, meaningless, senseless, or as you started this whole thing, a false dichotomy. Like, I get that perhaps the character of Thrasymachus was like this, but I'm not that guy.
So, to be clear, I'm not arguing against the goodness of governments, democracy, laws, morals, or keeping people alive. I'm just trying to clarify the facts about how force, law, and morals are related to each other, in practical terms as they apply to all power structures.
> there is nothing in the world which is illegal because everything which happens has been implicitly permitted to happen.
Where did I indicate that I believe this? The illegal things that happen get punished, at least some of the time. In the other direction, if something gets punished at least some of the time, it is an illegal thing. It's a stronger law if it gets punished more often, but punishing only a percentage of offenses is still enforcement in general. If it's a law that is never upheld, it's a law in theory but not in practice. If it's a law in practice but not in theory, something like "don't be impolite to the cops" or "don't make Daddy angry when he's drinking", it's an unwritten rule. Why is this an incorrect perception?
> The core problem is that you are making a very cynical argument that there is no law or morality which can or should prevent us from killing other people
First, morality and law are distinct. Anyone can say we should or shouldn't kill people on the basis of their own morality. Morality is converted into law by the use of force. For example, natural / human rights, which correspond directly to morals, are not guarantees, they are ideals about how we would like things to be. However, they are converted into legal rights by the use of force, or the threat thereof. This provides some semblance of a guarantee about things.
At the international level, there are no hard laws stopping the US from doing a lot of different things, because there is no world police. As such there is only really morality, no guarantees, and so by using force we are effectively making laws out of our own morality, in the same way that a dictator does.
And, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be prevented from killing people, nor in this thread am I arguing that it's morally okay for the US to attack Syria (it seems slightly better than doing nothing, but it could be a big mess), I'm really just stating the fact that bombing Syria is its own legal justification because there is no higher authority making laws that will stop the US from doing so.
I personally like the idea of one world government to stop this kind of ad hoc lawmaking, but that doesn't stop it from being ad hoc lawmaking. I even agreed with you that it would be better if the US ratified the Geneva Protocols first, but I don't see that's inconsistent with my understanding of what's actually happening here.
Basically, I feel like we are talking at cross purposes.
P.S. I realized after some thinking that maybe the problem is this: I'm claiming might makes legally right, whereas you seem to think I'm claiming might makes morally right, which I'm not.
Maybe you can look at it this way: if you take your original post and re-write it so that it doesn't contain the words "legal" or "moral" or reference any abstract principles other than the interests of the powerful, you'll have the same argument you are making, except it will come across as absurd:
> Since at the most base level the use of force is necessary to [exert force], bombing is its own justification [for using force]. We're making a [use of force] that says [we are using force]....
The words "legal" and "international law" make your argument sound more reasonable, but only because the reader assumes they mean something like a codification of moral or social principles.
My goal is not trying to be argumentative. It's that I'm reflexively pacifist and deeply skeptical of arguments which seek to justify violence, especially when made from a position of relative power or hypocrisy, and in a way which glosses over the moral problems in killing people.
> The words "legal" and "international law" make your argument sound more reasonable, but only because the reader assumes they mean something like a codification of moral or social principles.
I think the assumption that laws actually correspond to widespread morals and social principles is the fundamental problem here. It's not a valid assumption. I think it's actually immoral to believe that because something is lawful it must be good. In other words, if somebody actually does have "legal justification" to kill someone else (no greater authority will stop them), that doesn't necessarily make it a good thing, e.g. in the case of capital punishment in the US, or in the case of using chemical weapons in Syria absent some kind of foreign intervention, or in the case of the US bombing Syria.
Morals are relative, and not everyone will agree with a law. Illegal things can be moral, immoral things can be legal. In the best case everyone's morals contribute to the law, in the worst case it's only the lawmaker's morals that truly matter. None of that changes the fact that for something to be a law there has to be a punishment for breaking the law, and that punishment for doing something makes it into a de facto law. It's unpalatable but there it is.
I'm a pacifist too, for what it's worth; I believe violence is only a good idea when it prevents even greater violence, I believe it's a good thing for power to be concentrated by governments, and I don't like the current state of international relations where rich countries tell poor countries what to do. But, I'm not an anarcho-pacifist.
Fair enough. My complaint was with the statement that bombing is its own legal justification. As above, it is always ethical or moral considerations that "justify" action (make them just). To the extent that law is simply an expression of the interests of the powerful, the argument for use of force becomes absurd.
