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following the "logic" of the bush administration's "war on terrorism":
what rules of war?
here's why i ask this way:
it seems that it is now ok for nation-states to declare something like war on non-nation-state entities. apparently, the bush people have assumed that this irregular kind of war means that the rules do not really apply. whence the claims that the geneva convention does not really apply, that provisions in the convention are "confusing"--that prisoners being held at guantanomo arent really prisoners of war etc..
the rules are so inoperative that states dont even have to make a credible argument for war in this brave new world.
but if that is true, then there are problems: for example if a "terrorist" is one who operates outside the "rules of war"--and war against a non-nation-state entity arguably puts you on a different level than would war between nation-states---either (a) there are no rules so there are no terrorists or non-terrorists--the distintion has nothing to do with ordinance or uniforms, it simply is a function of whether you happen to approve of the politics behind an action or not. or (b) there are rules but everyone is outside them, so all actors are equally "terrorist" in this kind of context.
you would think that (c) this kind of war does not fit but everyone acts as though it does and respects the rules but that would entail things like proportionality of response, abjuring collective punishment, minimizing "collateral damage" and so forth. none of these seem to be happening so far in lebanon.
what in fact differentiates military from "terrorist" in this kind of irregular legal space? apart from supporting one side and opposing another--in which case the distinction means only "i like one side i dont like the other"
well, the uniforms and the press apparatus---these would be different. military operations that unfold in this grey area are presented as if they were legitimate--by being "reactive" say, by adapting to a "new kind of war"--all the usual arguments you have been getting from the rationale for the organization of the national security state to the neo-schmittian arguments for de facto dictatorship in america as a response to a "state of exception"....
another question: does defining something like the israeli pulverization of lebanon around the strange category "war" create problems for trying to understand causes? is a history of routinized brutalization visited upon the palestinians count as part of the cause? or is cause limited to hezbollah rocket attacks last week? if you link the myriad problems created by the israeli occupation--including settlement programs--to the present context, one thing that does happen is that the notion of the rules of war and the claim that the israelis have been playing by them go straight out the window.
just curious.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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