Global time limit?
Carlin, David R. Jr.
GLOBAL TINE UNIT? JUSTICE IN AN IMPERFECT WORLD ' 'Justice is subject to dispute; might is easily recognized and is not disputed. So we cannot give might to justice, because might has gainsaid...
...But since we don't live in a perfect world, we can't afford to keep the books open forever on acts of wrongdoing...
...But Israel is not to be outdone...
...But if so, these should be made on some ground other than recognition of antique Argentinian claims which, whatever they may have been worth once upon a time, have long since expired under the international statute of limitations...
...None of this is to say that borders should never be "rectified" or that control over a territory, once achieved, need never be given up...
...In the Mid East things are worse...
...There are often good reasons for doing these things...
...Pascal ONE OF THE most human (and humane) features in a legal system is the statute of limitations...
...And thus being unable to make what is just strong, we have made what is strong just...
...Surely the statute of limitations hag expired in this case...
...Do they commit acts of individual terrorism...
...A mere thirty-four years is nothing in comparison with her own claims...
...In our imperfect world, absolute justice must give way to that second-rate thing called damage control...
...If only you can get away with your offense long enough, it simply ceases to be an offense...
...The only merit in Israel's claim is that it constitutes a reductio ad absurdum of this entire way of thinking and gives us hope that we'll be able to laugh it out of court...
...Three-and-one-half decades of living and functioning as a nation, of being recognized as a nation by most of the world's other nations and by international organizations, such as the UN-surely this is enough...
...Now, leaving aside British claims to the islands that antedate 1833, and granting (though this is by no means clear) that Britain stole the islands from Argentina in the first place, one would think that 149 years was long enough to legitimize British dominion...
...For relations between Britain and Argentina, there's probably some hope...
...So we cannot give might to justice, because might has gainsaid justice, and has declared that it is she herself who is just...
...I mention this because of late there has been an alarming tendency to forget that in international affairs too there is a kind of statute of limitations...
...Does it follow that Israel has to atone for the sin at all...
...Once begin examining titles, and every nation will have to give its territory back to the Indians or their local equivalent...
...Her neighbors really shouldn't mess with Israel, since she can always beat them at their own game...
...In time new human interests, sentiments, and loyalties cluster around ill-gotten gains, and to disrupt them after so many years would be a greater wrong than to permit the original wrong to go unavenged...
...There the notion of a statute of limitations on international thievery seems almost never to have been heard of...
...All but one of Israel's neighbors continue in their refusal to recognize her legitimate existence as a nation...
...She refuses to recognise the claim any regime has had on the West Bank for the past two-and-one-half millennia...
...How could we...
...The present government insists that it will never give up the West Bank, not simply because it fears the creation there of a hostile state, but more importantly because the West Bank is really "Judea and Samaria," provinces of greater Israel in biblical times...
...Forever...
...But that necessity is inseparable from the imperfection of the human condition...
...It is indeed a sad necessity that compels us sometimes to disguise injustice with the cloak of justice...
...Thus Argentina invaded the Falklands even though Britain had been in possession for the previous 149 years...
...What then...
...Here ' below Captain Vere has no choice but to execute Billy Budd...
...The claims of Solomon and Moses and Abraham are the ones that really count, and they've been ratified by an authority that's higher even than the British Cabinet...
...Or to be more precise about this: though the forgetting of the statute has been with us from time immemorial, recently it has been causing more trouble in the world than it had been causing for quite a few years...
...It may be wise, for instance, for Britain to make certain concessions to Argentina with respect to the Falklands...
...Speaking of Plato and Aristotle, he said: "If they wrote on politics, it was as if laying down rules for a lunatic asylum...
...The law invites you to keep your ill-gotten gains...
...The epigraph from Pascal that heads this article is a dangerous saying, for it can be used to justify the most cynical and Machiavellian political strategies...
...As for Israel and her neighbors and the prospects of saying anything sensible that they might listen to, the best comment might be another remark from Pascal...
...In a perfect world, of course-in heaven or utopia-we'd have no statutes of limitation...
...This last seems to be the Argentinian position...
...But it's unlikely we'll be able to laugh it out of court any time soon, not when it's still being taken seriously enough to cause Just the other day, the death of one thousand men in the Falklands and God knows how many depths in Lebanon...
...Does it follow that Israel can atone for this sin only by going out of existence...
...and if they presented the appearance of speaking of a great matter, it was because they knew that the madmen to whom they spoke thought they were kings and emperors...
...Now, that's overkill...
...Three forty-nine...
...There'd be nothing wrong, for instance, if the British were to say something like this: "Look here, chaps, we admit our great-great-great-grandfathers stole these islands from you, but that's neither here nor there now, since our ownership of them has long since been perfectly proper...
...So I have nothing to fear-unless, of course, those Indians stole the land from prior inhabitants...
...Fortunately for me, I'm from Rhode Island, where Roger Williams and the other original settlers purchased their land from the Indians...
...Bribes aren't exactly edifying things, but in international affairs they're a good deal less dangerous than title searches...
...But we're willing to give the islands back to you (to speak frankly) as a bribe: we want to buy your friendship and good will, not to mention a few more tangible advantages...
...How could perfect justice ever consent that the wrongdoer should get away with his sins, no matter how long ago committed...
...The Balfour Declaration be damned...
...Very well, then...
...DAVID R. CARLIN, JR...
...Let us grant (though it's a dubious proposition) that Israel established its nationhood only by stealing the country from its rightful possessors, the Palestinians...
...She retaliates with terrorism from airplanes and tanks, killing far greater numbers of civilians than she loses...
...Two hundred forty-nine years...
...Do they refuse to recognize her existence after nearly thirty-five years...
...Thus no religion has suggested that in the afterlife God will punish only those sins committed, say, in the three or four years immediately preceding death-all unrepented blasphemies, fornications, and thefts from earlier dates falling beyond the jurisdiction of the Court of Last Judgment...
...But there is at least a portion of truth in4t, and that portion has application in the cases we've been discussing...
...or to speak as Pascal would, in a vocabulary not very much in vogue nowadays, it is a necessity that is both a sign and consequence of man's fallen nature...
...If the thief and his descendants can't be allowed secure title after 149 years, how long do they have to wait...
Vol. 109 • September 1982 • No. 16
