NationStates Jolt Archive

If a nation with elected leaders harms people from another nation, are attacks on the voting body justified?

Are voters equally as cuplable as soldiers and officials?


If you can shoot soldiers, generals and even national leaders, can you shoot (or more often bomb) the civilians whose will is expressed by the leaders, generals and soldiers?

Is democracy a two-way street? If power flows from a populace, does reponsibility and culpability flow back to it?

No. The guilt falls on those commiting the crime, and those who ordered the crime to be committed. Even if you voted in the person who resulted in the atrocities being committed, you are not guilty. Those who intentionally retaliate against civilians for the actions of others are nothing more than murderers.

However, in a democracy such actions are never supposed to be a standard policy and so are committed by individuals, and the individuals who commit them are the ones who deserve punishment.

A very, very interesting question to be quite sure. I can't say I've ever seen anyone ask this: Bravo. You've restored just a teensy bit of faith that I'd lost in most people over the last 20 years.

At any rate, I find it difficult to wrap my head around the idea that people should or even could be held responsible for the actions of others. The mere fact that someone can say one thing and do something completely different exonerates the voters from the lion's share of the responsiblity, such as it were.

However, that being said, there is an exasperating amount of stupidity in this country, as evidenced both by the election itself and the [i]candidates for that election; say nothing of the previous 42 elections. I don't think it's fair to blame the populace as a whole because people have different values and I'm prepared to admit that a few people in this country actually did happen to have a good reason to vote for Bush. I just haven't found any yet.

In short [assuming I voted Republican in '04, which I didn't], I may have helped to put him in power, but I didn't press the button and probably wouldn't have under the circumstances.

Blame is not something that can be spread around: it might look like a collective error in some [or even most] cases, but with a proper application of hindsight the problem is always borne of one person. If a car falls apart on the road after coming out of the factory, it wasn't the whole plant that fucked up, it was the guy who put the wrong part in the wrong place. You could probably get away with blaming his supervisor, but the fact of the matter is people are and should be quite capable of discerning the accuracy and competence of their work.

In a democracy with procedures for impeachment, a government always operates under the direct and explicit approval of its people.

Permitting a government to do wrong is not passive, it is an active mandate.

Again, if power flows from the voting body, does reponsibility flow to it?

In a democracy with procedures for impeachment, a government always operates under the direct and explicit approval of its people.Permitting a government to do wrong is not passive, it is an active mandate.
Again, if power flows from the voting body, does reponsibility flow to it?

But there has to be a crime for impeachement to proceed, and it has to be in violation of the laws of the applicable country, not international law.

The key to culpability is whether or not the people actually know what is happening; that's why I feel a large number of the Germans during the Holocaust share responsibilty because too many of them knew full well what was going on in the camps, and did nothing, feigning ignorance.

No. I beleive the the responsibility lies on whoever makes the decision. Like the sign on President Truman's desk said, "The Buck Stops Here".

The people who allow the government to do wrong should be held indirectly responsible at the most. It also depends on who has the power to impeach. In the U.S. for example, the power to impeach is given to Congress. If they allow the misdeed, then they are indirectly responsible. If the power to impeach is given to the people and decided by a popular vote, the people who decided for the action are indirectly responsible.

If a nation with elected leaders harms people from another nation, are attacks on the voting body justified?

Are voters equally as cuplable as soldiers and officials?


If you can shoot soldiers, generals and even national leaders, can you shoot (or more often bomb) the civilians whose will is expressed by the leaders, generals and soldiers?

Is democracy a two-way street? If power flows from a populace, does reponsibility and culpability flow back to it?

It is not the fault of a nation's people to be living under tyranny. Suffice to say however that military action is justified when all other means of removing a fascist government in another country have failed.

It is not the fault of a nation's people to be living under tyranny. Suffice to say however that military action is justified when all other means of removing a fascist government in another country have failed.


That very handily answered none of the questions posed...

I certainly feel responsible for the governmental actions of the people I have voted for, but I don't think you can ever hold the people of a democracy, as a whole, responsible for a governments actions. The only individuals you can hold responsible are, in my opinion, the ones that would have made the same decision to commit said crime if they were put in the exact same position the government was when they made that decision.

What if you vote for someone who does the opposite of what you thought or they said they should do? That takes away all blame for the voter.

Besides, what do we really know about why the government does what it does? I mean, they say it is all public knowledge, but how many documents have they stashed away from the public and why?

Plus, war crimes are all dependable on politics. Like with terrorism, what is a crime on one side is a noble deed on the other. But when you vote for someone who clearly states they would commit crimes, well, then you're sorta responsible. Now the tricky part is how to decide what constitues as a crime, which might be the responsibility of the voter.

But seriously, who thinks about silly stuff like this on election day? Isn't the whole meaning of a presidential election to vote for the best "commander in chief"?

The whole civillian/combatant dichotomy is rubbish. It smacks of 19th century idealism, and I frankly wonder why anyone cares about it in the first place.

The whole civillian/combatant dichotomy is rubbish. It smacks of 19th century idealism, and I frankly wonder why anyone cares about it in the first place.
Could you elaborate just a little bit more, please? I don't quite get what you're saying here.

Democracy is all about responsability. For the good and the bad.

I've thought about this before, and I'd have to say no, an entire population cannot be held responsible for the actions of an executive who needs only a bare majority of the vote to win his office. The only situation in which I could see justification for targeting the voters is a situation in which the executive must be elected by a unanimous vote of the people and can be recalled at any time by a single vote. Needless to say, I don't think any such system exists or ever will exist in the real world.

Could you elaborate just a little bit more, please? I don't quite get what you're saying here.

Well, you can't really have a war these days without killing civilians, can you? The days where a whole bunch of nobles could go off and fight it out in an afternoon without effecting the general populace are long gone. Nowadays, whenever there is a major millitary action, civilians are going to die: whether through displacement or otherwise. So it is really silly to talk about "civilian casualities" in respect of simply those killed by direct millitary action.

The best approach would be to simply add up all of the dead.

Well, you can't really have a war these days without killing civilians, can you? The days where a whole bunch of nobles could go off and fight it out in an afternoon without effecting the general populace are long gone. Nowadays, whenever there is a major millitary action, civilians are going to die: whether through displacement or otherwise. So it is really silly to talk about "civilian casualities" in respect of simply those killed by direct millitary action.

The best approach would be to simply add up all of the dead.
So by going to war you always punish the population as well as the regime?

Although I think this is true, this doesn't address the populations responsibility for whatever actions the government has carried out after which the war started against them.

So by going to war you always punish the population as well as the regime?

Yes.

Although I think this is true, this doesn't address the populations responsibility for whatever actions the government has carried out after which the war started against them.

No, it doesn't address that question. But I think it is incredibly naive to think otherwise. Therefore, any objections about a war on those grounds should be dismissed as ill informed.