There He Goes Again.. Alan Dershowitz Promulgating Pre-Emptive War

On CNN's Situation Room with Wolfie hawking his new book, and promoting the policy of Pre-emption Warfare. Says the United Nations will be drafting new International policies and Laws (which I take he's a party to crafting) to legitimize the use of preemptive strikes against another country on the possibility they have nuclear weapons.

I'll never forget when he came out right after 9/11 promoting notion of legalizing the use of Torture, I was blown away. that was the first moment i realized what an evil rabid blood thirsty animal he is. But now he's pushing the idea of legitimizing preemption strikes.

why do these cold blooded wannabe killers get media creds?

No more. He disgusts me.

It specifically forbids preemption.

'they're all working on it'...

aggression. It served at Nuremburg quite satisfactorily.

he's actually a brilliant and quite liberal legal scholar.

why he decided to carry water for the bfee i'll never know. yes, there's the israel angle, but the kind of "preemption" the israelis use is very different from the kind of "preemption" that the shrubbies use.

and nothing explains his torture stance.

just bizarre from an otherwise smart and sane lefty.

To his support of Israel "right or wrong", when they were accused of the same. It is sad to see an otherwise intelligent person sell their principles down the river and justify the worst imaginable behavior for political reasons.

following 9/11 - that ended.

recently I saw him debate Noam Chomsky..Chomsky whupped his ass, but Durshowitz is a lot more agressive in that rabid right wing kind of way they have.

Afic, Chomsky is the Lefty who earned his creds and he' s never ever brought on CM.

His "liberalism" ends whenever something might not go the Israeli's way. This guy is not on our side--unless our side is also an Israel first side. I hope it's not.

Say it ain't so Alan, be sure you choose where to place your sociocultural loyalties wisely.

BUU bye.

aren't genetically cut out to be scientists? (paraphrasing)

Liberal scholar, my hiney! I contend that he is NOT a progressive; he's a rightwinger who sometimes exhibits liberal attitudes.

His attitude on torture and preemptive war resembles that of the hardright in Israel, and this attitude is disgusting and unacceptable. He's not welcome in my club, and I won't be spending any money for his writings, either!

I don't agree with Prof. Dershowitz, but he is a brilliant scholar and feels very strongly about this issue. Rather than summarily giving him the traditional DU trashing, it is interesting to hear his views on this. It's always okay to disagree without being disrespectful.

Q&A with Alan Dershowitz

By Harvey Blume | March 5, 2006

''HISTORY ISN'T a court of law''-or so I insisted to Alan Dershowitz last week in a conference room at Harvard Law School. Dershowitz didn't strenuously argue the point, as I expected. He gave no sign of turning into the firebrand his wife calls ''the Dersh character,'' famous for sarcasm and bad manners in public disputations. The Alan Dershowitz I met smiled graciously, and waited for me to go on.

I did so by referring to the comparison he made in ''Chutzpah'' (1991) between Palestinian refugees and city dwellers forced to relocate by the ordinary processes of urban renewal. Whatever weird sense that might make in some court of law, I said, it made no sense when it came to the dynamics of history. Dershowitz agreed, surprisingly, informing me that he'd learned a lot about Palestinian suffering since ''Chutzpah,'' and that he has always opposed Israeli occupation of the West Bank and supported a two-state solution.

Clearly, though, not everyone finds him as genial as I did. Because of death threats from various quarters, visitors must dial in to his office and identify themselves to gain admission. And ''Preemption'' (Norton), his new book, shows why even those who bear him no mortal grudge might find him terrifically annoying.

Dershowitz confronts the dark sides of legal practice. He has argued, for example, that it would be better to recognize and regulate torture than to allow it to be applied covertly and inconsistently. ''Preemption'' argues similarly that in an age of suicide bombers and WMDs we have no choice but to talk openly about awful subjects such as targeted killings and the whys and wherefores of preemptive war.

Whether you agree or not, it's hard to deny that his arguments are based on reason. The only glimpse I got of the ''Dersh character'' came as I was leaving. He had bet a colleague about some minor matter and, though proven wrong, I saw him go on arguing. ''Alan,'' his colleague chided him, not at all mollified by the fact that Dershowitz now owed her a very expensive lunch, ''you just can't stand not being right, can you?''

IDEAS: According to you, the Iraq war has given the whole subject of preemption a bad name.

DERSHOWITZ: Absolutely. People tend to look at the last historic event and make broad judgments based on it. And the war in Iraq is a bad war.

IDEAS: So why focus on preemption now?

DERSHOWITZ: 9/11 showed that we are being attacked by people we cannot deter, because they're not afraid of dying. Besides, a rational person can't be against preemption-or for it. You have to pick carefully. For example, Israel was correct in launching preemptive war in 1967, wrong for doing so in 1982 in Lebanon.

IDEAS: People would rather leave some things moot, but you make a habit of prying into the judicial subconscious.

DERSHOWITZ: Making people uncomfortable is the role of an iconoclastic professor. I tell my students I'm going to make them challenge every idea they hold dear, shake them to the core on every one of their views.

IDEAS: What about the statistical approach you take to moral questions, when you try to quantify whether a given preemptive action would do more harm than good? People, as a rule, are not keen on probabilities. We prefer our absolutes.

DERSHOWITZ: Rights and laws are human inventions. Why not look at the consequences, the benefits? I want to force human beings to think hard about statistics and probabilities. That's why I love the story about Abraham and God arguing about the destruction of Sodom. How many good men must there be to spare the city? Is 50 necessary? Will 10 do?

IDEAS: How well do you think Steven Spielberg's ''Munich'' deals with preemption?

DERSHOWITZ: ''Munich'' confuses revenge, prevention, and deterrence. And it fails to acknowledge that when Israel authorized the killing of the terrorists Israel thought it was hopeless to count on European deterrence, and had to go on its own.

IDEAS: But Spielberg's point is that the preemption failed. Killing the terrorists just spawns more terrorists.

DERSHOWITZ: Spielberg is wrong. Even during the most recent intifadah, Israel prevented thousands of acts of terrorism by target killings and arrests. I'm in favor of targeted killing of terrorists, if it can be done without collateral damage.

IDEAS: You don't believe that violence just begets more violence?

DERSHOWITZ: Think about what preemptive violence against Germany in 1935, say, would have accomplished. Selected violence is a necessary evil but sometimes produces a good result.

IDEAS: Why do you quote so often from the Talmud in ''Preemption''?

DERSHOWITZ: Everything in Talmud is a matter of argument, and dissenting opinions are preserved forever, whereas most religious traditions eliminate dissenting views.

IDEAS: Are you an observant Jew?

DERSHOWITZ: I'm a secular Jew. I have a nostalgic taste for tradition, partly a result of growing up in Brooklyn. But I live my life as if there were no God. The existence of God would interfere with my morality.

IDEAS: You'd be bothered if there were a God?

DERSHOWITZ: Furious.

IDEAS: Obviously, you don't think religion necessary for morality.

DERSHOWITZ: Quite the opposite. You need not to have religion to have morality. Morality based on religion is often no morality at all. If you do it because of heaven or hell, or because an instruction book told you to, it's not morality. It's morality when you have decided yourself, without benefits or threats, that this is the right thing to do.

IDEAS: I think of the Alan Dershowitz of celebrity cases, Von Bulow, for example...

DERSHOWITZ: You make a lot of money in those cases...

IDEAS: Mike Tyson...

DERSHOWITZ: Tyson was innocent! That's one of the worst miscarriages of justice I've ever experienced. I took that case because he was falsely accused.

IDEAS: Still, isn't there a distinction between the Dershowitz of celebrity cases and the Dershowitz who takes moral stands.

DERSHOWITZ: No. I told Von Bulow I was going to charge a lot of money, because I had several pro bono death penalty cases going. I see my life as an integrated whole-half my cases are pro bono, half for very high fees.

IDEAS: Why are you considered so controversial?

DERSHOWITZ: I don't know. I don't love conflict. But I do say what I think. And I'm willing to jump on unpopular bandwagons.

People say, how can you defend Lawrence Summers, even after he resigned, which I did? What's in it for you?

I think Summers's problem was largely a question of style. He's very confrontational. He argued with me a lot. I was furious when he allowed the military to recruit on campus with its antigay policy and publicly called him a coward. He phoned me, and we shouted at each other.

I told him he was full of . He appreciated that.

Plus, he preemptively resigned.

IDEAS: You can't fire me, I quit?

DERSHOWITZ: A silly version of preemption.


http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/03/05/qa_with_alan_dershowitz/

........culture above American citizenship.

Please clarify.

...that hates Israel, even if it is not, like the Iraq Occupation, in the best interest of the AMERICAN people.

I am pro-Israel. But, when the needs of the two countries are different, I am pro-AMERICAN FIRST!

Pre-emptive war is not only illegal, it is against everything that people like my father have fought for in our history. And the only time Lieberman has been in favor of it, is when it is against an Arab State. As for me, I am against it ALWAYS!!

if the people targeted for torture were jews instead of arabs?

at least not for our benefit...

Dershowitz also supports torture...

I'm looking at Atomic Kitten's post (thank you, Atomic Kitten). Dershowitz appears to be using the term pre-emptive war as it should be used. This is to say a pre-emptive war is one where an attack is immanent and the defending nation, rather than just wait to get pulverized, strikes first. There's nothing wrong with that and it is already a circumstance where the UN Charter recognizes an attack as justified.

Dershowitz is not arguing for preventive war, which is what Mr. Bush's misnamed doctrine of pre-emption actually sets in motion. That is war to pre-empt a threat that is vague and which might materialize at some undefined date in the future. It is really just a pretext to go to war against any one at any time for any reason, or no reason at all. A preventive war, such as Bush's invasion of Iraq, is a war crime on its face.

I would have a problem with Dershowitz if he said either that preventive war was justified or that invading Iraq was pre-emptive. It was not. There was no threat at all, and certainly not an immanent threat. The only immanent threat was to Iraq from Bush and Blair. Nevertheless, Dershowitz is not arguing that the invasion was a pre-emptive strike.

Before I get flamed, I will add that I have many problems with Mr. Dershowitz' pronouncements on other issues, especially his ideas about torture. For those who missed it, please read here.

on the specific point of the UN Charter's policy as it relates to what Dershwotiz is proposing..

Dershowtiz said specifically, that what he proposes is not cofidied in the UN Charters, and because that is so, new revisions are being drafted right now in order to fit the scheme which Dershowtiz is promulgating. I wasn't clear on whether or not Dershowitz is directly working on those new provisions - but clearly he's working with those who are.

I listened to Dershowitiz's rationalizations and reasoning.. on the face of it, it seems like a rational approach. But one knows it is easy to abuse and it comes with many caveats and I suggest that the existing charters is the only policy we should be abiding by, not this new range of conditions which is a clear Neo Con agenda, and just like I strongly disagree with all of Dershowtiz's foreign policy ideas that I've ever heard him express, including the legitimization of torture through legislation and possible Constitutional authority, I oppose it on it's face.

In the piece from the Boston Globe, above, Dershowitz does not appear to be out of line with the presnet Charter. When he says that the Iraq War gave pre-emption a bad name, he's right. However, the reason for that is that what was called a pre-emptive war was in fact a preventive war, that is, a war of aggression with a lame excuse.

In order to know whether Dershowitz has any good points or whether they're as bad as you say, I have to know the details.

I, too, have problems with some of Dershowitz's stand on some issues but there is a difference between pre-emptive and preventive war and he does make the distinction.

Comments on how this relates to Iran, specifically how it might play in front of the Security Council where Bush's definition and the UN charter meet?

L-

He stated that he was sorry that the Court had held as it did in "Roe v. Wade." He felt that there was no basis for, and no need to recognize, a federal right to privacy. I, of course, profoundly disagree. If the founding fathers meant for anything to be recognized, it's the right to privacy. Just look at the Fourth Amendment, and the history behind the Bill of Rights, and that right was meant to be recognized, in my humble opinion.

He next argued that we just should have left it up to the states; the pro-reproductive-rights people had been making progress. Well, just look at the South Dakota mess; leaving it up to the States will end up to be a horrific mess.

I really disagreed with him there.

He said the same bullshit about Gitmo and US Citizens being held without charge. "Oh, it will all be worked out, charges will be brought etc., etc...."

The fact is, he couldn't care less about them.

Edit to add: I agree with what was said upthread, "liberal" my half-black ASS.

HeeHee. We're in agreement!

Alan and I disagree on so much that I just don't consider him a progressive at all.

:toast:

Edit: although I wasn't disagreeing with you, heh.

Whatever respect I had for Dershowitz was lost when he covered up for that killer.

and that is being gracious.