Responsibility for the death of an Iraqi Child

Ted Rall has put up his latest cartoon about Responsibility for the death of an Iraqi Child. My comments are below the fold:

I would like to think that the real question raised by Cde. Rall's cartoon is where responsibility for the death of the Iraqi child lies.

Under the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (Articles 146 and 147), the primary responsibilty lies with the soldier who killed the child with secondary responsibilty devolving to the military chain of command. In other words, the soldiers in panels #2 and #3 as well as POTUS in panel #7 are exposed to criminal charges arising from the death of the Iraqi child.

The Nuremburg Principles state that following orders is not a defense at law (Principle IV). Indeed, Congress and the Media could be liable under Principle VII. At the Nuremberg Trials, one newspaper editor (Julius Streicher) was sentenced to death for his "...incitement to murder and extermination..." (Gilbert 1995, p.443), as well as several politicians (e.g. Fritz Sauckel and Baron von Neurath) were either hung or imprisioned.

All of these legal niceties avoid the central tenet of a Democracy: the people are responsible for acts committed in their name. So the responsibility for the death of the Iraqi lies with the people in panel #5. I believe some people understand Principle VII extends to all adults in a functioning democracy.

Gilbert, G.M. (1995) "Nuremberg Diary", Da Capo Press, USA.

In Section 3. For peace and international solidarity of the Party Program for the DSP, the warmaking powers should reside entirely with the people

War and preparations for war threaten the lives and welfare of the overwhelming majority. Decisions related to war must be taken out of the hands of the capitalists, their political representatives, and general staffs. Working people and rank-and-file soldiers have a right to know all the real aims and commitments of the government's military and foreign policy. All military and diplomatic treaties and agreements should be made accessible to the public. The people should have the right to vote directly on the question of war.

Emphasis Mine

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Intellectual Obesity

Ted Rall has put up his latest cartoon Intellectual Obesity. My posted comment follows below the fold:

So, according to the last panel, I must be a liberal because I am not an American. Therefore 95% of humanity must be liberals as well as a consequence of being non-Americans. Thereby making Liberalism the overwhelming predominant philosophy of humanity, and relegating Consevatism to the fringe.

Or, as Mark Twain once said, "There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

Enough of my demonstrations of intellectual obesity!

What are the economic drivers for intellectual obesity? One would have thought that a Capitalist economy would perform far better with workers who are intellectual fit (to prolong the metaphor).

In my own "profession" of computing, we hold up bad examples to ridicule at sites such as Worse Than Failure. However, "professional" computer societies promote intellectual obesity through examples such as IEEE Ready Notes, or through cookbook approaches such as Design Patterns.

The cost of labour reproduction (cf "Capital" by K.Marx) is far higher for an intellectually fit worker than for an intellectually obese one. The latter can probably do hundreds of Google searches in the time it takes the former to understand the problem.

Hence the need for the pundit class of "experts". They provide solutions to classes of problems. Everyone else just Googles them and reproduces the results. This is far cheaper and thus creates more output than the master craftspeople.

You are not going to change the culture of intellectual obesity by individual examples any more than a gourmet restaurant has of putting MacDonald's out of business. This is how the economic system works.

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