‘Just War’ or just war?
As Irish republicans prepare to remember those that have died in pursuit of a free unified Ireland, rededicate themselves to that cause and in some cases commit themselves to supporting current armed action to advance that aim I noted a comment by ‘Scaramoosh’ on this thread:
“Where a government has come into power through some form of popular vote, fraudulent or not, and maintains at least an appearance of constitutional legality, the guerrilla outbreak cannot be promoted, since the possibilities of peaceful struggle have not yet been exhausted.”
- Ernesto Che Guevara
This quote has always jumped out to me as a revolutionary socialist rewriting age old ‘Just War’ theory best articulated by Thomas Aquinas:
The war must be started and controlled by the authority of state or ruler.
There must be a just cause.
The war must be for good, or against evil. Law and order must always be restored.
Later added:
The war must be a last resort.
The war must be fought proportionally
As Easter inevitably merges religion and political remembrance in Ireland I wonder if many are reflecting the legitimacy of previous ‘wars’ and if they believe that to be the case how they feel about current armed struggle some will present as ‘just’.
my republican beliefs are not rooted in religion in the slightest. i am an atheist.
Have you ever met a doctrinaire socialist and observed the similarity with religious zealots? Yes, ‘true republicans’ are the same!!
I agree with Groundhog day on everything he said except for one basic point
armed struggle, IMO, has done a better job reinforcing sectarianism in Ireland far more than partition over the past 30 years. the IRA should have supported early attempts at a reformed stormont instead of seeking a UI. if their armed struggle had ended in 1974 or so they would not have dishonored the title of being the IRA
armed struggle became, and to some still is, not the means to an end but an end in itself
[i]“nowhere do you point to when the irish nation, as a whole, collectively exercised their right to self determination or gave it away.”[/i]
The Irish nation exercises its right to national self-determination every time it votes, and it does so exercising a collective right (Article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights). That’s how democracy works, kid. The Diaspora, such as those in Northern Ireland, America, Japan, et al, has no relevance to that process. You misunderstand: the Irish nation has not renounced its right to national self-determination, since the nation-state of Ireland exists. It is a small part of it that have renounced that right via the GFA process, i.e. those who are born in Northern Ireland, part of the United Kingdom.
I suggest you pay close attention to Article 2 of the Irish constitution, and here it is: “It is the entitlement and birthright of every person born in the island of Ireland, which includes its islands and seas, to be part of the Irish Nation.” The “island of Ireland” contains two separate sovereign jurisdictions. The “birthright” here (work of Martin Mansergh) is not declaring that you are born as a member of the Irish nation, for that is clearly impossible when you are born as a British citizen (your actual birthright). As one state cannot confer its nationality on the citizens of a foreign state under international law, it cleverly declares instead that you have a right to apply for Irish citizenship.
So, your birthright is not Irish nationality but the right to apply for Irish nationality (and be granted it). This automatic grant is only of symbolic value since you, like every other citizen of EU, could enjoy all the benefits of living in an Irish nation-state under the Maastricht Treaty. Apart from complying with the relevant international law, it would be deeply offensive to the citizens of a foreign state to declare that those who are British were born as members of the Irish nation. Article 2 of the Irish constitution makes no such declaration. It basically says, “Yeah, you’re British, but you can also be Irish if you want to be.”
That’s the irrefutable reality of it. And as it is in the Irish constitutional, it is national self-determination at work. You asked the Irish nation to agree to downgrade your former right to national self-determination as a member of that nation to the status of an aspiration that is now formally and legitimately subject to the veto of another nation, and they obliged. I’d agree, if you proffered it, that you thought you were doing the opposite, but will the rest of them agree that they were royally hoodwinked, too? No, that’s not how reality works. See, you supported the Shinners and the GFA, didn’t you? It’s only now that you realise whose puppets they were that you’ve changed your mind. Right? Your ilk is all accounted for, and as Dylan said, “It’s all over now, baby blue.”
[i]“there has never been a state (other than the short lived revolutionary first and second daileanna) that was capable of having the right of self determination vested in it. I don’t subscribe to the view that legitimacy is still vested in those bodies, but i do know that there hasn’t been an all ireland election since and there certainly hasn’t been the opportunity for the irish people to have an unfettered vote on their status.”[/i]
Like most shinners and neo-shinners, you exhibit an endless capacity for self-deception and for inventing an alternative wonderland to tiptoe through the tulips in.
[i]“the 1998 referendum has no bearing on self determination, it was a creature of partition as much as government of ireland act (which also involved similtaneous elections north and south).”[/i]
You’re going nowhere with this. If you want to pretend that Ireland doesn’t exist and that its people have no right to determine their own destiny or elect their own government, then that is between you and a good psychiatrist. But do you seriously think that I am going to accept an argument that is predicated on that level of insanity?
[b]Continued[/b]
Here comes some more reality: please look away from your monitor if it is painful for you. Okay, assuming you’re still reading, self-determination is a collective right, and all collective rights are exercised by polls (yes, this does get a bit tricky in the case of colonial occupiers who tend not to allow polls to overthrow their rule, but just accept that isn’t a relevant context here and stick with me on this). Since a poll is determined by the majority vote, a collective right is a majority right. See? Now, do you know the difference between majority and minority or will I explain that too? Now what would happen if self-determination was an individual right? Well, you’d have a few million different and equally valid policy positions instead of one, wouldn’t you? That would be a tad impracticable and contradictory, wouldn’t it? So, you see, the collective decide on a policy and the minority agree to be bound to non-violence in their opposition to it. If the minority break the contract and use violence for political ends, they violate the principle of self-determination and become common criminals. It doesn’t work any other way.
By the way, there were two seperate polls on two seperate issues held in two seperate juristictions, which the two cute hoors, Bertie Ahern and Martin Mansergh, decided to hold on the same day in order to give the false impression that there was one act of national self-determination. Contrary to the propaganda, no one in Ireland voted for the GFA. We voted on the 19th amendment (to remove the state’s claim to Her Majesty’s territory). What do you think would have happened if both juristictions voted on the same issue, with a majority in Ireland voting Yes and a majority in Northern Ireland voting No? You’d have two different results in two different juristictions, wouldn’t you? So, the minority would overrule the majority. In other words, the Unionist Veto would prevail.
[i]“where is it written that the right to self determination cannot be regained if indeed it had been given away?”[i]
Well, it has only been given away by those who consider themselves as members of the Irish nation in Northern Ireland. In return, they accepted that the right to self-determination that applies to them is Northern Irish. Once you accept the legitimacy of another nation holding a veto over you, on what grounds do you then declare it to be illegitimate? You can’t claim that something is illegitimate when you have declared to be legitimate, can you? All you can do is normalise British rule and try to obfuscate Irish unity as the end in itself rather than the means to an Irish nation-state for the Irish nation in Northern Ireland. So, your only strategy then is to seek to extend the political arrangements that exist in NI into Ireland, and unite the island under British rule or some variant of it or some device that, at the very least, removes the right of the Irish nation to national self-determination, encouraging them to dismantle their nation-state and replace it with an entity wherein they are de facto stateless. Good luck with that. In the real world, you won’t be getting back what you gave away.
[i]“self determination stems solely from the concept of a nation (which may or may not be a fascist concept), but if you accept that there is a right to national self determination, you must accept that while there is a nation, the right cannot be extinguished.” [/i]
Self-determination is the foundation of democracy – it is democracy in practice. There is nothing fascist about it. Sovereignty is key to that, since there is no point having a democracy if there is no sovereign power to exercise, is there? That’s relevant because we are in the process of giving away the sovereign powers of the state to foreign powers. Is the EU project is a direct violation of international law, specifically Article 1 of the covenant above? “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” It is a violation if you hold that people have no right to renounce their right to self-determination. But as that right holds that self-determination can be exercised to renounce itself, it isn’t.
The Irish Supreme Court upheld the right of the Irish people to give away their sovereignty to the EU. It did not hold that they were merely “loaning” it or “pooling” it because they were doing neither of those things when they voted for the applicable EU treaties: they were giving away their sovereignty to foreign powers with no right to reclaim them. There are no exist clauses in the EU treaties, and permission to regain those sovereign powers is solely at the discretion of those foreign powers. So, the right to national self-determination is being self-extinguished. In fact, 84% of all new laws are not devised by the Irish nation or its state at all.
[b]Continued[/b]
The Americans, on the other hand, hold that self-determination cannot be given away, but they too are in the process of giving (some) of it away under Obama, so whereas they would have seen the likes of the EU project as something they would take up arms against if such foreign powers exercised their sovereignty, that may be about to change (very slowly) too.
In Ireland, the Irish nation has a very weak grip on its nation-state. Only a fool would place a bet on the long-term survival of it. In NI, you have an emerging threat from a newly engineered nation who seek to subvert the Irish state and you always have an EU policy that allows any other member of the EU to live here. Now, do the math on this: 20% of Ireland are EU nationals, and about 30% on “the island of Ireland” are this engineered NI nation, so that put the Irish nation dangerously close to being a minority on “the island of Ireland.” Let’s ignore the NI threat and focus on the EU threat: 20% of Ireland are EU nationals, so they can be expected to support the political system that allowed them to live and work in Ireland. Add to this the growing number who feel an affinity with the artifically engineered nationalism of European, and you get a dangerously high level of people who will vote to fully integrate with the EU, i.e. to give away the remaining sovereign powers of the state to foreign powers. The Irish nation doesn’t know how close it is to becoming a stateless nation.
[i]“on the eu law point, the constitutional courts of every member state would disagree with you. i don’t dissent from the view that any secession could result in the EU flexing its muscle, but that doesn’t diminish the principle of right to self determination, only the physical ability to exercise it!”[/i]
Now, now… who has bought the propaganda line about sovereignty merely being “pooled” rather than given away? (As if it is legitimate for a democracy to chose not to function as such but to allow others to determine its affairs without any consideration of what its affairs actually are under one-size-fits-all laws, policies and regulation). I cited the Supreme Court case on Slugger before, and if you try Googling either “Dave” or “The Dubliner” you should find it. If the powers were not being given away, kid, there would be no need for a referendum under the Irish constitution.
Closing [i]italics[/i] (Hopefully)
dave
no need to resort to allegations of insanity. i’ve put forward a view on the right to self determination, and you have put forward a view, yours is no more irrefutable than any other view i’ve seen here. You appear to believe that even if the boundaries are gerrymandered, that the result is still valid.
not much content hidden in your rant
picador,
yeah, there was no 1921 referendum, i never said there was. the decision on whether to accept the treaty was debated in the second dail, but probably more importantly debated hard and long by the entire country. probably better participation than any referendum that we’ve had, although it was ultimately tested by arms. I’m no historical expert, but i suspect a referendum would not have carried the treaty. But yes, you’re right, the people were never asked directly in a referendum. Had things improved by 1998 by having a rigged referendum?
Groundhog Day
In recent elections republicans who do not support the GFA put them selves forward as candidates. How well did they perform, they certainly did not have the endorsement of the Irish people in a fair election. If people objected to the GFA, they would not vote for parties who support it. That is not hard to understand. You ask for more peaceful alternatives. Here is a simple one, win the arguement and get the irish people to support you. If they don’t and you think it is okay to take up arms to oppose THEIR views, then you have no understanding of the word republican. What is the point of a republic if the democratic wishes of the Irish people are ignored? It took me along time to get to grips with the fact a unionist vote does not equal an armed british occupation no matter how many times you say it. Maybe you should think about that.