He doesn't specifically seem to be in Wakandan custody at the end of the film. He's "boxed" like Bucky was, with Everett Ross mildly taunting him.
You are right -- I totally forgot that scene!
I wonder if part of the Accords provides for the establishment of international tribunals to try war criminals and terrorists the Avengers apprehend?
As for Zemo's plan: it's clear he was able to dig enough of of the Hydra files to put some pieces together. He knew about Bucky's conditioned recall code phrase, but not what it was. He knew about the other Winter Soldiers, but not where they were. He also probably suspected Bucky killed the Starks, but couldn't prove it.
Once he got the code from the old Hydra agent, he flushed Bucky out, allowing him to get the other two pieces of information he needed. That provided him with a theoretical threat to keep Cap following his breadcrumbs, knowing that the Avengers would be tearing each other apart every step of the way.
Works for me.
A key detail that people seem to overlook is that Zemo intentionally let Stark find out he'd framed Bucky. Right at the point where he needed Stark, Bucky & Cap all to be in the same place, he called for room service to the hotel room where he'd left the body of the psychologist he posed as before. Then once he had them all boxed in, he dropped the bomb.
Good catch!
Sci said:
Doesn't matter. You cannot have individuals capable of state-level interventions out there who answer to no one. You wouldn't want Eric Prince running a Blackwater army capable of doing whatever it wants -- and you wouldn't want the Avengers out there doing whatever they want.
Is it more palatable when government agencies do whatever they want?
Of course not. You are confusing a
necessary condition for a
sufficient condition.
In order for the exercise of executive power to be legitimate, it is
necessary for it to be carried out by agents of the democratic state. Yet it is not
sufficient that it be carried out by agents of the democratic state, because said agents may be engaging in human rights violations/civil rights and liberties violations/etc (what I'll lump in under the term "abuse").
Just as, in order to be in Ohio, it is
necessary that you be located in the United States but not
sufficient that you be in the United States, it is
necessary that the executive power be exercised by the democratic state in order to be legitimate but it is not
sufficient that it be carried out by the democratic state in order to be so.
The problem is, Cap's argument denies the
necessary condition.
By that logic, the military shouldn't answer to democratically-elected governments but should do whatever its leaders think best. Perhaps you would enjoy living in Pinochet's Chile, but I would not.
Yeah, that's never happened in American history. Not at all.
And when military leadership in the United States
has undermined civilian control of the Armed Forces, it has represented a significant abuse of power and an undermining of the Constitution.
And, yes, it bothers me very much that Cap is depicted as arguing that he should not be regulated after his actions lead to the deaths of innocent black people. Hard for that not to in the age of Ferguson. I don't think Cap is racist -- but I think that writing decision carries unfortunate implications the writers did not intend.
Absurd. It does not carry that implication unless one already has a tendency for making false equivalencies between the CA:CW Lagos sequence
as an isolated situation for Cap, which requires a dishonest, selective amnesia of the larger in-universe debate over accountability in the wake of the deaths of many from the Avengers movies--not just those in Lagos.
I'm evaluating that scene from an out-universe perspective, not an in-universe perspective.
A movement is just that -- a segment of the populace pursuing a political agenda. It is not the entirety of the people, and one cannot determine whether or not the will of a movement is the same as the will of the people as a whole unless you have an election.
Not so fast, guy. The American Civil Rights Movement's growing support proved that the movement expressed the will of the people before any official recognition;
No, it did not. What it
did prove was that there had not been any legitimate elections in the former Confederacy since the era of Jim Crow began -- how could there be, when you are excluding a third of the entire population of the South? Thus, the Civil Rights Movement proved that that third of the populace was no longer one that could continue to be oppressed -- they would exercise disruptive power until such time as their voice was heard as part of the people's through legitimate, democratic (rather than apartheid) elections.
In other words -- the Civil Rights Movement was not about demonstrating the will of the people as a whole, but about demonstrating the power of an oppressed segment of the people to disrupt the status quo until they were no longer oppressed.
if you ever listened to all of JFK & LBJ's individual recordings on the matter, it was clear that their call for legislative action on civil rights was an acknowledgement that the situation had reached a crisis level--that the will of the movement was the will of a significant number of the people.
Sure. But that's different from representing the will of the people in aggregate -- which was, in point of fact, impossible to determine precisely
because a third of the South's people were denied their voting rights. The will of the Civil Rights Movement to take any measures necessary to disrupt Jim Crow is not the same thing as the will of the people as to who should govern as President or Governor. (Mind you, the elections held under Jim Crow were inherently illegitimate precisely because they were essentially built to disenfranchise a third of the people in order to prop up an apartheid regime.)
The magnitude of their virtue is irrelevant, because in a system of liberal democracy, the monopoly on the legitimate use of force by the democratic state within the context of a system of constitutional rights and legal accountability is what you are supposed to rely upon -- not one man's (sometimes inconsistent) personality. Systems, not personalities. The rule of law, not the rule of men -- even good men.
<SNIP>
I hold a bachelor's degree in political science with a concentration in international relations -- I am well aware of government corruption, thanks. This does not change the fact that only those who have obtained democratic mandates have the right to exercise executive authority, and that nobody elected Cap.
Then you should have paused to know that in American history, government agencies with legally appointed members, have a long, consistent record of corruption against the citizens of the nation, or illegal operations abroad <SNIP>
Yes, the history of governmental abuses is a well-established fact. But this fact is not relevant to the discussion.
As I said above, for the exercise of executive power to be legitimate, it is
necessary that it be carried out by agents of the democratic state but not
sufficient. The fact that agents of the democratic state are capable of abusing power does not mean that the exercise of executive power by vigilantes is legitimate.
Here we see the incessant attacks on Cap's right to act when necessary,
He has no such right. No one elected him.
in favor of government decree from On High
No, in favor of a system of democratic accountability in carrying out the primary duty of a government (to regulate the infliction of organized violence) rather than the personal whim of an unaccountable man putting himself above the law.
The problem is that Cap in CA:TWS was the kind of person who wanted to serve the people, but was willing to rebel in the face of government abuse of power. But the regulation of a group of people who specialize in inflicting massive organized violence is not an abuse of power -- it is a legitimate function of government.
....yet for all of that government support, there's not a single word about the World Security Council (in
The Avengers) ordering the launch of a nuclear missile at Manhattan in an attempt to stop the Chitauri.
Because, once again, you are conflating necessary and sufficient conditions in order to impugn the necessary condition. Obviously such an act on the WSC's part would have been completely illegitimate, and obviously the members of the WSC who order that attack should have been charged with war crimes.
