Being an anarchist at heart, my gut says no nation has a ‘right to exist’. All nations are simply the local warlords in charge, creating laws out of nothingness, compelling everyone within certain invisible boundaries to obey said laws, or face punishment or death. Nobody inside the borders has a choice, except perhaps the wealthiest people, who own the government.If there’s a nation the above doesn’t describe, brief me please, as I’m unaware of it.Arguing for anarchy is a fool’s folly, though, so let’s instead discuss how things are and ought to be, within our shared worldwide framework of nations and borders and laws.
Nations have a right to exist, I’d say, if they meet two criteria: ① Make life better for the least of their people, and ② Don’t make life hell for people elsewhere. I’m an American. Within this nation’s borders, the poor are hugely disenfranchised and left to fend for themselves, and beyond our borders the USA has attacked 68 nations and counting, give or take, all around the world. So the United States of America fails on both counts, ① and ②. We’d need at least a century of good behavior on probation, before I’d grant that the USA has any right to exist.For most other nations, I can’t speak for criterion ① without doing research, something I’m not about to do. Sorry bub, but I don’t study global and international politics, and only know what I grok from the headlines.Certainly, though, under criterion ② Russia, Pinko China, and probably other nations would be disqualified from any ‘right to exist’.Israel fails the ‘right to exist’ flamboyantly, on both counts. Israeli-Arabs are treated as second-class internally, and Israel’s next-door neighbors are frequently treated to military attacks. At least with America, so far as I know, we’re not bombing anybody this week.Israel was attacked by terrorists on 10/7/2023, and it was a hell of an attack. What’s Israel supposed to do in response? Hell if I know, but certainly — the opposite of everything they’ve done.”Israel must defend itself” is not a valid reason for bombing and invading and destroying Gaza. A terrorist act, no matter how awful, doesn’t justify perpetual terrorism in response, and it ain’t kosher to respond by killing anyone who looks like the terrorists.That’s what George W Bush did after 9/11/2001, and he ought to be in prison in the Hague for it, with Benny Netanyahu as his cellmate.I’ll add before closing, if you imagine any of the above as an endorsement of Hamas, you’re an idiot. It’s also not an endorsement of Pearl Harbor to say that Japanese-Americans shouldn’t have been rounded up and stored behind barbed wire. Guilt by ethnicity is horseshit.11/17/2023
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