The Exception

What neither a “drone court” nor any other legal structure will change about our system

To step back from the Armageddon-level options that still follow the U.S. president around in a briefcase, there remains only a post hoc and in the highest sense political check on a president’s interpretation of Article 2 powers. In non-global-apocalyptic but merely national apocalyptically extreme cases, a president may even interpret his designated and implied powers to allow for flagrantly unconstitutional measures: We return as frequently to Lincoln during the Civil War, nullifying the requirement for writ of habeas corpus, generally prosecuting a war against insurrectionists on the basis of his own judgment until eventually recognized by a wartime Supreme Court. At such points, it is “up to history” to determine whether the executive has done the right thing – will get a monument or a tearful farewell under threat of impeachment.

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A Diffuse and Ever-Variable Enemy (It’s the War, Intellectuals #2)

If progressives believe, or know whether they believe, that exceptional measures were justifiable, but went wrong, then an entirely different replacement regime and set of reforms might make sense than if they believe common rhetoric about rule of law mattering more than all other concerns, whatever the costs or risks. On the other hand, if they believe the War on Terror was in fact a self-obviating success, then they might wish to replace the AUMF with a new legal and administrative regime that acknowledges and learns from authentic successes – successful warmaking against a real and legitimate, not simply ideologically constructed enemy – as well as from errors.

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Table of Forthcoming Contents: Voegelin/Hegel, Lib v Dem (re Islamism), Torture/0D30

My commitment to indiscipline was intended to help me “put out” more material, but has instead, as perhaps should have been predictable, had the exact opposite effect. So far.

Posted in History, Philosophy, Religion, The Exception, War

The Unquestionably Un-Complicated Matter of Torture

Apparently, at virtually the same moment that I was putting up my placeholder post on 0D30, and asserting that “[t]he unreserved condemnation of torture will on close analysis sooner or later reveal unexpected or suppressed ‘ambiguities’ in any observer’s position,” Kyle Cupp at the League of Ordinary Gentleman was writing a post under the title “Torture Isn’t Complicated.”

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placeholder for a 0D30 post

It may be the very notion that morally very highly ambiguous or simply wrong actions might be converted by patriotic sacrifice into something “morally unambiguous” that produces the deeply troubling actions depicted in and fictionally replicated in Bigelow’s film. Gach and Isquith’s elision prepares to repeat the same syndrome from another side: The unreserved condemnation of torture will on close analysis sooner or later reveal unexpected or suppressed “ambiguities” in any observer’s position – commonly brought forward in the “ticking time bomb” scenarios popular among torture defenders, but potentially much more complex. The examination is not one, however, deemed likely to serve paramount objectives of eliminating torture from any arsenal of democracy and further winding down or re-conceiving the War on Terror.

Posted in Movies, notes, Philosophy, Politics, The Exception

2nd Précis: Cairo and Philadelphia (cc @hhassan140 @ibishblog)

On, appropriately enough, July 4 of this year, via Twitter as @hhassan140, Hassan Hassan (“HH” below) offered a provocative summary of an article on Islamists and the Arab Spring by Hussein Ibish (@ibishblog, “HI”). A colloquy between Hassan, Ibish, and myself (“CM”) ensued, its terms anticipating the same arguments, and the same situation, that informed that tweet of Hassan’s at the head of my “1st Précis.”

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stable state

Liberal presumptions re Egypt offer “textbook” examples of logocentrism, but in this world one book bounces against another.

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“Constitutions Need Very Broad Support” (on Egypt)

Michael Neumann, Professor of Philosophy (emeritus), writing at his personal blog “Insufficient Respect,” has put together an unusually thoughtful and balanced discussion of the Egyptian situation: “Has Morsi overthrown the rule of law?” Neumann explains the fundamental constitutional problem in clear terms (without relying on references to controversial German legal philosophers), and also notes in passing the contradictory positions and conduct of the self-styled liberal democratic forces – the proponents of rule of law and consensual decision-making who have responded to Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood with vitriol, maximalist demands, and the torching of political offices.

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Egyptian “Acts of Sovereignty” (SiC 2)

Forcing or persuading Morsi and his movement to compromise will not by itself solve the Egyptian problems. It may however help to constitute a new Egyptian sovereignty along broader lines than purely Islamist ones, supply the deficits in the Islamist theory of the modern nation-state, and preserve a liberal democratic opening.

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Schmitt in Cairo (cc @ibishblog)

One could easily – the liberalist Twitterati have shown little hesitation on this one – compare Morsi’s assumption of the right to rule by decree with acts by Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, or a wide range of autocrats including Morsi’s immediate predecessor. If inclined, however, to support or excuse Morsi, one might instead invoke Franklin Roosevelt after or even before the 1941 American Declarations of War, or Abraham Lincoln suspending the Constitution to save constitutional order: Each was called tyrant, traitor, dictator by his political enemies, even amidst undoubted states of emergency. Now they are, generally but not universally, called “great.”

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