Sunday, September 11, 2016

Giuliani is Deplorable




When former NY Mayor and former US Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani makes a statement like "Until the war is over, anything is legal," he betrays a hollow moral core. Anything is legal? Anything at all? Torture? Mass murder of civilians? When one dispenses with any respect for international law (and yes, there are laws pertaining to the private property rights of people during a war), one shows a disrespect for the moral and logical foundations for why laws exist. He's envisioning a moral universe where only might creates right. Why not torture, kidnap, even rape people? He's ceded the high ground entirely. There is no American exceptionalism in this except in the sense that "These things are heinous, except when the US does them".

(It's also logistically stupid: the oil is in the ground--how does one actually "take" all of it away? The only way this is imaginable is for the territory to be occupied by the US militarily until every last barrel is sucked up--think about that. How would that work out? ISIL makes money off of human trafficking also--would it then make sense to take all the humans?)

It's like he really is no kind of expert on anything to do with foreign policy or anti-terrorism or government or basic human decency at all. But other than that, he is a very good spokesperson for Donald Trump.

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