Behind Enemy Lines

Nick Berg's dad Michael about his son's killers:

I am sure, knowing my son, that somewhere during their association with him these men became aware of what an extraordinary man my son was. I take comfort that when they did the awful thing they did, they weren't quite as in to it as they might have been. I am sure that they came to admire him.

So because Nick was such a cool non-hatin' guy, the Islamist terrorists "weren't quite as in to it as they might have been"!? God, somebody remove this man from public view before he says something really stupid.

That would be my first take. My second take is that Michael Berg is an opportunist who will use his son's death to make political points against the US government which is fighting the likes of his son's killers. But I really don't want to go there.

So what were we to do when we in America were attacked on September 11, that infamous day? I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labelled our enemies and start listening to them. Stop giving preconditions to our peaceful coexistence on this small planet, and start honouring and respecting every human's need to live free and autonomously, to truly respect the sovereignty of every state.

Sovereignty for Iraq. Sovereignty for Saudi Arabia. Sovereignty for North Korea and Cuba. Sovereignty for Iran and Burma and Syria. Let's truly respect sovereignty for every state. In Michael Berg's world, apparently, not only is there no contradiction in both honouring and respecting every human's need to live free and autonomously and in truly respecting the sovereignty of every state, it seems like he thinks they're one and the same.

Of course the truth is that many people are deprived of their freedom because of state sovereignty. At least, sovereignty is given as the reason they ought not be let out of their chains.

I note that "autonomously" is an adverb generally applied to state's living conditions and not to people's, as Micheal Berg does. When I'm living autonomously, that means I'm no longer living off my parents. I'm sure that's not what he means. I think he means that when it comes down to the sovereign power of states to suppress their people versus the non-autonomous nature of people relying on the US to secure freedom within their country, sovereignty should win out.

But that's exactly the lesson that was unlearned on 9/11.

If a government derives its authority through any means other than through the consent of the governed, it's sovereignty isn't worth the paper the UN charter is written on. The government in question is no better than $200 kidnappers and it has no moral legitimacy. They have hostages and not citizens.

There is no "black box" of sovereignty into which we cannot peak, no government whose legitimacy cannot be questioned in the interest of international peace a la Westphalia anymore. We can no longer accept that governments and states are legitimate merely because they exist, a devil's bargain at best. After 9/11 it is clear: there is one route to sovereignty, and that is democracy.

And the main reason this must be so is technology. Before, we could accept the suffering of the disenfranchised, because it didn't intrude on our liberal enclosure. Respecting sovereignty, and whatever horrors sovereign states created internally, made sense. It reduced violence overall, even while sacrificing many victims of sovereign states to their fates. But now technology, cheap and ubiquitous travel and communications, and the continuing democratization of WMD, makes this devil's bargain disadvantageous. The political disenfranchisement of the hostages threatens everybody. This must end.

It is now a fact that the US's radical ideology and it's global interests intersect to a degree that they haven't since WWII, and maybe even earlier than that. Freedom is good. And sovereignty is only acceptable where there is freedom. I hold this to be self-evident. Our enemies use the old concept of sovereignty as a license. We should get rid of it.