I don't like any of it. But the interplay back and forth of nations doing horrible things like this to the other citizens is what has created all of these international norms in the first place. We don't want the Iranians grabbing people off the streets of DC and killing them in their embassy. We shouldn't do it to other countries.
I agree with you. Once we started doing it, then it's okay for everybody and there's no clear delimiter of what's okay and what's not.
It's not okay. This is the reason we're supposed to declare war before we use force overseas. You can't continue to do this semi-war thing for very long.
My only point was that in reality things aren't perfect. That's fine. If the Soviets kidnapped some person from Nevada and tortured and killed them in 1960 it was a horrible thing. But the international order continued. It continued because we had established norms. Countries knew that if they had to do things like this, it should be hidden.
What happened after 9-11 is that we've systematize a lot of things that should be done by exception-only. And now we gotta go back and re-learn why all of those norms were there in the first place.
I think, without saying that things were "fine" or "tolerable" prior to this, that the feeling is akin to "I can't believe things have become so blatant, obvious, and delivered / met with this total lack of caring."
It's astonishing that things don't even seem to be thought out. It's almost like "We need to get rid of X person and we'll worry about the fallout / cover up after the fact. First we need to find out how much evidence we left behind, how guilty we look, and what our options are before we admit to anything and start playing defense."
I don't like any of it. But the interplay back and forth of nations doing horrible things like this to the other citizens is what has created all of these international norms in the first place. We don't want the Iranians grabbing people off the streets of DC and killing them in their embassy. We shouldn't do it to other countries.
I agree with you. Once we started doing it, then it's okay for everybody and there's no clear delimiter of what's okay and what's not.
It's not okay. This is the reason we're supposed to declare war before we use force overseas. You can't continue to do this semi-war thing for very long.
My only point was that in reality things aren't perfect. That's fine. If the Soviets kidnapped some person from Nevada and tortured and killed them in 1960 it was a horrible thing. But the international order continued. It continued because we had established norms. Countries knew that if they had to do things like this, it should be hidden.
What happened after 9-11 is that we've systematize a lot of things that should be done by exception-only. And now we gotta go back and re-learn why all of those norms were there in the first place.