Decade of war amidst unending war

There are two kinds of war, which is to say that there are two distinct and separate categories of warfare.  One kind that we know is that waged by Nations against other Nations and that is formal, legitimate war or war that takes place within the accountability structure of Nation States.  Nations are accountable actors and they are all equal as to type: while some are larger and more capable and others weak and less capable they are all Nation States as a category and represent a place on earth, a people living within that territory and even when inflicted by forms of dictatorship or despotism that government is one that is accountable to its fellow Nation States for its activity amongst them.  Accountable military actors represent that Nation, are held in an accountability structure by that government, fight under a banner and wear the uniform of that Nation and are amenable to the formal structure of war which includes cease-fires as a form of treaty (indeed the highest form, even when temporary) and can be officially ended by the governments involved, even to the point of extinguishment of one of those governments to end it.

Formal, declared war is a way for a Nation, large or small, weak or powerful, to assert its standing as a legitimate actor for its people to act with respect to them so as to assert their standing as a Nation amongst all Nations to be treated like any other Nation.  It is an understood venue of war that, even in the era of Total War, has limits to it which is the ending of one (or more) of the governments involved as institutions.  The people who had been under that form of government now have the right, as a people, to decide their own way in the world and settle internal problems and re-establish legitimate government.  Often that has not been the case in the history of mankind and the results can be ethnic populations that undergo unrest, cause civil war and otherwise seek to reassert their people's right to having a definite and defined government that is different than the one imposed on them.  When that government is defined, when it raises a banner, when those fighting to establish it put on uniforms and place their military actions as accountable to their rebel government and to the people for which they are fighting, they are performing an act of legitimization in seeking to establish this government to represent these people.  This, too, is legitimate and if but one Nation amongst the brotherhood of Nations recognizes and supports them then this organization is considered a Nation coming into being.

In summary that is one category of war and while war is a horror at least this type of war can end and reach a settlement.  That is desirable amongst the affairs of men.  No matter how many die, no matter the brutal logic that it entails, this formal form of warfare is desired when peace cannot be sustained due to the differences amongst men within the brotherhood of Nations.

There is another form of warfare, however, as war is not born amongst Nations but within the hearts of men as an inalienable right and power that cannot be divorced from individuals.  Indeed we recognize that this happens amongst animals who have a right and power to defend themselves against predation, and those seeking such predation we call predators.  The actions of such warfare is, then, depredation: that of acting like a predator upon others with no formal recourse against such actions.  This form of warfare, by its nature and source, is informal and takes place by men as individuals who can form groups but form no government and seek to establish no Nation.  If civilized man recognizes that Nations and the State system used to run a Nation are limits upon passion to which we submit so as to have a protection of our society as distinct from other societies and to be represented, then it is to be recognized that those adhering to this framework agree to quell their passions and allow for only accountable actors to declare war.  Those that seek to act with the power of war on their own, no matter their reasons, if they become an unaccountable actor amongst Nations, then we are to call their actions depredation.  By renouncing to utilize the civilized form of accountability, they reduce themselves to their savage nature, which is base in all regards, and that they have reduced themselves to savagery as they now put their actions into only one venue of accountability: warfare.

This kind of warfare is of a separate kind and nature from formal war and it is informal and illegitimate war.  If the formal kind is that done in public with accountability and, thusly, Public War, then this form done in private with no accountability is Private War.  These are distinct and separate categories of warfare and have been recognized as such since the dawn of mankind and the first Nations created by man to represent a people.  If a Nation is a creative framework to foster an understandable system amongst men, then those performing Private War are antagonists to this agreement and see that only the natural, savage predation structure is valid and legitimize that viewpoint by their actions.  We call these people by various category names, yet they all have the same underlying viewpoint to them: pirates, brigands, corsairs, freebooters, armies of thieves and terrorists.  That list is not all inclusive, but demonstrates that the supposed cause to perform such Private War is not limited to any ideology nor religion, but is universal in its scope.  Thus no matter what stated cause those performing such actions are claimed, their activity is, one and all, savage and against the structure of Nations in all regards.  This is not a 'clash of civilizations' as that puts forth that there is a structured environment for such a clash to take place amongst men to sort out their differences.  No this clash is amongst the civilized of all kinds and against those seeking to assert their will upon all mankind no matter if it be to plunder or booty, or just to become a warlord over a people and subjugate them to the will of that savage predation.

Private War can have many stated causes but its effects are the same, universally, and it is to tear at the civilized nature of man who works hard to put his savage nature aside and assert his positive natural rights on behalf of himself to his own betterment and, thereby, to the betterment of all civilized men.  Civilization is an agreed set of limits upon the actions of individuals to which we hold each other accountable.  Those performing illegitimate and informal war hold themselves and their sole standard as individuals up as supreme amongst men and will inflict it upon any they come across if they so like and have no limits upon their actions.  If civilizing oneself is an act of construction, then reverting to savagery can only result in destruction of the works of man both physically and as a mental framework that we agree to abide by.  Times can, indeed, change and bring forth great and new excitements and stimulation via the heights that can be achieved amongst the civilized of the earth.  Unfortunately the nature of nature does not change and is unchanging, and by being part of that framework and natural in all regards (no matter what we create it is all within this realm of nature) we are under threat of reverting to savagery.  While man does have a social instinct, as all animals capable of any thought so acquire, it can be put forth that if a single generation of man were to lose the ability of understanding what the limits of his actions are, then the entire edifice of civilization would collapse into savagery and that civilization would need to start all over again from that most base of states within Nature.

It is desirable, indeed part of the foundation of, formal war that there be an end to it and that a regularized course of affairs resume amongst Nations.  Nations and their governments called States are not permanent edifices amongst men, however, and it is sobering to see how often mighty Nations crumble under savagery.  Sophisticated systems of trade, discourse and intercourse amongst Nations can fall away as dust under savage man and his actions.  Building, construction and creation of artifacts and governments is a long and laborious process and yet, apparently, those that seek to end them can do so in very short order as depredation creates isolation from the very civilized structures created by men and those structures are seen as not safeguarding civilization itself.  Such governments can implode by ill moves (no matter how noble in cause) and their own weight causes them to implode, yes.  Such structures, even those that are lean and capable, can also implode at the slightest hint that they are no longer capable in safeguarding the very structure that allows them to exist.

From this it can be seen that those waging informal war can wage it not just on individuals, but upon the creations of those people in the form of States to run their Nations.  Informal, predatory and illegitimate war can be waged against Nations and by their very informal source there is no easy formal way to go to war against those doing this.  Military actions without an obvious object cannot be brought into being and only responses given to attacks as the only and defensive venue against those savages seeking to end a Nation and its State.  While war can be declared against those creating a safe haven for such actors, those actors are not attached to those people nor that territory and may basely flee to create a new predatory atmosphere for themselves elsewhere.  These ones flee the judgment of war against them and seek to inflict it upon the weak so as to weaken all of mankind and liquidate civilization at that most low of levels.  The power of any Nation, no matter how mighty, is brought low by such savages as they, by their chosen path, seek to remain unaccountable to anyone on this earth.   

Yet, for that, there is a venue that Nation States can take beyond the formal military means and that is to declare such actors who oppose them from the informal realm as being pirates, savages and an enemy to all mankind.  These are then not the Public Enemies of a Nation but its Private Enemies and a Nation State can then exercise specific articles against individuals and organizations that are in the Private realm.  Within this realm is the authorization of private individuals of that Nation State to be given papers and limits to their actions to predate upon the predators.  These are known as Letters of Marque and Reprisal, as they can be given not just to go after a particular asset of such savages, but to bring a fight to them wherever they are within the limits of warfare done by accountable actors.  Thus a Public action may be taken and authorized to put Private individuals into the role of accountable and self-organized military to go after the assets of those who seek and make war from the Private realm upon a Nation and its people.  Such counter-predation is under the oldest form of understandable warfare that is part and parcel of the savage realm: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.  A simple dollar for dollar accounting in which every dollar of destructive cost that has been inflicted by an individual or unaccountable organization may be legitimately seized by them to yield up Private returns for those risking their lives to do so.  This, too, is limited warfare in that it does have an end once dollar amounts of cost value are reached: the score has been evened and settled with as much damage inflicted as has been given.  Amongst even the most savage of animals it is understood that the horn of an antelope may gore a lion, that a puffer fish may injure the mouth that bites it and perhaps even inflict a mortal wound where one is being administered.  That is savage justice and yet one that is comprehensible to civilized man as we are all creatures of Nature and see this form of reprisal as legitimate as it is not only codified into civilized law but is based in Natural Law.

What this creates, and civilized man is one that asserts creative nature above base predation, is a two-fold system of justice to hold those waging war against Nations accountable.

The first is the martial realm in which such illegitimate actors can be put to death with only the most basic of trials to see if they are fighting for a government in a declared war while wearing a uniform and being accountable to a Nation State's government.  Fight without these things and you are subject to the laws martial and your end is summary execution.

Within the realms martial are also the private takings of goods and artifacts and despoiling the very things utilized by savage man to wage war upon civilized mankind.  Here the act is to be authorized to do so and then seek out and predate upon the predators, strike where they are weak and take anything of any value or destroy that which they use, and then yield it up for cash payments usually at auction.  Demonstrate that these are the goods of such savages and the payments begin to defray the cost they have inflicted in the private realm and the funds flow in from that private realm via the Nation's authorized and legitimate actors.  Once the dollar cost of inflicted damage has been reached, the Letters are then withdrawn and those actors formerly utilized go back to purely private concerns.

Together those are the complete martial or war track of accountability: end actors that you run across militarily or those actively waging war against the Nation, and send private actors out to start putting the pain of attacking the civilized upon the wallets and goods of those doing the attacking.  This is rough justice but it is the venue that the savages actively seek, thus a wholly vital realm that they will easily understand in their most base of states.

The other realm is that of public law in which the crimes of piracy are applied to those who are caught when not actively engaged in warfare or just at large in the civil venue.  Piracy is a simple charge to prosecute as it has a touchstone of waging war without any legitimacy granted by a Nation State.  War waged illegitimately can also fall into this venue, but rarely elicits a civil trial save when there are no authorized military actors to take such people into custody.  These savages caught in the civil realm an be put on trial and found guilty of their crimes and the proper punishment performed for their actions.

Unlike other forms of civil prosecution, the crime of piracy being both civil and military allows for trials in both venues to occur, although because of the savage nature of such actors the military is preferred as they are the ones best suited to sort out just what is and is not a legitimate military action.  Even those prosecuted by civil means for piracy can undergo a separate trial for military crimes associated with piracy: the civil penalties due to death and destruction of property is a separate realm of jurisdiction from waging war illegitimately and while the action may overlap those two realms they each are separated in the accountability chain for that activity taken.  There is no 'double jeopardy' between mere civil crimes and crimes of warfare, and both venues are open to civilized man against those waging war without legitimacy and predating upon civilized man.  An act of blowing up a building, say, can be both a civil crime (call it terrorism or simple destruction of private property with intent to kill or injure) and a war crime (that of waging war without legitimate basis).  Do note that while civil punishments may vary, the military punishment is without variance and must be so to uphold the formal and legitimate form of warfare: by putting such actors to an end there is a clear and decisive statement of what is and is not acceptable in the realm of war by a civilized military structure.

Upon informal war there is a value judgment but it is not one based upon the supposed causes brought forth by those actors, but a judgment that such form of war is illegitimate no matter what the stated cause is.  Thus the judgment upon why people revert to savagery is set aside to deal with the fact that they have decided, on their own, to reduce themselves to the savage state of being and become a predator and wage a war of depredation upon all mankind.  That martial realm of judgment is hard, nasty and justified as it is not we, the civilized, forcing men to act like savage predators but they who become predators forcing this realm of decision upon us.  Sad that they could not take up the myriad forms of civilized discontent to express themselves and create a better world, but that decision is not forced on them to become uncivilized.  No matter the supposed 'justice' of a cause, to take up savage war is to wash away all of those arguments and put the most base fact of savage war taken up by individuals into clear stark light.  Woe befall those who seek to muddy this starkness and they do no benefit to mankind and can even be seen as trying to debase man to a lower standard by trying to legitimize savagery.  No matter how noble the calling, there is not elevated basis for those that choose savagery willingly and no trusting them in the future to be reformed as they have so easily shrugged off the burdens of being civilized once and can easily do so again.  There is not a gray area to be seen between these realms, no hint of shading on the border: one is civilized and adheres to civilized formal war, or one does not.

It is a life and death decision.

One not forced upon any individual but chosen freely each and every moment of every day, and only once one steps from civilized action does the choice to return get barred. 

It is hard work to remain civilized.

Sad that there are those who seek to legitimize savagery.

No good shall ever come of that.

Roots of constitutional government

Elsewhere I have two posts on this topic (part I, part II) taking a look at where the US Constitution gets some of its roots.  Those roots are much further back than just the Enlightenment Era and the post-Westphalian conception of how a State is to be run so as to allow individual liberty of religious freedom.  That in and of itself is a great advance in that the State as conceived in the post-Westphalian West is something that while it can have a general religious direction, it is not seen as a benefit to promulgate worship at a religion directed by the State.  With that said, post-1648 thought is built on preceding lines of thought and the direction Continental Europe would take between the slow retreat of the Western Roman Empire (ca. 500AD) and the 30 Years War is not the main thread that was followed by the old Roman Province of Britannia.

If the swapping of Roman rule for local rule happened anywhere the fastest it was at the outskirts of the Empire, which was Britannia in the North and up to the Rhine river and Germanic peoples to the North East.  The Germanic peoples and their close Scandinavian cousins (excepting the Laplanders in Finland who have a language closer to the Bosque in Spain) had territory under their domain that stretched as far as the Upper Volga river, as far south as the Danube, and then westward towards what we would call Switzerland and then north up to Denmark and Norway.  The retreat of Roman rule meant territory going back to local concerns and smaller tribes in this larger cohort of Germanic and Viking populations could then see such territory as ripe for plunder or trade.  The Roman Catholic Church tended to represent concentrations of local wealth when the Empire receded and those outposts became focal points for raiding due to the accumulated wealth.  Two peoples of what we would call Denmark, the Angles and the Saxons, saw the East of Britannia as being similar to their lands in climate and far larger for spreading out in expanse.  By the investing of local populations in moving to these new lands (as Vikings were doing in the area of Northumbria and York) permanent settlements of a new type and legal view got planted in that territory.

These Anglo-Saxons retained a Viking system of authority in government which rested not upon a King to make law, but a King to govern the law and be a part of the body of the governed.  Unlike Kings in Continental Europe, the Kings of Viking peoples were held accountable to the Thing, which is a once to twice annual gathering of local Law Givers to administer justice, settle disputes and then receive local problems to be taken up to the next realm of government at what we would call a 'county' level.  These ill-defined regions tended to have local governors that were Jarls or Earls, and amongst their gatherings of Law Givers one or two would go to the largest assembly of the Thing that would then present multi-county problems to the King and also tell of how the law was being administered.  Law was not so much handed down by the King as settled upon by this group and the King, and then it had to be administered at the more local levels which had representation at the highest level via the Law Givers.  As a later Swedish King would put it: No King is above the law.

The Anglo-Saxon tradition of local law administration also had a relatively unique piece to it that is one that we would recognize today.  Trials, as such, had a law giver but the actual judgment of guilt or innocence was performed by peers with no interest in the dispute.  Thus law was judged by a jury and administered by a Law Giver and to be convicted one had to be convicted by a jury of his peers.  This system of law had proven to be durable over time and allowed for local management of affairs in a diverse Kingdom and was also one that scaled well downwards until there was only one local governing area or shire, and upwards until it encompassed many disparate geographic regions (as under King Canute).

One major record for this consolidation of what would become Angla-Land in old Britannia, was The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (seen textually at the Online Medieval and Classical Library), sponsored by King Alfred the Great of Wessex.  It is of note that between ca. 500 AD and the rule of Alfred (871-899 AD) that the Anglo-Saxons now differentiated themselves as a different peoples from the Vikings and the Germanic peoples.  Linguistically and genetically they do source from those peoples, but through a process of inter-marriage with local tribes that survived and amalgamation with those tribes via the extensible shire and borough system (a burr or burg or borough being a small unit within a town that self-governs) the Anglalanders now had a National perspective.  King Alfred cemented this by commissioning The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle which would be kept in the common tongue (not in Latin) which would do two things: confirm that government was to be understood widely amongst the governed, and, more importantly, solidify what would become the English language in use and spelling.

National identity via commonly held government that is administered locally and having even the highest reaches of the government under the power of the law are all important and vital concepts in the formulation of constitutional government.  While constitutional government can often be 'in name only' and a sham used by a ruling organization that puts itself above the law, it contains the germinal seed of governing that goes quite beyond those who abuse it and remains as a reference point for the ideal that government is, indeed, something that is done in accordance to the people and in a way the people of a Nation understand.

With the expansion of English rule over the older Kingdoms such as Sussex, Kent and Mercia, and the absorbing of Viking groups in the regions of Northumbria and York, then into Scotland, the new system of government served at once to break down larger territorial blocks (into shires and newly placed fortified towns with boroughs) and yet retain Earls who would oversee these more local territories that used to be Kingdoms in their own right.  That would place tension within the English system all the way to Ethelred II, and would even see Kingdoms temporarily resurrected when one Earl or another would gain enough power to try and upset the current ruling order.

Even though this stuff gets written down, it is merely agreements that are renewed by Kings with their Earls who are locally powerful aristocrats but are accountable to local law.  The written form of constitution had not been put fully in place, save as these agreements, so that when Alfred agrees to have taxation that is only amenable to his Earls, he forms a limit to the power of the King (that is the State) in that realm.  Taxation, from that, must be something that is amenable to the representative aristocracy for a given region and, what would follow to the displeasure or some Kings, would that for there to be such taxation there must be representation.  The Monarch would have some areas of taxation left solely to the State under his control, such as admiralty taxes and port taxes, meant for use and maintenance of ports, protection of them and even raising a navy.  Over time and abuse those would also move into the purely representative realm as the precedent had been established early on under Alfred.

In our Constitution it is interesting that the Supreme Court with the case of US v Wiltberger (1820) (which I looked at in the context for piracy) establishes that the extent of reach for US maritime law via the admiralty goes to a time prior to King Richard II and (if memory serves) goes back to King William.  William of Hastings comes in at a point where there is strife between Ethelred II and his Earls, due to changes in taxation, raising of troops and other actions being taken that were seen as not holding to the agreements between the Earls and the King since Alfred.  Ethelred II had the unfortunate problem of being on the throne when one of the strongest Viking Kings, King Sweyn of Denmark, had set his sights on Angla-Land as the best place to expand Viking rule.  King Sweyn went far beyond prior Viking raiders of the prior two to three centuries, and actually established military encampments and localized rule in surrounding areas.  At the Battle of Maldon a diverse Kingdom under Ethelred II was represented to try and halt the expansion of King Sweyn's Vikings.  For all the glory and songs about Maldon, Ethelred II lost the battle and was on the way to losing his Kingdom unless he could come to some agreement with his Earls. King Sweyn took the day in 1013, the Kingdom and early in 1014 he died. That defeat and subsequent retreat to the Isle of Wight, meant that Ethelred II had to send his son Edward as part of the agreement to pull in his tax policies and otherwise moderate his imposition on the Earls.  Edward was, in other words, hostage to the agreement of 1014:

A.D. 1014. This year King Sweyne ended his days at Candlemas, the third day before the nones of February; and the same year Elfwy, Bishop of York, was consecrated in London, on the festival of St. Juliana. The fleet all chose Knute for king; whereupon advised all the counsellors of England, clergy and laity, that they should send after King Ethelred; saying, that no sovereign was dearer to them than their natural lord, if he would govern them better than he did before. Then sent the king hither his son Edward, with his messengers; who had orders to greet all his people, saying that he would be their faithful lord -- would better each of those things that they disliked -- and that each of the things should be forgiven which had been either done or said against him; provided they all unanimously, without treachery, turned to him. Then was full friendship established, in word and in deed and in compact, on either side. And every Danish king they proclaimed an outlaw for ever from England. Then came King Ethelred home, in Lent, to his own people; and he was gladly received by them all. Meanwhile, after the death of Sweyne, sat Knute with his army in Gainsborough until Easter; and it was agreed between him and the people of Lindsey, that they should supply him with horses, and afterwards go out all together and plunder. But King Ethelred with his full force came to Lindsey before they were ready; and they plundered and burned, and slew all the men that they could reach. Knute, the son of Sweyne, went out with his fleet (so were the wretched people deluded by him), and proceeded southward until he came to Sandwich. There he landed the hostages that were given to his father, and cut off their hands and ears and their noses. Besides all these evils, the king ordered a tribute to the army that lay at Greenwich, of 21,000 pounds. This year, on the eve of St. Michael's day, came the great sea-flood, which spread wide over this land, and ran so far up as it never did before, overwhelming many towns, and an innumerable multitude of people.

This would not be the first time nor the last time that the Earls would hold the King to account to them, and the Earls would also demonstrate that while a powerful Earl could reign in the King, other Earls would not necessarily let that Earl then drag the Nation into a civil war.

King Sweyn was capable, competent and ready to make local agreements to start chipping away at England.  King Canute, however, would go for everything and, in 1016, actually do that.  Even with the replacement of so many English Earls with Danish Jarls, often with the expediency of killing of aristocrats and nobles, King Canute would then do something upon ascending the throne in England and agree to the prior compacts between the King and the Earls.  Yes he did garner a lot of booty and outright cash from this, but he put a guarantee on the continuity of government which, with a number of his own people in place, would assure a relative calm for England.  Canute had the great fortune to do all of that before he was 20.  He would also hold Norway, Denmark, Brittany and almost every other Viking land and become the last King of the Vikings.  In doing that he sought to allow local law prevail in each place as a uniform code of laws was unsuited to such vast and disparate holdings by any Monarch.

So, why would King Canute agree to have limits on the power he could exert over taxation, raising of men at arms and such?

The answer is simple and it is what drew his father, King Sweyn, to England: it is rich.

All of that raiding, tribute, and the rest of it had a point and that point was that the internal trade system of England afforded a prosperous economy.  From the time of Vikings holding York at least until Alfred if not after, York was the second largest trading city in Europe and it was situated in what was England.  That put it right after Constantinople in trade wealth.  Trade wealth, however, is transactional in nature not put into monuments or into vast storehouses of gold, but moving from hand to hand in exchange for goods and services.  Taxation on such wealth can garner large amounts of funds for a State but that also puts the very trade, itself, at the peril of over-taxation.  If Vikings understood one thing, it was that while local people must trade, the place of trade could move and today's central trading spot could become a ghost-town if over-taxed.  Thus keeping in the traditional agreements, traditional tax rates and traditional restrictions on the power of the King was agreeable to Canute due to the wealth it assured via continuity of trade.

Prior to William the Conqueror the system of England is one that, while largely not adhering to the written law standards of Roman law, is something comprehensible to the modern reader.  In fact we begin to see the outlines of a number of vital features embodied in the US Constitution showing up as common practice agreements in England.

- Representative government and holding the governors accountable to the law.  If there is any feature of US law it is that those administering law are held accountable to the same law and the same standards of it.  That is a strongly egalitarian principle that seems to evade many other revolutions that claim to be about egalitarianism and yet put a ruling class that is unaccountable to the law into a governing role.

- Trial by jury is ancient in the Anglo-Saxon lineage and pre-dates the migration of the Angles and Saxons to Britannia.

- Limited State power via a representative class in the governing role is a form of republicanism.  Not called republican by name, but the essence of breaking down the power structure of a Nation State into separate realms of power to a judiciary, legislative and executive is, inherently, republican in nature.  While the roles of these areas were malleable and remain malleable, that they are present and distinct is easy to discern with the earliest of written agreements between King and Earls.

- Another vital concept showing up is federalism, although not named as such, the ability of local government to hold the next higher form accountable to it is one that is clearly demonstrated by Ethelred II.  In fact the power to raise armies is directly related to the agreement of those local parts of government to agree to their part of the agreement between King and Earls.  That is not a conflict between the Earls as legislative group (moderating taxes) but in a direct power relation in support of the Nation State from the sub-National level.  That and having local law givers and juries figure out if they like higher level law then puts a distinctly federal cast into a republican system, yet neither is named as such as this is just common practice of government.

These are powerful and potent concepts that the Framers of the US Constitution could rely on because they had been time-tested by 1787 having been in practice for over 600 years by then in England.  Far from being new, these were old ideas that were put into a constitutional and written framework which at once both regularizes and solidifies the practices.

What followed King Canute is the son of King  Ethelred II, King Edward the Confessor.  With the return of Edward came rising conflict between him and Godwin, Earl of Wessex, which would put England into turmoil but not open civil war.  In a matter of months the Earls would hold the King to account for the conflict between the two of them, and yet, when Godwin gets the upper hand, the Earls would then side with the King to put Godwin in check.  The idea was to keep a continuity of peace within England and to put the Earls in the position of being able to veto the strongest amongst them and the King as well.  These conflicts left the Kingdom weakened internally, even after the death of Godwin, with problems between the sons of Godwin with the earl of Mercia (which had been a Kingdom prior to its absorption into England).  Harold would have to deal with not just Tostig (Godwin's son in Northumbria), but in the year after his father's death in 1066 the agreement he had with William in Brittany and a Viking incursion near York.

Of these things only dealing with William at Hastings would prove to be too much and some of that brought on by a prior agreement with William after Harold had been shipwrecked traveling between Brittany and England.  The agreement to have William in power after the death of Edward the Confessor put into motion what would be known as the Norman Conquest under King William.

King William attempted to put a ducal system of nobility on top of the Earl/shire system that was then currently in place in England and even utilized the past agreements system to attempt a reconciliation amongst the Earls.  Although a few Earls did sign on to backing William, many did not and they found themselves chased down, executed or went into self-exile and lost power.  The Harrowing of Northumbria would be one of the worst parts of this and it would lead to a devastated region in England that would be later recorded in the Domesday book commissioned by William.  This is one of the great books that accounts for all property in England down to the last horse, cow and pig and is done so that King William can get an idea of just what sort of tax base he is dealing with.

By force of arms the Earldoms went down and the ducal system established military strongpoints under Dukes from William's extended family in Brittany.  With the ducal system also comes a different system of law enforcement, that being the position of sheriff who is also the tax collector for a given area under a Duke.  Along with these new systems would come the concept of the King's Land which would have different laws over it than the rest of the lands of England.  The King's Land laws would expand under William's son, William Rufus, so that even scaring a deer in the Royal Forest had a relatively nasty punishment attached to it.  During the reign of King William II the amount of land held in the King's name went up to 25% of all the land in England.

Under William II there would also be strife between the Church and the King as the King had the power to appoint Bishops and Arch-Bishops and when he decided not to fill a position, then the land and wealth fell into the hands of the King.  This was not the only concern of the Church as William II also kept close company with a male friend, produced no heirs and for all his martial skill appeared to be homosexual.

Thus amongst the common people and even yeoman class, there were problems with William II that started with the changes to the tax system via sheriffs and the encroachment of the King's Land via the Forestry Laws that were making life difficult for many.  Amongst the aristocrats and lesser nobility, the taste of what William I had done coupled with the evident land grab of William II put them ill at ease and an uncertain succession was in no one's interest.  And the Church had problems both on spiritual and practical grounds.  These were all problems which, no matter how well run other affairs of State were run, pointed to near-term problems that were not being addressed and some few were being made worse.  The death of William Rufus during a hunting accident left only his brother, Henry son of William I, as the closest claimant to the throne, although other cousins in Europe could also lay claim via kinship to William I and his wife.

If you were Henry faced with this, what would you do?

Would you continue the path of William II, your brother who had his problems put on display and was gaining ire amongst many classes in the populace?  This was the European path and it wasn't working that well in England.  Yet a stern and capable new King might just be able to solidify those gains and try to change the centuries old culture of England in two generations.

Would you try to put a cap on things and let an able relative take the throne (and the blame) for the turmoil that was coming and try to stand aside to save your own skin and, perhaps, offer a return to things only a bit less bad than they were under your brother's reign?

Would you take to the throne, and abase yourself before the Church (thereby crippling the treasury, or what was left of it at any rate) and then try to persuade it to be your interlocutor with the people?

Would you try to pull a Canute, re-affirm the power base amongst the nobles, withdraw much of the Forestry Law and coverage, assert the traditional role of the Church and undo what could be undone of the tax system your father put in place?

The time to act on any of these was short as even a relatively good sized war meant that the closest relative with a claim would be no less than a month away (with good travel) and no more than 6 months away (with major problems).  What Henry did was not only pull a Canute, but actually print up copies of what he was going to do and sent those to be read out in every town and village in England.  This would become The Charter of Liberties of Henry I and it would not only repeal many laws and tax systems, but also ensure the rights of the minor nobles and aristocracy for inheritance.  By re-establishing the seignorage on coin minting (if you brought in an ounce of gold you typically had to pay a certain part for the minting, or the King took that up as part of the cost of running things via taxation), assuring coinage, and re-establishing much of the traditional governing system, King Henry would, at a single stroke, win over everyone from the commoners to the Dukes and by utilizing the Church during his confirmation ceremonies and moving to restore Church lands and nominate Bishops and Arch-Bishops, put himself in good graces with the Church.  All of that meant that any other claimants to the throne faced a unified England under King Henry.

The Charter of Liberties of Henry I became heavily reprinted and later Kings would assure everyone that they held to that Charter which protected the liberties of conscience for worship, regular coinage, protection of property at least down to the level of Baron, and the local application of law to which all the aristocrats and nobles were also held accountable.  The framework that The Charter of Liberties of Henry I established became the template for the Magna Carta and for all later coronations of Kings and Queens of England and Great Britain.  It holds key pieces that would be put into the US Constitution and are recognizable as such.

One of the first is uniform coinage, which is a traditional way to assure a population that their trade is well regulated via consistent weights and measures.  That power was given to the US Mint and to a bureau of standards, and while part of many other legal systems, it remains a touchstone for the US especially now that the currency is no longer tied to precious metals.  A traditional way to re-establish a solid economy is to lay fears of devaluation to rest and that remains as true today as it did in the time of Henry I.

Another is the enshrining of the law above all people in the land, including the King.  Due process of law for inheritance and becoming penniless are given as powers to the US Congress via the Constitution and the concept of regularity of the law in its drafting and consistent application would become a major point in the centuries to follow in England.

Traditional, that is to say consensual, taxation is restored giving local government a say in the overall amount that could be taxed in the Nation.

Withdrawal of much of the Forestry Law becomes a major relief for the common man in England so that spooking deer did not cause one to be maimed, and was a major lesson to the Framers of the US Constitution in the necessary limits of land held by the Nation's State to require asking for its use and to enshrine that the land of an individual State actually belonged to it as it had to consent for usage for the common good by the National government.  It is an example of restriction of government from becoming onerous and abusive via confiscation of land by fiat and one that was worth regularizing in the US Constitution.

The Charter of Liberties of Henry I is not an actual constitution so much as it is a written agreement to a contract.  The people, as represented through their local and regional government, sets forth grounds for which they will be governed and restrictions on actions by the King, and the King then must agree to those terms so as to govern the people in the way they wish to be governed.  In fact all constitutions written by the people and proclaimed by them in overwhelming majority is just that:  a contract that any who wish to govern must abide by.  There are sham constitutions, those foisted upon a population by a ruling elite that then have no intention of abiding by it, or of having written themselves so many powers that the people of a Nation have no representation in government.  That is par for the course with human nature, after all.  What the US Constitution, in particular, has is a depth of understanding of just where the power for such a government comes from and that those who would govern are ultimately held accountable for their adhering to the contract by the people and their representatives.    The recourse for abuses and excesses is to find those that will stop such abuses and excesses and go back to the core basis of the constitution and re-affirm it not just in word but in substance.

The lesson of Henry and even Canute is that this is best done quickly, major portions of the abuses ripped out as fast as possible and as sharply as possible, re-affirm continuity of government so that those left out in the cold by the changes know that they don't have a recourse to change the system back, and then stick to that and pass it on as a durable lesson.  A once working government that has moved to excesses is found by trimming off the excess even if that means huge branches of the government, itself.  In return the continuity of the very basics of government tend to ensure stability, not chaos, which allows for further reforms and pruning to happen so as to get a well run and restricted government once more.  The other path, that of overthrowing the arrangement and trying to put a new constitution in place, is fraught with danger and, as Oliver Cromwell found, you often find your brand, new system emulating the old system you wished to end.  That points out that the actual requirement for continuity by a people of a Nation may actually be stronger than any new governing group or cabal may wish to think about.   Which brings into question just what it is that such revolutionaries are actually trying to do when what they end up with is little different than what they started with... wouldn't long-term reform have been a better path with less bloodshed?  And for those returning from a time of excess, there is much in the English tradition that points to less bloodshed, not more, from re-establishing a reformed government with sound and understood basis than trying to do something brand new from scratch.

Afghanistan and the essential fight

The following is a position paper of The Jacksonian Party.

Of all the things that cannot be done, Nation Building is the one that cannot be done from the outside. To have a Nation one must have a people committed to it, willing to stand up for their neighbors to live under the rule of law and be able to expect some modicum of protection from their government. When reading Sen. Lieberman's piece in The Wall Street Journal of 06 FEB 2009, I come away agreeing with much and disagreeing with some areas. While I have disagreed with Sen. Lieberman on many social issues, on military and foreign affairs I find more than majority agreement with his positions.

First and foremost is a strategic coherence on the fighting in the Afghanistan theater, as it is more than just Afghanistan a full and complete approach that includes Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Pakistan, India, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan is essential. I have looked at the main supply routes now under attack by al Qaeda, Taliban, Mehsud fighters, and followers of Hekmatyar and they are choking off the critical supply routes to Afghanistan from the south. Because our supply system depends so much on shipping as the cheapest form of transport, fully 90% of all supplies for Afghanistan arrive in Pakistan and must be shipped overland through the passes through the mountains. Those routes must go through hostile provinces, now under siege and often full control of these opposition forces. Pakistan has not been ready to take up arms to finally integrate these Pashtun provinces into their country, disarm the rebels, and disband traditional war fighting bands (known as Lashkars, or personal forces beholden to a leader or organization). At this point the most powerful organization is Gulbuddin Hekmatyar's terrorist organization that spreads across the Central Asian Republics that used to be held by the USSR.

Russia has been unwilling to offer supply services and, instead, wishes to send troops into Afghanistan. This would further break up command, put different Rules of Engagement in play and cause more complexity than what we now have on the ground. To simplify command the command structure must revert to the Nation that actually declared war on Afghanistan and that is the United States: it is our responsibility to see it through to its end, not NATO's. Further we need the troops that can be acclimated to the climate and who have the best capability to fight there. Finally we need a secondary route of supply for our forces so as to lessen reliance on Pakistan.

The route to do this is clear: work with Turkey, Greece, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan for a route across the Caspian using Georgia and Azerbaijan to trans-ship goods from the Black Sea to the Caspian Sea. This would bypass the need for Russian help and put Russia on notice that interdicting Georgia or Azerbaijan is a direct threat to US warfighting in Afghanistan. In theory this should be part of a 'hope & change' initiative by the US to offer good contracting through those Nations, help support Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan trade with the rest of the world and help to start putting the ability of Pashtun tribal areas into a role of reduced significance in our fight in Afghanistan. Doing so would also put it to Pakistan that the US is more than prepared to set up alternate and more expensive means of secure transport if they are unwilling to step into their role to actually build their Nation.

Unfortunately I do doubt if the new leadership in the Oval Office has the skill, fortitude, and capability to be assertive abroad in a war handed to them by their predecessor which was mandated by the 9/11 attacks and Congressional response.

Thus to firm up strategic coherence with limited supply lines, the troops most able to fight in such conditions, and fight extremely well, are Mountain Warfare, Alpine, Highland and other similar forces from NATO. Mountain Warfare forces are not regular, flatland forces, and have some of the most rugged and disciplined training for fighting in the most hostile climate the planet has to offer. I go over that in this article, on such troops and how they consistently out fight, out maneuver and out survive their opponents in any conditions. These are not 'Special Forces' but Specialized Forces and this is their domain of battle and now that Iraq is moving towards civil control by local authorities, it is time for a full deployment of Mountain Warfare forces into Afghanistan. During the Winter of 2007-08 Canadian Mountain Warfare forces staged the first successful winter campaign in Afghan history: the locals said it could not be done. When we look back at all the training camps identified in Pakistan we can rest assured that specialized forces known for their ability to infiltrate in hostile climates had no small part to play. When the Taliban attempted a Spring Offensive their troops were spotted, targeted, more than decimated and routed.

To that end the US should call on all NATO Allies to agree to a unified set of Rules of Engagement administered by CENTCOM and remove any and all troops not willing to be under that ROE. Additionally the US should call for all NATO and Allied specialized warfare units adapted to Mountain Warfare to come and join us in removing the al Qaeda, Taliban and other forces in Afghanistan and in interdicting their supply routes. Further all Stryker Brigades not actively needed in Iraq should now be given Afghanistan as their central mission area as these are the troops best equipped to do forms of fighting that were once only the realm of Special Forces. This redirection may actually cause a draw down of troops in Afghanistan, but the fighters put in often fight far above their 'weight class' on a 3:1 basis or better. As this fight may take up to five more years to complete, the US is now in sore need of a SECOND Mountain Division and we should spend the eighteen months necessary to train and equip such a Division.

As these forces are ones best able to adapt to climate and local problems, they are the ones that should be used and only backed up by regular forces that are also adaptable and able to change to varying local conditions of tribal concerns. This needs to be dovetailed with Mr. Lieberman's second point.

Further the US should seek the help of Mountain Warfare troops in Iraq, particularly Kurdish troops, as Kurds have ethnic heritage that stems from that region of Central Asia. Iraqi troops drawn from all ethnic and religious groups in Iraq, however, are to be the primary goal, even if Kurds will tend to lead such troops at the highest levels, the lower levels will be populated by a diverse set of ethnicities, cultures and religions. What we seek is the necessary cultural and ethnic support, along with combat support, to help Afghanistan examine how it is that close cousins can work with others. This is one of the great benefits of having done such hard work in Iraq: we can now ask for help from those we have helped and know that when we say it will be a tough fight, we mean it.

Second is increasing civilian capacity both in areas of tribal and National concerns, and in helping to stand up local government beyond the tribal level to interact with the National government. Here Provincial Government has not received much attention by the MSM or even embedded reporters, but has proven to be a key mediator between tribes in locales and in passing problems up to responsible offices to be addressed without bias towards any tribe or ethnic group within a locale. I have heard very little about this middle-tier of government from anyone in Afghanistan, and yet a good federal system of distributed powers and local authority has been a demonstrated positive good for all Nations, save for periods of internal conflict and then the National government must take on the same role as the Provincial Governments so as to mediate in good faith between Provinces and Ethnic groups.

To do this requires substantial training of government officials at that level not only on the bureaucratic side, but the accountability side. This is of primary importance as policing power administered to the good of all citizens then removes an argument for forces controlled by strongmen. For Afghanistan to self-govern, the day of Private War forces held by the local leaders in tribes must be ended and equitable policing power enforced at the Provincial level. This requires training for judges in these concepts to be carried out and administered by them. Further a means for checking and restraining judicial authority and a system of higher courts is necessary so as to remove judicial bias via an internal check and balance system within the judiciary itself. This gives citizens the right to appeal judgments they feel to be unfair and yet puts a final stop at such things at the highest National level. Continuing problems in the judiciary will be seen at that level and, with good training and mentoring, addressed over time. This does not mean that tribal level courts or other systems need be abridged, just that they need to be incorporated into the larger suite of judicial systems in the Nation.

Do note that this is not a mandated system from the outside, by the US, and must be indigenous to Afghanistan. If there is any legal tradition to the English Common Law system, however, the US and Great Britain will be in good stead to help firm up such a system as we all use the same judicial philosophy. Even absent that, ensuring that good laws that are not biased towards any one group or ethnic concern becomes a key point in demonstrating that the tribes can be respected, that local control can be exercised and that war fighting is done by the Nation, not strongmen.

The single, largest threat to civil government in Afghanistan is not ethnic rivalries, although those are ancient and need to be addressed, we, in the West, can learn profitably from our ancestors on how best to do this. Nor is it the Islamic Radicalism of the Talibe and al Qaeda sort as these arise and fall in frequency in Islam, although the death toll to each is horrific. Both of these seek a common table setting with which to become local overlords of their peoples and other peoples, and it is that source which threatens Afghanistan to its core time and again. I looked at this some time ago in Defunding the opium trade in Afghanistan, and stand by that view and it is the one of Jefferson: a people who are able to profitably farm to sustain themselves and have enough to trade and ensured income from it will prosper. The illegal nature of the crop does not change that component, but shifts it hard against local support for food and shifts it to imported food via illegal commerce to procure it. It is true that many farmers plant in fallow or rugged areas unsuitable to farming and gain meager extra income from that, from which their lives are put at risk from the criminal class seeking to gain those crops. Here the criminal class can be actual criminals, Islamic Radicals, local strongmen... the list is near infinite and yet their means of coercion and meager pay while taking the middle-man's cut is unchanging. To destroy that system, the farmer needs the tools and skills necessary to not only grow legal goods for local use, but to have an advantage of better techniques and equipment to do this.

America oversupplies her own large scale agricultural corporations, called 'Big Agriculture', while having let the small farmer become beholden to a system of paybacks and payoffs via Congressional funding in the Agriculture budget. And yet 'the war on drugs' can actually, for once, be fought by the military and administered as part of a Counter Insurgency plan: COIN to address the rural farming base of Afghanistan with useful and needful dryland techniques and water conservation that can be done locally would begin to shift the base of that rural section out from the strongman as the money to be garnered by trade of legal goods would not come with immediate threat of life that the illegal sort has. Protecting these communities until they can protect themselves is the GOAL of COIN, in case anyone has forgotten that. This requires a multi-year commitment of shifting funds from America's already overstuffed Big Agricultural sector and putting those funds, skills and tools to use in Afghanistan. The road to fighting the indigenous Taliban and other Islamic Radicals requires not only the right skills on the military front, but the right ones on the civilian front.

There will be no peace, no ending of the supply of radicals until the local farming community has a Jeffersonian attitude demonstrated to them of how good husbanding of farms, crops and livestock via insured means taught by those skilled at such farming can gain the farmer a decent, reliable profit and demonstrate that the need to work together to maintain that system is greater than any minor profit an individual would get from illegal goods. When the land holder is invested in the land and its husbanding of resources and care, the system of tribal views changes to become centered on THAT. The farmers in their tribes will then become the backbone of the tribe, and will be the ones who will need protecting BY the tribe so that the local tribe may flourish.

With a single, hard blow, the US can remove the Central Asian supply system from Afghanistan in not less than a decade and make Afghanistan a net agricultural *exporter*. By teaching dryland techniques, how to husband rain water and other water sources, how to deal with droughts... these are the finest and most well honed weapons in excising this problem and demonstrating that investing in yourself to sustain your people is not only a good thing to do, but well supported. To date the US has paid almost no attention to this, and yet the military component to bring this home is absolutely necessary to peoples who are brought up as warriors: farming must become the respected backbone of the community to support local warfighters to protect the tribe and Province. The badge of honor must shift from how many you attacked and killed to how well you defended your people so that they may flourish against those wishing to strong arm them.

There will be no peace in Afghanistan or Central Asia until this is done.

Third is expanding the Aghan Army, and that is vital so that Private War forces that threaten the Nation can be addressed and so that Afghanistan may protect herself against neighbors such as Iran and China. With that said, we cannot discount the English and American experience of local militias under Provincial control that can stand ready to serve the Nation and yet also counters threats from local sources. As I looked at above this requires a change in COIN from Nation-Building oriented to re-orientation of local populations that will see some value in local and National control over war fighting. We cannot and must not disrespect the fierce and honorable tradition of the Afghan peoples: it has protected them for centuries against Persian, British and Soviet Empires. The very local skills of warfighting need to be upheld as that is the trump card against any invader, and supporting it through local economy and having these forces on-call to defend the entire Nation must become an honorable trade in itself. Thus the current Afghan Army will transform over time: we must beef it up now, for general self-protection of the Nation, but what must be set down is a way of reformulating it over time to reflect the culture in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan, as so many detractors like to point out, is *not* a modern Nation and we cannot make it become one no matter how much money and how many lives go to it. America and the West, however, did not arrive at modern civilization without going through this exact, same phase between roughly 900-1700 A.D. Modern tools and training do not an Army make: there must be the tradition an necessity of it that makes it a respected profession *beyond* a tribal virtue. Afghanistan, at this point in time, looks more like 16-17th century Central Europe than a modern Nation State. We must identify that the Christian Tradition is not present in Afghanistan and yet the Westphalian State concept has actually taken root in another Islamic Nation: Iraq.

One of the few and great goods of the British Empire was to demonstrate that religious tolerance was no weakness upon the majority and strengthened the State. In Iraq the local traditions are now those of religious tolerance, as you cannot get through the fact that not only do two major branches of Islam have root in the Nation, but Christianity of more than one form, minor Islamic Sects, Yazidi, Alevi, Judaism, and even followers of John the Baptist. There is no more modern equivalent of a Christian Westphalian Nation State concept in action in the Islamic world than in Iraq. British Westphalian rule had to deal with the fall of the Ottoman Empire, there, craft a common law system, and the toleration of religions in Iraq is one of the great legacies of the British rule there. That is why Iraqi involvement, especially Kurdish involvement, is vital and necessary to long term victory and peace in Afghanistan. There will be no reduction of violence in Islamic Radicalism until a peaceful method of co-existing with multiple religious sects is found and that can only be done via a tolerant population seeing the good and end in bloodshed over religion as any legitimate means to power. Iraq is well poised to teach this at a civil level, and our help of Iraq to become stable must require us to ask them to help the United States in spreading that word of civil peace and its practices to Afghanistan.

For those looking to a long-term end to al Qaeda and similar groups: this is the only way forward that does not involve a horrific death toll. Many will die to do this, but our modern world demonstrates that this CAN BE DONE. Unless many have forgotten, the lives lost to uphold 'The Prince of Peace' demonstrates that having good intentions in a religion is NOT enough to spread peace. To do that requires a tolerant civil society that accepts religion as a personal means to enlightenment, not something mandated by the State for all peoples in the State. Religious Nations can exhibit tolerance towards other religions and not castigate or kill the members of them as those are members of civil society and of value to the entire Nation. We can but look to those pointing the way before Westphalia and directly after to examine how best to do this, and we will find thinkers like Machiavelli advocating for enlightened Princes. That does not mean *nice* Princes, but ones that will understand enlightened self-interest is in creating a safe and stable society *first*. To create a true, civil military force requires a true civil society. America can help lay the foundations, form fast friends with the peoples of Afghanistan, introduce them to Islamic enlightened rule concepts in Iraq and help *both* these Nations to secure long term civil societies for themselves.

That is what we did after WWII in Germany, Japan and Italy and should be the exact, same goal today: to help these people to civil societies and peaceful co-existence within their Nations with religious toleration and a productive class of people worthy of being defended by the Nation.

I disagree with Sen. Lieberman in the fourth goal in broad terms, but agree in many details. 'Hardening' Afghanistan is a loser's proposition as it requires time, effort and ability to be applied to the negative of defensive operations and sustainment. Many of the civil institutions need to be mightily revamped and many of the ones that we take as necessary in a modern State can't be built until the lower level society comes to some basic agreements in the Nation. Our own young Nation at the Founding had a very different set of organs and power arrangements in it than we do today: our goal must be to help Afghan society to create the organs they need in the form that best suits them and ensure that they are accountable to civil society. We did this in Iraq, ensuring that a good system of Inspectors General in the Iraqi military had the ability to root out corruption and subversive elements, and our own institutions have such organs throughout them.

Anti-corruption task forces are good, but changing the tone and tenor of civil society to move away from substantive gifts to honoring gifts, as is seen in Japan and other parts of East Asia, is a good and worthy goal. When trinkets devolve into bribes, the system becomes corrupt: those who seek honor they don't deserve will want bribes, those willing to accept the honor will take the trinket. Any goal of self-policing a society must involve the higher esteem of the honorable gift and the disdain and even disgust at the bribe. Here the value of our older allies in Japan and Korea should come to the forefront, and civil teaching of how cultures can still honor and respect, without the need for bribery have to become a necessary section of helping the Afghan society to flourish. Even in our enlightened Nation, this is no longer respected and officials now seek and take bribes, and while prosecuted for them, those seeking to excuse such activities are not castigated for corroding civil society. If we are on the downward slope of this, we can assuredly help others to see our bad example and NOT TAKE IT.

On the civil side that will give Afghan society an area in which they can be SUPERIOR to the US, and take just pride in doing that and then disdaining the corrupt American officials who only know the value of money and not the value of leading a good life. In truth much of the Left in the United States could do with this lesson, and the best way to get it is to teach the right way to do it via our friends and allies in the world. One does not need to be a mighty warrior to become a mighty,honored and respected person. Even as we forget this, we can still bring in those who know it to teach it, to get Afghanistan off to a better start. And once they do that, Afghanistan self-hardens and is sustained from the inside.

In the broader sense of regional engagement, the US will continue to have vital interests in Central Asia so long as corrupt societies create havens for Islamic Radicalism. The modern world can no longer afford an Empire of any sort, and yet another one from Central Asia will bring a death toll to the planet that is horrific beyond all recounting. India and Pakistan are well agreed that they prefer to screw each other up over Kasmir without outside interference - if we are their friends we should RESPECT that and not meddle as we have a full plate. Indeed the best way to end that conflict is by cutting out the criminal money supply from Afghanistan and seeing if the US can help in some COIN operations in the Northwest Frontier Provinces and southeast provinces in Pakistan. Active fighting to remove radicals and separatists will have no end until civil society has been given breathing space and local accommodation between these ethnic populations with the Nation of Pakistan can be performed. This does not require a full constitutional convention, but some formulation of civil organs to address the problems of the different ethnic groups in Pakistan with each other. Many feel that the agreements they made at the founding of Pakistan have not been honored, while others were more than willing to wait out a century holding pattern put in by the British Empire on provisional borders between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This cannot happen until the Pakistani ISI, its Intelligence Service, stops funding the damned radicals. This is something that can and must be addressed to at the Nation State level as the ISI is the source of much of the unrest in Pakistan, Afghanistan, India and even into the Central Asian Republics. All Nations have need of an Intelligence Arm for the protection of their Nation: any Nation that funds one that not only puts internal but external order between Nations at risk must be asked why they are doing this. Simply put the ISI, as it currently is, must go. There will be no peace in Kasmir until the ISI's activities in funding Radical Islamic groups ceases completely. Any civil society that aims at disrupting its neighbors must be told that doing so will bring the death they are exporting to their own people: and it has already started. The nest of vipers, finding the rough and thick boots of US troops stomping them flat in Afghanistan now slither home to the warmer nest of their paymasters. At this point the ISI can only be seen in the light of destabilizing their own Nation to their own ends, and they no longer care about the blood spilled by those they fund in Pakistan.

Iran is a tough case to deal with and yet, if we work with Turkmenistan in a cross-asian route for supply, the US will then have an entire suite of friendly Nations encircling Iran. Iraq, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan and Afghanistan will only leave Pakistan as the last great outlet for Iranian exploits and they are already facing problems from the local Balochs in the East of Iran who feel they got a 'raw deal' in both Iran and Pakistan. To this day Iran has problems with Baloch separatists and the underground independence groups have demonstrate high levels of competence and expertise in their terror attacks in Iran.

By shifting through Turkmenistan the US can slowly erode Russian influence in the region and help to stabilize that realm of Republics that would help us in getting a supply route to Afghanistan. Perhaps we could call it the 'Modern Silk Road' and open up some venues for increased civilian traffic through these routes to get better export markets for the Central Asian States. These Republics are not lacking in trade goods, but they do lack the modern transportation and means to get them to a global market. A long-term strategy of opening up a conduit for US supplies will, of necessity, start to build the infrastructure necessary to address the poverty in Central Asia due to their lack of markets. By opening up a non-authoritarian route for market goods, that is to say not going through Russia, China, Iran or Pakistan, these people will be able to start not only supplying goods to US warfighters (so we don't have to ship it all), but find other venues for their products in the empty trucks and ships going *back* to the Black Sea. Here the opening of trade venues in Georgia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and Turkey will enrich the entire region as these 'exotic' goods move from luxuries to items finding their place in the global market. Indeed, America should welcome this opportunity to start laying the infrastructure for the 21st century of trade in the world: built of necessity to become the first pathways to the spread of market based economics in some of the most deprived areas of the planet in Central Asia.

Unfortunately I cannot see the current Administration doing this: it is too much hope & change to believe that America can be a demonstrable force for enlightenment and trade, even while making the necessary routes to keep our troops supplied. Such is the myopia of zero-sum Leftism in America that we cannot seize this opportunity to turn our investment in blood into something greater for all peoples in Central Asia.

Fifth is a 'surge' in political commitment to Afghanistan in America. I fully agree with the Senator here. Our political class only knows the value of money, not of lives: and then are willing to sacrifice both to schemes of home ownership, retirement systems, medical systems and such that will impoverish us all and shorten our lives if we follow those dreams to their poisoned fruit.

The United States used to know how to see opportunity in strife and reach out to do more than any other people on the planet would ever dare to do, while leaving our people free to choose their own lives, well and unwell, while garnering general support for those needful things that protected the Nation. Now we seek to protect all the citizens in detail and will be at risk of losing them in whole rank.

Soon we will have our own COIN operations in the desert South West of the US and northern Mexico.

Perhaps it is time to take the lessons of limited government, government that protects the Nation and is held accountable home to the United States.

We sure could use it right about now...

The Modern Jacksonian - Chapter 7 - The Ties that Bind

From the very start of the exploration of North America by Europeans and Asians, this was seen as a varied land in shape and form, but not necessarily an easy land to stay in nor one rich in treasure. The original settlers who came from Asia and some from Europe back thousands to tens of thousands of years ago brought their capabilities with them and found that this rich and varied land required work to survive in. While game was plentiful, the types of grain that could be sustained were different than what they had known and the plants offered a different array of things that could provide sustenance. Long centuries allowed these peoples, diverse in their origins, to spread across two continents and meet up with each other East to West and West to East. Those original populations that we now dub 'native' have the remnants of that meeting in their blood which can still be traced to two parts of the world: Europe and Asia.

These peoples also brought tools with them and made new ones to address their conditions across varied climates and regions. They also brought warfare and the tools of that, which are only lost in the most isolated and small of human populations, where surviving alone against the elements is the battle. The first tendrils of the modern European movement westward was done by a People that had reached the limit of exploration and the climate shift of that age ended that first foray to this now unknown land. No longer having any ties to this New World, the populations that lived here were unready for the alien culture and ways that looked towards the land differently than those that had made a living with the land from that first great settlement. But this land also offered more than just the plenty of hard work upon the land and the first of this second wave would experience an awful thing unknown to them by prior experience in warfare.

Scant records exist of a war that was going on in this New World before the second wave arrived, but the end of it was seen and recorded by churchmen and frontiersmen north of the Great Freshwater Seas. This was a grim and bitter struggle of culture against culture, of Nation against Nation, which would be recorded as the Iroquois-Huron War. From the oral histories gathered this had been a long, long war across generations of the Iroquois Nations against the Huron, and the slow, bitter drive of the Huron northwards as they lost and lost and lost again. The end of that war would not come in peace, but in extermination of the Huron: ended as a coherent culture and people by the Iroquois. We would put a name to this, in later ages, when this sort of destruction would happen due to the European type of conflict moving into that realm: Genocide.

That war continued on because it was 'traditional' in form: bred into the culture and children raised knowing who their blood enemies were and that to assert supremacy those in the other culture must die. There was no law on that, it was the culture that made it so, and the ancient binding of tradition that year on year would drive that war to an end, until only one people survived as a people. Other cultures on these continents would have different forms of warfare, and many of which put forth skill and cunning over raw power. Those of the Great Plains would see warriors of great esteem who could *touch* another warrior in battle and survive to tell the tale as anyone who could merely *touch* had shown bravery and skill to get that close and not get killed. These peoples of these continents were of different view of life and relationship to land than those of the second wave, but that was difference in degree, not kind.

What the new wave would do was bring a culture that was more highly coordinated and adhered to standards of conduct also enforced by their societies, but tempered by those very same societies. As the great wars of religion had more than decimated Europe multiple times, the separation of culture to peoples who had recognized differences into these things called Nations was done and the bonds that allowed Nations to enforce religion were likewise broken. By the tempestuous close proximity of Neighbors taking up arms on opposite sides of wars and then switching sides through death, bribe and coercion, the entire concept of one coherent culture or religion that was over these peoples could not be made. Their differences were put forth as necessary and sacrosanct along with the hard and fast need to negotiate ends to conflicts so that they would not go on for generations. For centuries. And to make that to be the case there would grow up these things that had been used between starkly different cultures before: diplomacy, negotiations, treaties.

That change in outlook by this second wave of immigrants, thousands to tens of thousands of years after the first, changed history. There was a time before the rise of City States in the Old World, when the peoples there adhered to much the same ethos and outlook towards the land and people as the New Worlders did. With that rise of large scale organizations, ordered structure for society and seeking a long-term and long-standing means to invest it in something other than the land, would begin a hard process of investing culture within a people and recording that to be passed on. While the New World would use characters and symbols to communicate, the press to move that information outwards was not done and those societies invested the communication in permanent structures, not ephemeral reading material. With the rise of writing upon clay then papyrus and then upon parchment and finally paper, would come a way to increase literacy, increase knowledge and more widely disseminate it beyond the capabilities of the oral and stone written traditions of old. In those thousands of years of difference the wide chasm between organized society around systems of belief and ethnicity and investing within that society to form long lasting social structures would be seen.

Those that first came to the New World were labeled as 'primitive' keeping to traditional means of society and passing information on in an oral culture. The last of that culture is not even dead in the Old World, where bards and storytellers in small communities across the Middle East and Asia continue to relate verbal stories about Alexander the Great when his army marched through town. The change, however, was when the Poet Homer had one great Epic put to writing that could be easily copied and moved, and that would come after long centuries after the event it depicted. It told of a War of minor Kings and tiny Kingdoms coming together to face a larger City State who was once at peace with them but had given cause for them to go to war together. It would tell of Troy and the confederation that brought it down. And the aftermath of the Trojan War is still felt to this day across the world, because it served as the first tie to bind culture together and show just what it meant to be a Sovereign in that bygone era.

It is not because of the grandness of that war, but of its telling that would make that tie. The skill of many poets would be involved, as some stories are clearly not of that war, but belong as a part of the history of the people involved. Long centuries later that simple story would tie a people together, beyond the concept of Kingdom or Empire, and would even bring foreigners into that culture as they moved there and they would also lose their previous cultural heritage and become known as Greek. That single tie has diffused across cultures, across religions and across time and serves as the founding point for that New World culture, although it would intertwine with many other outlooks, this point was the one that gave the basis for understanding the world and mankind's place within it.

And that place starts with war.

The era following it did not usher in peace, but, instead, a break up of that confederation, of peoples taking to the sea as Corsairs and Pirates, it would see the Trojans disperse outwards and the great early Bronze Age fall into Dark Age in the Aegean basin. Other cultures would record this, but their ability to capture such spirit of society that would form a strong culture outside of ethnic bounds was minimal. Egypt would rise in Empire and Fall again and again, but the ability to make disparate peoples into Egyptians would not be seen. The Hittites, recorders of events and scholars, had mighty forces and yet they, too, would succumb to the vicissitudes of time and Empire and fall to be nearly forgotten until their full rediscovery some decades back. It was in those Dark Ages of the fall of the Early Bronze age that would forge the Late Bronze Age and the true City State structure and give rise to democracy, to trade making people wealthy, to investment in cities and peoples to increase their wealth of knowledge. And it would bring conflict with a great Empire that sought to conquer the known world and its only real rival were these pitiful City States across the Aegean. With one pontoon bridge and thousands of ships, a vast army would invade. An army of the old style of committed warriors, great and grand heroics, nameless and faceless elite troops named Immortals. That would be the second great founding point of this new idea of culture and peoples. It would be at Thermopylae when Soldiers would supplant Warriors and Ranks of Bronze would withstand the frontal assault of chaotic attack. Those soldiers would die to protect their lands to the last man, so that they would be worthy of that given them by Achilles, Odysseus and Agamemnon.

The battle on land and at sea to deprive the Persian Empire of easy supply routes and to weaken and then drain its ability to fight that would, in a scant two generations, bring forth that one who would unite Greeks for the first time and conquer Persia and be sung about right to the modern time. From seven centuries from Troy to Thermopylae would then come scant two lifetimes to bring forward the Greeks united in cause and memory. That empire would not outlast the man, but the shock waves of it, of this tiny, foreign army destroying Empires and nearly going to lands only heard about in fable, it is that which would create the spirit that would drive mighty Nations.

And it, too, was born in war.

Great Empires would rise and fall across history, and many would use the exact, same tools used by the Greeks to create Nation. This would not, however, prevent those Empires from falling, time and again, but would start to give a new basis for recovery after that fall. China would use the vastness of the plains of Asia and the seas around it to turn inwards and seek internal order first and always, which would require rulers, second and always. The great joke they relate is that they may come as foreigners to victory, but they will all be Chinese in a generation or three. From that, however, different ethnicities would have different standings and while there might be one culture, there are still many peoples each with underlying views and outlooks.

In the New World would arise larger ruling Nations, but they would be limited due to time, outlook and changing climate. Lacking written basics for mathematics and interpretation, the great cities would remain built by measure via simple tools. Yet they would be inventive beyond those limits, and create tools that are unmatched in surgery in the modern age until they were recreated. Without the ability to store plans, make long term associations between events and physical outlays of structures and without that ability to compile all of those to create a distillation of knowledge, these societies would be at the direct mercy of weather, land and problems in trade. That gulf between the Old and New was already vast, before the Roman Empire and that is plainly obvious. These cultures were on different tracks and yet only one had outlook to explore, expand and create new things where they had not been created before.


It is that culture that would next change in a way not expected when a more primitive peoples with different outlook would interact with it and change it at the fringes and then deeper still. The older ideas of Nation, democracy, soldier, and honor would be suffused with a new group from the north that would expand while the Roman Empire fell. These people would bring accountability, social cohesion and popular democracy to the table, and the slow crossing of these two at the fringes of the area called Europe would change forever the course of Nations because they saw Nation as directly accountable to people and that the Nation was not powerful because of being a Nation, but due to the power of the people within it. They would make Nation and Leaders accountable to a common law and enforce it at that level, and not expect one to pay for enforcement as had been the case in Rome.

While Rome had shifted to be associated with religion and enforce it, these people would be associated with many religions and respect those differences. These two outlooks of vibrancy could not co-exist for Nations and peoples. While a religion may speak of tolerance, the toleration is in the action not the words spoken. And those from the northern climes would demonstrate their ability to give each man his leeway in belief, often in equal disdain it is true, but that would set no religion as basis for war nor as basis for control of peoples. The religion of Rome would use the Nations to enforce it and the slow grind of these two concepts would lead to conflict as some northerners would adhere to the religion of Rome... and then put forth that it must practice what it preaches. With the printing press and one man nailing his views to the church doors would come a revolution in that old order of Nations as accountability of Nation to its people was put forward above religion. Much of Europe would be swallowed by the wars that followed and the death toll was staggering in terms of the population of mankind of that era.

Those wars would end in a different form of peace as it had not been fought, like at Troy and Thermoplyae for just temporal power, as this was an outlook of what the sphere of power of those things higher than mere mortal should be in the mortal realm. With 15-20% of Europe dead due to the greatest of these wars, would come a peace that would change the definition of Nation and what Nations are to be accountable to. That peace would be in 1648 at Westphalia, and would give that Nations may have religious outlook, but are not to impose that upon its people. These Nation States would be Sovereign to those within them and would only be accountable to two things: each other and the people within them.

That, too, was born of war.

While the New world was rediscovered by the Old in this era, the turmoil and tumult of this change in Europe would spread across the globe in fits and starts. Empires could still arise, but their life term was no longer to be measured in millenia and even centuries would be difficult as the knife point stuck in to cleave religion from Nation had begun to erode those ties. And by placing an internal accountability of Sovereigns within their Nations to their Peoples, the very first new form of representative democracy with high degrees of accountability and a common law would be born. Nations had that as something within the wide spectrum of governments that could arise, but there was no guarantee that it ever would arise, just that it could arise. There were those actively pushing for that as a concept both within restricted Nations and by adhering to local law practice that was enforced by communities upwards. These notions fused together when those disenchanted with the views upon diverse religions came to this New World as social outcasts. And others looking for a better means to live life with more freedom would join them as well as criminals sent into exiles and the social outcasts of Europe who would find no good means to live in those lands due to their personal outlooks.

For a century or more that would slowly accumulate in this New World in the Northern Hemisphere in those Colonies placed down by a King so as to expand an Empire. That Empire had a mighty fleet and mighty armies at its call. And because no one had ever acted as if they should be free on their own accord, the imposition of taxes to pay for prior war for the defense of these Colonies were imposed upon them. What was about to happen in those Colonies was unprecedented: No People had ever chosen to throw off the yoke of Empire and declare themselves Free unto themselves. One, single tax was enough to take these outcasts, religious minorities, social misfits, and quite some number of loyalists to the Crown and ignite yet another war. Not a war to defend themselves, although that, too, was part of it. Not a war to establish religious freedom, which they enshrined so that they could live together in peace. Nor was it a war to continue Nation and defend it as no Nation existed there.

These people would declare that the ties of Nation were directly depending upon themselves to be a Nation. To do that they sought the greatest liberty, so that man may profit from his works in proportion to their worth and thus have a life separate from yoke of government. And they would make each accountable to the laws in common and make government a safeguard of freedom, not a source of it. This was a war of Revolution in the affairs of mankind, that put forth that men are free because it is self-evident. That freedom comes from higher power but it exists and must be dealt with as a fact amongst men, no matter the source of that power, it is the order of things that man is born free and equal and is no longer subservient to State or religion. That individual is accountable to the commonality within the Nation and to any higher power for their conscience. And it is that accountability to commonality of law that is highest, so that all men can know how they are to act and upon what they shall be judged upon by those around him in this mortal realm.

It would take 7 years and more to finally win that Revolution and establish that at least in one Nation upon Earth men are seen as born free and equal. A place where one lives by their own work and the worth of that work, and gets the greatest possible leeway to utilize the fruits of their labor. As with the systems within Nations, that is no guarantee that an individual will succeed, but it places within the realm of the possible that success and good life can be found and had in proportion to how one contributes to society. To their dismay the initial war, once won, was not the establishment of peace but of poverty as small States sought to pay off the debt owed to other Nations in helping to become free. In 5 years the Confederation that had won victory was seen as losing the peace and it must change to be strong enough to bear the burden of common debt and yet not so strong as to endanger liberty and freedom that had been hard won.

The victory for liberty and freedom was born in war.

The victory to make peace was made from lack of planning.

That lull between end of war and coming together a second time marked two ways forward that would fuse from Virginia and Connecticut and would give rise to government with limited scope, but high powers within that limitation as the People agreed to give that to such government to govern. Each State made its problems with these compromises clear and they still stand as a warning to all future generations on the problems of having a Republic supported by representative democracy. The thing that brought them together, however, was ancient: the first thing necessary to form anything is called "Community".

All of the other ties of city, State, Nation, Republic, democracy would stand upon Community. As all other forms of government and association would, also. For that basic and common right is across all of mankind, in all parts of the world and is self-evident by its omnipresence. Mankind comes together in diverse Community to form associations with each other. Without that, there would be no higher purpose to life. Without the right and ability to amicably live together with those who are agreeable to us, and they the same with us, there would be no communities, and even tribes would be difficult to make or nomadic hunting groups. People seek that association for the common good between them, for increased protection and for companionship. Today that sense of local community has changed in scope, but not in outlook via modern communications: the 'virtual community' is no less a community and association of individuals than is a town or village. That being said the lack of co-location makes such communities distributed, dispersed and mobile.

The two major outcomes of this, and there are quite some more beyond it, is a change in local, physical associations due to time spent in 'virtual' community and the lack of cross-acknowledged rights in that 'virtual' community. Both of these have seen some academic study and the ways that we change our personal outlook to accommodate any dichotomies between 'virtual' and physical communities may point up positives and negatives in one's own physical reality and location. To Americans this is noticeable only in how others have viewpoints that are constrained by their locale in the physical world, which shows up in outlook in communications. More jarring are those coming from authoritarian regimes or those with few societal rights for speaking and acknowledgment of self-worth. Disparities in the expectation of individuals for government in the physical world are seen in the virtual ones, especially those that are not limited to static story lines or to dedicated game play, although this will show up in those, also.

American demonstration of freedoms and responsibilities for actions to Communities is a prime mover in the affairs of man and have been since the founding of the Nation. As those who would explore the world brought American values with them, other peoples would see the expectation of free practice of religion, freedom of speech and the power of the individual to utilize them in ways they saw fit to make a better world. Be it to teach, tend the poor and sick, offer new religions, or to just explore it is Americans that stand at the forefront of liberty and freedom, showing that individuals have the choices, to themselves, to practice as they preach... even if the preaching is about religion, the practice shows the expectation that it will be treated with dignity and that the devoutness is combined with personal accountability. No one forces an individual to do these things, but their spirit, given the widest scope of interplay demonstrates the depth of commitment and fulfillment of anything that is done by an American.

To counter this, those that have taken to authoritarian means also utilize these vast resources in an attempt to control or end them. They, too, form a virtual community, but one with commitment to subjugation and destruction. Fanaticism is the key to entry to those limited realms, and those without it find hard entry to them. Here the disaffected use the means of modern communication to subvert the protections of actual Nations and seek to end them. There is no interplay of mankind, save to find better ways to reduce their fellow man, subjugate them or just kill. These opponents of freedom use the vast resources available for human fulfillment to bring about an end to fulfillment by all others, and gain power to themselves in that doing. As in the previous eras of distributed threats that can elude the mighty but cumbersome forces of the Nation State, the prime defense is *not* police or army, but of individuals who want to defend their community against attack, destruction and enslavement. This is the second most primal right after forming community: defending community.

All endeavors by mankind have always seen opposition, be it in neighbors that disagree and resort to violence, States resorting to martial endeavors to impose their will upon others, or advancement in technology by those that would sabotage it... literally to throw a shoe into the works to foul them. To protect society those that would step up to defend it require the right to do so on a voluntary basis, and worthwhile societies have always found those that will volunteer to protect home, family and community as not to do so would be the loss of the last and the endangerment of the first two. With modern communities that are made to do ill we, as a Nation and humanity, must realize that this community seeks to end all others and remove them for ones of their own choosing. They do wish to make the world the same all around: equally subservient with all treated equally by those that rule, and with very few rights of the individual acknowledged.

Those exact same freedoms have *always* been available to mankind - the freedom to oppress, to subjugate, to suppress the rights of others or just to kill them. Many of these go under the name of 'terrorist' but others now cloak themselves by the name 'progressive' so as to try and disarm others by affecting a forward looking nomenclature to a backwards looking ideal. When these endeavors moved beyond peaceful and peaceable interaction, when they moved towards empowerment of the unelected over Nations, those doing so have sought to lose in peace what was gained in war. By pushing peace at any price, at any cost, the sum total is that of: give power away to those who threaten or proclaim their wisdom to be overarching and will lead mankind out of these times of Nations to something 'better' and more 'just'.

What they ask for are the keys to Empire. Terrorists look to diminish the ability of Nations to fight by being no Nation and fighting unjustly so as to coerce power from Nations. Progressivists seek to enthrall Nations with lofty ideals of a common good for mankind that can only be found by giving them power at the top, so as to administer their views upon the world. Those that follow the Capitalist credo of trade to empower people seek to misguide Nations that trade creates freedom, while the history of the world has only demonstrated that freedom amongst Nations and Peoples creates trade. By the Sword, by the sweetly venomous words or with cold, hard cash, these views each seek to end the power of Peoples to have Nations that will represent them, for good or ill. These views seek only their own Just outlook, not the Justice of People ruling themselves as they will. By trying to cut the hard bindings that war has given us that makes the system of Nations by the law of nations, and in seeking to abolish the 'bane of war' through their means, these outlooks seek to create an unjust Peace. One in which accountability cannot be found as none propose it nor any way for them to be held accountable. That is not a Community crafted by all the Peoples, in their global diversity, but of a set structure of tyrannical outlook imposed from above by the validity of convincing People they should not form their own Communities and should let others decide for them what is best for them.

In seeking to undo the law of nations and replace that with some thing called 'international law', those seeking in that doing forget that only the old law of nations keeps any form of accountability upon these voluntary agreements between Nations. To enforce anything else is not a path to freedom, but a path to authoritarian rule that is tyrannical in outlook. Give this to terrorists and the death toll they already inflict would be multiplied by orders of magnitude, so that instead of random death by the ones or tens there would be coercive death by the hundreds or thousands, until agreement was killed upon Peoples with assent of the grave as the only one possible.

Give this same power to the lawyers and diplomats, with their views for themselves, and the suppression of Peoples to their views would be enforced by their own organs of repression. Any 'international law' that has its own enforcement arm will soon find it wielding that arm to the good of those doing so. These Transnational bodies do not have the legitimacy of Nation nor of actually input from Peoples directly: they seek to put an unaccountable layer over all Nations until the idea of Peoples being free to choose their own way is forgotten. There is an inflicted death toll upon those that disagree with this, also, but even worse than the naked barbarity of the Sword used unjustly is the rendition of accountability to be obsolete. All the work of centuries to reign in mighty Kings and Emperors and hold them accountable to those they governed would be undone so that some 'new community' of the ruled would be created. Those seeking to beguile with Progressive ideals hold that there is no judgment that Communities can render upon those that are predators and that the only way to judge is by their lofty ideals. They will tell you who and what predators and victims are, and enforce that with the unaccountable systems and forces they ask us for today.

And those seeking to do this via the craft of trade and economics put forth that there should be NO accountability of that to any Community and that those that would own the means of creating the goods of mankind should LEAD mankind. That, too, only leads to tyranny as the fallen form of Communism has pointed out. When those doing the producing of goods are held to no account by any Community, it is not freedom that is found, but laws of economic efficiency enforced upon the unwilling. It has only been a century since these industries have been powerful enough to create such vast amounts of goods so as to give some physical ease to those living life, but these goods are not the end in and of themselves, but only the means to lead a good life. By putting forth that the means are the ends, and that those doing the creation of those ends should have final say on how to do them, they seek to cut their ties to Communities and create the sea of consumers that will only consume and not ask questions as to the utility of what is being consumed if it has no other end than consumption.

Those are the fates that await us down these paths of 'international law' held unaccountable by Nations and they are far worse than the wars they seek to end: Coercion, Subjugation, Bribery.

They all seek to end the ties that bind from Individuals to create Community and for Communities to declare their identity as Nations.