Lots of noise is being noised about the Supreme Court's 5-3 decision ruling the military tribunals contrary to military law and the Geneva Convention. Some folks seem to be under the impression that this means the end of Gitmo, or that the Administration has been told that everything it's doing is Bad and Wrong.

It isn't, and it hasn't.

What the Administration has been told -- and admittedly quite sternly -- is that it acted without the support of the law. That is, Congress never told the Bush administration it could set up tribunals like this. The Uniform Code of Military Justice does not contain any definition that can be applied here. It's also been told that its information gathering methods are a violation of the Geneva Conventions and that the Conventions do apply to these detainees.

We interrupt our calm review of the electoral situation in various other nations to take a look at something more specific and a bit less calm.

Today, the US Administration made perfectly, brazenly clear what its principles are in persuing Mr Bush's War, and they can be summarised more or less thusly:

• We don't torture. No, really. Honest. Although it may depend on how you define 'torture'.
• But we do abduct people we've decided are 'enemy combattants' and take them places we're not going to tell you about.
• What we're doing is legal by US law, and that's the only law we actually care about.
• These people have information. No, we don't know what information they have—if we knew that, we wouldn't need to...um...talk to them
• This is the kicker The information we've pried...er...extract...er...obtained from these people has helped save European as well as American lives, and therefore the Europeans should shut the fuck up.

That, in a nutshell, is the message that Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice is carrying on her trip to Europe. The very last part in particular. Not, "Hrm, OK, I see you have some concerns here. You're all democratic nations and your demos are pretty pissed, so maybe we should talk about this." But, "Shut the fuck up, and tell your people to shut the fuck up. We're the Global Police and we're keeping you safe."

Now, I'm not known for being much of an internationalist. I don't believe there's any such thing as international law, I don't believe the UN is much more than a corrupt money sink that hosts an occasionally useful debating club, and I don't believe that all uses of force are inherently bad or wrong.

But how in hell can we claim to want to spread democracy when we're doing everything we can to suppress it, manipulate it, or discredit it?!

Originally, it was Armistice Day. At 11:11 on 11 November 1918, a cease-fire was declared across the Western Front of the Great War -- what is now known as World War One. It's commonly supposed that this was the day the First World War ended, but this is not strictly true. Combat continued on the Russian and Ottoman fronts for some time. In fact, the Turkish part of the war did not end until 1923.

After the Second World War, both the British Commonwealth and the United States changed the day a bit. In the Commonwealth, it's now Rememberance Day; in the US, Veteran's Day. France, by contrast, and I think Germany as well, continue to remember Armistice Day.

On the surface of it, the decision to change the day was something of an odd choice. While not the true end of the war, the original Armistice Day marked a significant turning point in world affairs. The cease-fire itself was more an expression that everyone had recognised the war had become too costly -- in literal and political terms -- than because anyone had really won or lost. Oh, the Central Powers were doomed to lose regardless, but they hadn't lost yet.

But most of the Central Power governments -- and some of the Allied ones as well! -- had already been thrown overboard by their populace by the time Armistice Day rolled around. The armistice was as much a declaration of a new chapter in European governance as anything else. "You can stop shooting at us because the guys who started all this are all dead, exiled, or otherwise defunct."

And yet, as important a moment as this was, and as much as it made sense to commemorate it as such between the First and Second World Wars, it does make some sense that, outside of Continental Europe, it's now seen as a more general day of recognition for veterans. America was really just barely involved in the Great War. Britain was involved heavily, but was never in direct territorial danger, as they would be in World War Two. They lost plenty of people, but World War One did not leave their country scarred with trenches and laced with mines.

The US has, by and large, gotten kind of bad about its own veterans and active duty service personnel. The strong isolationist streak that ran through the US's collective unconscious up through and even after the Great War has a habit of kicking in at odd moments, and how we think of our military gets rolled into that. Oh, there certainly are people who do support them, mind you, but there are many more who are indifferent, either taking them for granted or believing that if we'd just keep ourselves to ourselves, we wouldn't need much of a military in the first place.

Supporting the military and the men and women in it becomes harder when you hear of crap like Abu Graib. One starts to wonder exactly what one is supporting. Why should I spend a day commemorating sadists like Private England?

The answer, of course, is that, despite its occasional efforts to appear otherwise, our military is not all of a piece. Like any large collection of human beings, it has its heroes and its goats, brave and cowardly, smart and dumb, sadistic and sane. Even if you suppose that the crap at Abu Graib was sanctioned by the chain of command (and I'll admit that I'm someone who thinks it probably was, although we'll never prove it), that still does not mean that every soldier, or even most soldiers, think it was a good idea or would want to be associated with it themselves.

Even at its best, the military life is not the easiest life to live. When you become part of the modern military, you become part of a machine. You will be expected to do things you wouldn't choose to do, pursuing an agenda you didn't devise for an aim you may not understand even if you know what it is. It is not, bluntly, a life I have chosen or would choose for myself.

But I'm damned glad that there are people who do, and have done in the past. And I think perhaps we should make more of a big deal than we currently do -- whatever we call it -- about 11 November.