On Warfare and Genocide
Last night on the way home, the Kid asked me about war. It started with the number of soldiers in Iraq, then it moved on to the number of Americans killed in Iraq every day. For comparison’s sake, I explained to him about the number of Americans who died on Omaha Beach, and the number of Marines who died in Okinawa.
The kid listened intently and asked pretty good questions. When the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki came up, I explained why the bombs were dropped and told him some stories my Japanese students had told me about their preparations for the American invasion that the bombings prevented. I didn’t sugar coat the bombings – how they were horrific attacks that killed hundreds of thousands but saved millions. I moved on to Japan’s takeover of China, and the rape of Nanjing in which men, women and children were slaughtered.
I told him about a book on one of our bookshelves – Japan At War – that tells the stories of Japanese Imperial Army veterans – and said that when he was old enough, he could read it, but he was too young now.
He asked me if such genocide happens today. I told him about Darfur.
“Why don’t we send soldiers there to stop it?” He asked.
I told him I didn’t know.
I could tell him that we aren’t the world’s policeman, that it’s not our business to save the world. But then I consider our nation, our history and our ideology. It’s much more radical than anything Marx wrote, or Lenin proposed, or Khomeini issued in a fatwa. Like good radicals everywhere we have always worked to spread the word – through Manifest Destiny, or through the efforts of private citizens to fight fascists in Republican Spain during the 1930s, and on to today where we are attempting to remake the face of the Middle East by bringing democracy to Iraq.
We are an idealist people, one that has a hard time accepting the suffering of others around the globe. We send aid to tsunami ravaged Indonesia, try to make peace between Arabs and Jews, Irish and Unionists, and Turks and Greeks. We should intervene to stop the genocide there.
Then reality hits me: I know why.
Is Darfur worth sacrificing a single American kid over?
It’s a cold-hearted question, but nevertheless it’s one that our pol’s have answered – “No.”
And I can’t say I disagree with that. My globalist ideals are waning towards isolationism, which is the default condition of Americans. Recent polls in Indonesia show that all that aid and effort we sent that nation didn’t change their hearts and minds about us: They are still convinced we are out to divide Muslims – and 80% think that Osama Bin-Laden is an ok guy.
Granted, he’s one that doesn’t shower their country with aid in the immediate aftermath of the tsunami, is intent on truly dividing Islam by wiping out the Shi’a in Iraq – but he’s an ok guy nevertheless in the eyes of those who weren’t washed out to sea on Christmas eve 2004.
Whenever you intervene to protect someone, you make an enemy from someone else. Intervene on behalf of the Bosnians in 1995, and you upset the people massacring them – the Serbs. In the Arab world we have somehow managed to intervene to protect Iraqis from each other – and we get grief from both sides.
Machiavelli once said:
Just look at the Anti-American attitudes of nations like France and Germany. Thousands of American soldiers are planted in their soil, yet we’re the bad guy.
Would the Darfur residents do the same? Would they welcome our protection our would they eventually complain about our neocolonialist policies and influx of McDonalds fast food restaurants?
America needs to fight battles against its enemies. The people of Darfur, Tibet, Burma and other places need to rise up on their own. We should send them guns, but not American young people.
That’s the answer I needed to tell the Kid. It’s not the answer I want to tell him, but it’s the truth. Is he ready for that? I wonder.
hydralisk:
Are we wanting to be thanked for our interventions or are we wanting to do the right thing? And are we sure it’s the right thing? I come to a decision I’m satisfied with based on how I answer those questions.
2 May 2007, 7:59 amAdministrator:
Doing the right thing is usually painful. In this case, the right thing would be to intervene in Darfur. HOwever doing so would result in placing American soldiers in harm’s way – which usually means some of them coming home in flag-draped coffins.
Are we willing to make this sacrifice? The American Soldier joins to defend his homeland. Does he join to defend another’s homeland?
We have treaties that extend our protection to other nations including the UK, France, Germany, Taiwan and Japan. We do not have such a treaty with the people of Darfur.
Do we have an obligation to them nonetheless?
These are painful questions that no one appears to ask. Many on the Right say it’s not our fight. Those on the Left call for “peacekeepers” – as if wearing a blue helmet protects a soldier from harm or firing his rifle.
Peacekeepers don’t disarm militias. Peacekeepers didn’t disarm the Hutu militias in Rwanda. They didn’t stop the Serbs from slaughtering the people of Srebrenica, or Hezbollah from firing 4,000 missiles into Israel from south Lebanon.
The US Soldier is the true peacekeeper, and I don’t think people who are calling for “something to be done” in Darfur realize that they are calling for him. Instead they have this magical belief that the janjaweed militias will stop their slaughtering if the blue helmets appear.
2 May 2007, 11:01 amSticking out your neck « Likelihood of Success:
[...] But you know, Ara, being wrong is no crime. Sometimes you stick your neck out and you get to be historically right. Sometimes, true, the price of doing that is a broken neck; and understandably not everyone is up for that. Hitchens (via Hydralisk): So one day we’ll all see just how right you all were about Iraq? No, I don’t think the argument will stop, perhaps forever. But when it does become the property of historians rather than propagandists and journalists, it’ll become plainer than it is to most people now that it was just. Most of what went wrong with it was that it was put off too long. What a lot of people wish is that the thing could have been skipped. [...]
2 May 2007, 8:08 pmhydralisk:
We have no legal obligation to defend Darfur. The question is do we have a moral one. I answer the question in the affirmative. Of course I allow that we as a nation have many other priorities and this one, unfortunately, may not rank at the very top. (Never accepted the silliness I hear, usually from the anti-war left, that we shouldn’t intervene in one region of the world unless we’re going to intervene everywhere)
Still, even knowing that US soldiers would die, I would support it. We’ve sacrificed far more for (arguably) far less. Who believes that the losses we would suffer from putting an end to genocide in Darfur would even begin to approach the 50,000-60,000 soldiers killed in either the Korean or Vietnam wars? Estimates of the dead in Darfur are already well beyond those figures.
There are many painful questions that need to be asked. Here’s another one:
Exactly how much more is the life of an American (or British, or French, etc) worth than the life of an African?
3 May 2007, 6:37 amAdministrator:
Exactly how much more is the life of an American (or British, or French, etc) worth than the life of an African?
Ideally, none. However this question leads to another:
Who made us the world’s policeman?
The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have made people forget that often we are criticized for not acting as often as acting. When we don’t act, as in Rwanda and Bosnia, we are criticized. When we do act – as we did in Iraq and Afghanistan we become “imperialist”.
Honestly it boils down to what my stepson’s mission in the Marine Corps is: To defend the United States. He didn’t sign on to defend East Timor, although he was sent there. He didn’t sign on to provide humanitarian aid to Tsunami victims in Indonesia, but he did as he was ordered.
Those are noble things, but people tend to forget that an intervention in Sudan would not be looked upon favorably by many. In fact it could endanger the US directly by cutting ties we have with the Sudanese intelligence services who are helping us fight terror. The “Muslim Street” (which I personally don’t give a flying crap about) would be “inflamed”. Even the ultra-left Chomskyites would view it as another act of aggression against a 3rd World country.
As Machiavelli wrote, “Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.” While the cause would be noble, military intervention in Sudan would have many unforeseen consequences.
3 May 2007, 7:19 amhydralisk:
Frankly, we made ourselves the world’s policeman.
Some may view this as a good thing and others as bad, but it isn’t, historically speaking, surprising to find a superpower of our caliber wanting to exert influence over the rest of the world. Our military has evolved and continues to evolve to have de facto an expanded role in this regard well beyond the narrow objective of defending only the homeland.
I respect that not everybody in the USA is okay with the expanded role. I wish there were some way that those who desire to serve their country only in a stricter sense of the word “defense” could be allowed to do so. (but is it practicable to organize the military thusly?)
As Machiavelli wrote, “Hatred is gained as much by good works as by evil.” While the cause would be noble, military intervention in Sudan would have many unforeseen consequences.
All the consequences that we are able to predict would result from military intervention in Sudan deserve due consideration. We should put them all on the scale, the negatives and the positives. I would expect that the weight of the crime of massive ongoing genocide yet exceeds them all.
4 May 2007, 6:57 amDal:
Regarding your ideal, “try to make peace between [...] Irish and Unionists” I thought you should know that Unionists are Irish.
26 May 2007, 1:11 amAdministrator:
Dal
26 May 2007, 9:13 amI suppose it depends on what your definition of “Irish” is. Does a Unionist consider himself to be a citizen of the UK or a citizen of Ireland?
Dal:
It doesn’t depend on citizenship at all, nor on a “definition” of Irish. I am Irish. I am a unionist.
I am Irish because my family and parents are Irish, and their parents were Irish.. and so on, as far back as can be traced.
I am unionist (note the small “u” – I am not an official or a politician) because I desire that Northern Ireland remain in union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
Being Irish is not mutually exclusive to having British citizenship.
Loyalists however, generally reject any notion of their Irishness.
Citizenship of Ireland doesn’t exist, in the sense that Ireland is an island and not a country (as in ‘state’). However, two things complicate this. One is that the official name of the Republic of Ireland is Éire, which is “Ireland” in English (as written in the RoI’s constitution). The second is the desire, of both nationalists and republicans, that the whole of the island does become a country. This desire however does not make it currently a fact.
30 May 2007, 7:01 amAdministrator:
Loyalists however, generally reject any notion of their Irishness.
Dal
The unionists I have met consider themselves to be citizens of the Crown more than Irish. However being an American of Irish ancestry, I’ll be honest and state that I no doubt miss the subtleties involved in the issue of citizenship. My apologies if I’m off-base regarding that issue.
However the point was that Americans tend to get involved in foreign affairs as often driven by idealism as by national interest. President Clinton took a personal interest in the conflict in Northern Ireland. His involvement may or may not have had a positive impact on events that lead up to the Good Friday accord which SEEMS to have ended much of the violence there.
But often involvement means picking sides, and when we do the other side isn’t very happy. We thereby create enemies. If we side with the Jews we anger the Arabs. If we side with the Arabs we anger the Persians, and the Jews. If we side with the Persians we anger the Chinese, etc etc.
There is no foreign policy that will please everyone, and as the sole remaining superpower that causes us to wonder just WTF we are supposed to do in every crisis in every nook and cranny on the planet. Witness the reaction to President Bush’s tightening of sanctions on Sudan.
30 May 2007, 8:15 am