Arming Civil Society Worldwide
IN FOCUS, 23 Jul 2012
Anthony Judge – TRANSCEND Media Service
Getting Democracy to Work in the Emergent American Empire?
Introduction
This exploration is concerned with the conditions required for comprehension and uptake of American-style democracy worldwide as a basis for the viability of the emergent American empire. The focus is on a unique feature of the American Constitution which ensures that citizens have the right to bear arms. Given the recognition by Americans in general, and especially by the current government of the United States of America, that the system of democracy in America is one of the best, if not the best, in the world, this feature calls for careful attention. This is especially the case in the light of the new security strategy that envisages the establishment of what is now widely acknowledged to be an American empire worldwide [more].
This preliminary investigation is a contribution towards a more formal study of the systemic need for armed citizens for American-style democracy to work effectively.
Intangible Responsibility
Addendum on the occasion of the mass shooting in Aurora [Colorado-USA] ([July] 2012).
On 20 July 2012, a mass shooting occurred during a midnight screening of The Dark Knight Rises at a movie theatre. Such events are not unusual, whether in the USA or elsewhere. Nevertheless, many were “shocked” (Aurora Shooting: Shock, Sadness, A Search For Clues, The Huffington Post, 21 July 2012; ‘Batman’ massacre: World in shock, Emirates 24/7, 21 July 2012). People claimed to be unable to understand “why” — as with an equivalent shooting in Norway in 2011, with a greater number of fatalities. There the perpetrator claimed it was “gruesome but necessary”, using a slogan from a highly popular online game (World of Warcraft), as separately discussed (Gruesome but Necessary: Global Governance in the 21st Century? Extreme normality as indicator of systemic negligence, 2011). Potentially more “shocking” is why people have been so “shocked” in a period in which hundreds of fatalities are announced on a weekly basis — as a consequence of the uncontrolled trade in arms, cultivation of a gun culture, and indulgence in a daily diet of increasingly extreme media violence.
Attention is currently being drawn to the fact that in the USA there are more guns in civilian hands than there are people. Neither the number of deaths, nor the frequency of such incidents, are expected to ensure significant change to gun control legislation or to the Second Amendment — understood as fundamental to American understanding of democracy. As a Permanent Member of the UN Security Council, the USA continues to be a primary manufacturer and distributor of weaponry worldwide — and therefore with a vested interest in the perpetuation of violent conflict. Multilateral regulation through an Arms Trade Treaty has been proposed for trade in conventional weapons — and was the subject of a UN Conference in July 2012 (Why we need a global arms treaty, Oxfam International).
As noted on that occasion, there are more regulations governing the production and marketing of bananas than there are of weaponry (Scott Stedjan, What’s the deal with bananas and the global arms trade? Oxfam-America, 26 June 2012). However the debate made it clear that regulation of arms trade was perceived as a potential infringement of the Second Amendment of the US Constitution (Larry Bell, The U.N. Arms Trade Treaty: Are Our 2nd Amendment Rights Part Of The Deal? Forbes, 10 July 2012; Madison Ruppert, U.N. Finalizing Arms Trade Treaty, U.S. Claims Second Amendment will be Protected, theintelhub.com, 7 July 2012).
Put bluntly, the Second Amendment is not negotiable — even if it eventually enables the death of millions. According to the Wikipedia summary on gun violence in the USA: There were 52,447 deliberate and 23,237 accidental non-fatal gunshot injuries there during 2000.The majority of gun-related deaths there are suicides, with 17,352 (55.6%) of the total 31,224 firearm-related deaths in 2007 due to suicide, while 12,632 (40.5%) were homicide deaths. The Second Amendment is vital to the sustainability of American-style democracy and therefore should be expected to be reflected in the constitutions of all genuinely democratic countries, according to that understanding of democracy.
The controversy is especially interesting in terms of understandings of responsibility and how this is enshrined in law, in the light of the following:
- as indicated by the statistics, the Second Amendment effectively ensures that people have access to a device which gives them the right to commit suicide, which is otherwise prohibited. People do not otherwise have the right or the means to commit suicide. This is clearly vital as an “exit strategy” from democracy as currently conceived. Access to that facility is not enabled in many countries.
- the Second Amendment gives individuals the right to armed response to threat. This capacity has recently been reinforced, as a right to self-defence, by the US Senate (T.W. Budig, Controversial self-defense bill passes Senate, HomeTownSource.com, 23 February 2012). Critics have claimed that this is a legal invitation to summary executions instigated by any citizen.
- as the leader of the world’s major democracy, the President is now legally empowered to authorize assassinations of individuals in other countries — when they are perceived by him to be a significant threat to the American people. No democratic oversight is required. As with individual self-defense, the person authorizing the act performs the function of judge and jury in deciding the termination. Collateral damage to civilians, as in the case of drone strikes, may be regretted but is considered acceptable. It may even be treated as a joke (Obama Jokes About Killing Jonas Brothers With Predator Drones, 2012; Did You Hear the Joke About the Predator Drone That Bombed? AlterNet, 2012)
- whilst the President does not carry out assassinations in person, it is his agents — acting on his behalf — who perform the task. Since they are acting as agents of the state, they do not have any legal responsibility in the matter and may expect every form of legal impunity.
- such impunity naturally applies to pilots of drones, irrespective of the frequently cited deaths of civilians — considered as collateral damage, whether regretted or not.
- the degree of impunity extends to some degree, and controversially, to so-called massacres and shootings by military personnel. This is exemplified by the case of the My Lai Massacre resulting in the death of 347 to 504 unarmed civilians. While 26 U.S. soldiers were initially charged with criminal offenses for their actions at My Lai, only Second Lieutenant William Calley was convicted — guilty of killing 22 villagers. He was originally given a life sentence, but only served three and a half years under house arrest. A similar pattern is expected with respect to Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, alleged perpetrator of the killings of 16 Afghan civilians in 2012.
- the erosion of responsibility extends most evidently to the manufacturers of arms and their ammunition. No concern is expressed by them regarding the potential for irresponsible use of their products. Their responsibility cannot be called into question by any legal means — other than in the case of equipment malfunction. Any responsibility is even more deniable in the case of the employees of those corporations — as in the case of those who constructed the weapons used in the Aurora shootings. It is appropriate to note however that every effort would seem to be made to avoid detailed indication of the manufacturers of the weapons used in major recent conflicts (Libya, Syria, Congo, etc). Nor is any effort made to trace the origin of the weapons used murderously back to the towns and citizens responsible for their hands-on construction — as is possible in the case with bananas (cf. Identification of Bullets: human right and human responsibility? 2009). How “shocked” is it appropriate for a community to be if it is directly implicated in arms manufacture and marketing?
- the erosion of responsibility is further diluted in the case of the cultivation of a gun culture, most notably through the omnipresence of media violence (ironically exemplified by the Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, shown at the time of the Aurora shooting). How “shocked” is it appropriate to be for a movie industry dependent on such violence (cf. Jake Coyle, Shooting at Colo. theater shocks movie industry, WISHTV.com, 20 Jul 2012)? In the case of the Norwegian shooter, the point has been repeatedly made regarding his use of online games in training for his act (Norway Terrorist Used World Of Warcraft As A Training Simulator, 27 July 2011; Terrorist Anders Behring Breivik Used Modern Warfare 2 as “Training-Simulation”, 23 July 2011). Such games — in which millions engage daily, often for many hours at a time — are also employed in conventional military training.
This pattern is interesting in that the credibility of the logic hangs on a set of intangibles — through which people acquire a “right” which “authorizes” them to undertake certain actions in response to “threats” they “perceive”, whether or not these are confirmed by others. For these acts they may, or may not, be claimed to be “responsible”. As in the case of Robert Bales: When it all comes out, it will be a combination of stress, alcohol and domestic issues — he just snapped (Accused G.I. ‘Snapped’ Under Strain, Official Says. The New York Times, 15 March 2012). His case bears comparison with that of William Calley. The case of Major Nidal Malik Hasan — accused in the case of the Fort Hood shooting in 2009, involving the death of 13 and the wounding of 29 — has yet to go to trial. Might the perpetrator of the Aurora shooting be assumed just to have “snapped” — thereby absolving him of a degree of responsibility? Curiously, in the case of the Norwegian shooting, Anders Behring Breivik strongly emphasized that he was sane at the time of the act and therefore fully responsible for it.
PLEASE READ THE WHOLE PAPER IN THE ORIGINAL – laetusinpraesens.org
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Anthony Judge is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace, Development and Environment.
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 23 Jul 2012.
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