Deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

In the heat of the Saddam underpants controversy, human rights groups and our own government claimed that the release of the photos was a violation of the mass-murderer’s rights under the Geneva Convention.

Many people wondered why the Geneva Convention rules protected Saddam, but didn’t protect the hundreds of thousands who were murdered and tortured by his regime.

This is nothing new. Geneva Conventions and the unelected elites of the international community have been very effective in protecting the lives and rights of mass-murdering dictators. Pol Pot and Idi Amin died of old age. Slobodan Milosivec was recently elected to office. Under current ‘international law’, any sociopath with political ambitions will realize that gaining political power doesn’t just bring in money, it allows you to get away with the most heinous crimes.

The Geneva Conventions, the UN and international law have all been very effective at protecting the lives and rights of dictators, but they rarely (close to never) protect the rights of civilians. Far more citizens died at the hands of their governments last century than ever died in its wars. Many Westerners, living happy cozy lives in well-protected democracies, will claim that the prevention of war should be our first priority. If tolerating genocide is the price we have to pay for that, they say, well, let’s do that. At least we haven’t had a nuclear war.

Of course, they’re willing to tolerate genocide as long as it’s happening in someone else’s hemisphere.

Although it may be very hard to believe this, hate is a far more destructive WMD than nukes. More than 800,000 people in Rwanda were slaughtered by the old-fashioned combination of hate and machetes. Millions have died in the Sudan as a result of Islamist hate. Islamists, following the same philosophy of hate as the Sudanese genocidaires, slaughtered thousands of Americans on 9/11. They’ve murdered hundreds of Europeans since then. The failures of the UN and the international community to protect civilians or prosecute terrorism are reaching into our once-protected Western Hemisphere. We’re all Rwandans now.

Since the end of WWII, most governments have had a long-running obsessive fear of nukes. If a problem doesn’t involve nukes, the threat of nuclear war, or some other attention-getting WMD, most governments, ours included, don’t do very much. They say a few word, then move along. Hate and democide, despite their millions of victims, fly below the radar every time.

It’s happening again, in Zimbabwe. Joe Katzman, who has been following Norm Geras and others’ concern with the situation, has come to the conclusion that:

The Right to Bear Arms is the only reliable way to prevent genocide in the modern world.

The idea that a state derives its power from the people, and the people have the right to overthrow that state is still revolutionary. But this right, and the connection to this statement..

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

..may explain why the United States hasn’t suffered the lunatic political uphevals that Europe, the Middle East and Africa have suffered. I don’t think most of the unelected members of the UN approve of or even understand the concept that the people should have a state-given right to overthrow that same state. I don’t think most Europeans understand it.

Joe’s post has a lot more. Read the whole thing.

Getting back to the Geneva Convention rules, their inability to deal with the realities of democide and terorism is a sign that they need to be changed. People should have the right to defend themselves and those rights are currently taken away on a regular basis. But the question is, who should make the changes?

Or better yet, who should NOT do it? – the same unelected elites that make up the dictator-friendly international community. They wouldn’t favor the right of ordinary civilians to defend themselves. That’s the job of groups like Amnesty International and the Toyota Taliban.

Since the new rules would have the goal of protecting civilians, maybe civilians could assemble them. The internet has changed a lot of the old rules. Maybe someone could set up a Wiki?

[posted by Mary at Exit Zero]