the author has his phd from northwestern and an llm from harvard. he's also an associate professor at national defense university in washington dc.
well. the article title is
TRAHISON DES PROFESSEURS:
THE CRITICAL LAW OF ARMED CONFLICT
ACADEMY AS AN ISLAMIST FIFTH COLUMN
intrigued?
an aghast mason professor wrote a response and introduces it like this:
The article argues that critics of U.S. military policy at major American law
schools have offered false accounts of the law of armed conflict for the purpose of
assisting Islamist military campaigns. From this premise, the article reasons that such scholars are “combatants” in a psychological warfare operation on behalf of our enemies, but “combatants” who have forfeited prisoner of war protections because they have not worn the “distinctive insignia” which the law of armed conflict requires of lawful combatants. It then concludes that these scholars:
"… can be targeted at any time and place and captured and detained until the
termination of hostilities. As unlawful combatants … propagandists are subject to
coercive interrogation, trial and imprisonment. Further, the infrastructure used to
create and disseminate propaganda – law school facilities, scholars’ home
offices and media outlets where they give interviews – are also lawful targets given
the causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited. Shocking and extreme as this option might seem, scholars and the law schools that employ them are – at least in theory – targetable so long as attacks are proportional, distinguish noncombatants from combatants, employ non-prohibited weapons and contribute to the defeat of Islamism."
rest of embarrassed professor's response/summary http://www.nslj.org/wp-content/uploads/Betrayal-of-Rational-Argument.pdf
the insane thing: https://www.nslj.org/wp-content/uploads/3_NatlSecLJ_278-461_Bradford.pdf
This power to act according to discretion, for the public good, without the prescription of the law, and sometimes even against it, is that which is called prerogative: for since in some governments the lawmaking power is not always in being, and is usually too numerous, and so too slow, for the dispatch requisite to execution; and because also it is impossible to foresee, and so by laws to provide for, all accidents and necessities that may concern the public, or to make such laws as will do no harm, if they are executed with an inflexible rigour, on all occasions, and upon all persons that may come in their way; therefore there is a latitude left to the executive power, to do many things of choice which the laws do not prescribe.
All the seeds are there for liberalism showing its true form being brute force to assert property relations.
A. Islamophobia
The first criticism is that the assessment of the threat Islamism poses is grossly overblown. If Islamism is not an evil, totalitarian ideology and does not spur its followers to destroy the West to make way for the Caliphate, survival as a nation and civilization is not at stake. In fact, there may well be no compelling need for unity to defeat whatever quantum of threat Islamism does represent, if any. Existing LOAC may be adequate to the task; law enforcement measures may even suffice. With skillful statecraft that encourages Islamic moderates, a path toward peaceful accommodation, coexistence, and friendship between the West and the Islamic world may be negotiable. Any talk of civilization conflict or total war is therefore rooted, ultimately, in Islamophobia, which this Article stokes.
This imprudent critique is in deliberate disregard of the malevolent words and sanguinary deeds of Islamists splashed in ink and blood across the pages and sands of history. Rampant Islamism has resumed a struggle to achieve a goal that has eluded it for 1400 years. That religion might constitute the most violent variable in international relations is hard for Western minds to assimilate. It is frightening to accept that a long respite from religious warfare is over, and Islamism may well be separable from Islam. Yet to fail to acknowledge the Islamist threat as an existential challenge to Western Civilization, and to fail to unite to defeat that threat, would be the greatest dereliction of duty in history. Admitting that a survival imperative dictates the need to marshal urgency, unity, and courage, and to seize opportunities to defeat a threat—including a rationalized LOAC befitting a Fourth Generation War that pits honorable military forces against anticivilizational atavists—is not “Islamophobic.” It is a demonstration of thumos, and must be hailed as such.
qYOr8TlnqsY
Miasmic Islamism
The Isle of Iambic Miasmic Islamism Jism
HenryKrinkle posted:say what you want about the tenets of Islamophobia, dude, at least it's a thumos.
*Sylvester Stallone voice* "It's NOT a thumos!!!"
The article cites a range of scholars, whose works purportedly exemplify such treasonous activity. Among those cited are: Gabriella Blum of the Harvard Law School, a former military lawyer for the Israel Defense Force; Ryan Goodman of NYU Law School, now serving as a senior policy adviser at the Department of Defense; Michael Scharf, a professor at Case Western Law School, who served as a legal advisor to the Iraqi government for the trial of Saddam Hussein and before that in the Legal Advisor’s office at the State Department; and Michael Walzer of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, whose book on the ethics of war has been assigned at U.S. military academies for decades.
love the touch with the C.L.O.A.C.A. acronym (critical law of armed conflict academy)... this William C. Bradford guy has been in some controversies before:
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/12/06/bradford
check out his cool comment on his own wikipedia talk page
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:William_C._Bradford#Message_from_William_Bradford
drwhat posted:looking forward to the new instant-loss-of-citizenship-and-personhood crime of being a liberal
this, but unirionically. something something mao. my sense of humor is pretty dark. troll face
Perhaps American military efforts would be more effective if less restrained. Perhaps the military would be less constrained – or more fully supported – if there were less criticism from legal scholars about combat practices of the U.S. military.
Makeshift_Swahili posted:what strikes me as funny/weird is how deeply connected to the US state these 'treasonous' profs are.
i dont think its that surprising at all. these are the only people the author is going to be aware of, or feel threatened by the Seriousness of
Makeshift_Swahili posted:
In an article picking apart Bradford’s argument piece by piece, Matt Ford, an associate editor at the Atlantic, pointed out that “Treason of the Professors” may not even be Bradford’s most controversial work.
“Since 2014, according to what is apparently his LinkedIn page, he has been circulating an article for publication entitled, ‘Alea Iacta Est: The U.S. Coup of 2017,'” Ford wrote on Monday. “The abstract is strewn with thinly-veiled references to President Obama, asking, for example, ‘What conditions precedent would be required before the American military would be justified in using or threatening force to oust a U.S. president attempting to “fundamentally transform the United States of America”?’ Although describing it simply as a ‘heuristic test of a proferred theory,’ it also wonders aloud, ‘Is such a duty incumbent upon the U.S. armed forces at present?’ That’s a disquieting question for a faculty member to pose, when he’s charged with instructing the nation’s officer corps.”
ilmdge posted:too bad this guy isnt a radical leftist
Where is the American Sankara?
Well-meaning attempts at improving service life led to
the unintended insularity of military society, representing a return to the cloistered life of the pre-World War II armed forces. Military bases, complete with schools, churches, stores, child care centers, and recreational areas, became never-to-be-left islands of tranquility removed from the chaotic, crime-ridden environment outside the gates. As one reporter put it in 1991: “Increasingly isolated from mainstream America, today’s troops tend to view the civilian world with suspicion and sometimes hostility.”Thus, a physically isolated and intellectually alienated officer corps was paired with an enlisted force likewise distanced from the society it was supposed to serve. In short, the military evolved into a force susceptible to manipulation by an authoritarian leader from its own select ranks.
What made this all the more disheartening was the wretched performance
of our forces in the Second Gulf War. Consumed with ancillary and
nontraditional missions, the military neglected its fundamental raison d’être. As
the Supreme Court succinctly put it more than a half century ago, the “primary
business of armies and navies to fight or be ready to fight wars should the
occasion arise.”When Iranian armies started pouring into the lower Gulf
states in 2010, the US armed forces were ready to do anything but fight....
We must remember that America’s position at the end of the Cold War
had no historical precedent. For the first time the nation—in peacetime—found
itself with a still-sizable, professional military establishment that was not
preoccupied with an overarching external threat.93 Yet the uncertainties in the
aftermath of the Cold War limited the extent to which those forces could be
safely downsized. When the military was then obliged to engage in a bewildering array of nontraditional duties to further justify its existence, it is little
wonder that its traditional apolitical professionalism eventually eroded.
Clearly, the curious tapestry of military authoritarianism and combat
ineffectiveness that we see today was not yet woven in 1992. But the threads
were there....
/i]
http://strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pubs/parameters/Articles/2010winter/Dunlap_Jr.pdf
https://talesfromthelou.wordpress.com/category/military-industrial-complex/
A useful precedent to keep in mind when contemplating current media narratives.
Edited by RedMaistre ()
RedMaistre posted:Makeshift_Swahili posted:In an article picking apart Bradford’s argument piece by piece, Matt Ford, an associate editor at the Atlantic, pointed out that “Treason of the Professors” may not even be Bradford’s most controversial work.
“Since 2014, according to what is apparently his LinkedIn page, he has been circulating an article for publication entitled, ‘Alea Iacta Est: The U.S. Coup of 2017,'” Ford wrote on Monday. “The abstract is strewn with thinly-veiled references to President Obama, asking, for example, ‘What conditions precedent would be required before the American military would be justified in using or threatening force to oust a U.S. president attempting to “fundamentally transform the United States of America”?’ Although describing it simply as a ‘heuristic test of a proferred theory,’ it also wonders aloud, ‘Is such a duty incumbent upon the U.S. armed forces at present?’ That’s a disquieting question for a faculty member to pose, when he’s charged with instructing the nation’s officer corps.”
http://reverbpress.com/news/us/43-gop-say-no-elections-yes-military-overthrow/