Reply #5: Interesting piece.

[bemildred]

The problem is that we are conflating notions of the abstract grinding of the wheels of justice with the punishment of defeated enemies and sovereign wrongdoers. Matters that are essentially political (the public humiliation of Saddam Hussein for example) should not be conflated with notions of ordininary criminal law. Whatever Hussein is, he is not a burglar, and his crimes are not of the same nature as what a mugger does.

This fellow, in this piece, in the later part of it, is pointing precisely at the ambiguity of law, that while we normally pretend that law is a rigid and consistent formal system, in fact it is not, and in fact it operates largely on opinion and convention, not fact and logic, and that it serves the ends of purposes of the rulers of men, and only secondarily the purposes and ends of the public at large, and I believe he is suggesting that we would do better in dealing with the likes of Slobo were we to be more candid with ourselves as to what we are about.