First Duty of Gummint - Security

This was my substantive comment on the Campbell and Fisk thread.....

The first duty of Gummint is the physical security of its citoyens.

Fisk is essentially saying, if you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you’d never go to war again.

But history is replete with cases of citizenries being trapped in what amounts to our modern eyes, as slaveries of some sort.

Tyrannies of all stripes are in fact extremely sustainable, particularly if they rely on fear engendered by letting 14-30 year old males (in ’security forces’ or the like), indulge their hard-wired tendencies to slaughter, rapine and general hell-raising.

So shooting your way into such self-sustaining loops, to release the lives of all involved for Better Fings, is literally the only way sometimes.

Fisk may well have seen a lot, and be prepared to spread a message of ‘let’s not keep doing this’. But he’s preaching to the choir. Anyone truly concerned with the sustainability of a way of life, will in a political sense, ensure that there are police, security and other specialists in violence, on hand to keep people safe. And answerable to that citizenry. So saying ‘ don’t keep doing this’ is at best mischievious, and at worst a recipe for takeover by folks with fewer scruples about employing violence.

And Campbell didn’t ask the most obvious question:

‘Mr Fisk, you have lived safely for 30 years in Lebanon, which for all of that time was a police state, client of Syria, funded by Iran. Who has ensured your own freedom over that time, and has that affected your judgement?’