Third Party & Independents: Archives

Excellent points, and something we ought to be thinking about mass graves continue to be excavated in Iraq.

“In short, leaders from one so-called ethnic group, using the downing of an airplane as a pretext, called for the mass-slaughtered another ethnic group- while the world, including our administration, stood by and did nothing.”

So I must ask: why is that you say “our administration” and don’t bring yourself to say Clinton?

Martin, if you read the article, later in the I say “the CLINTON administration was licking its political wounds from Somalia and not wanting to get involve in “that part” of the world again, did nothing”

I did not want to make this about partisan politics, so I only mentioned Clinton once. This is about what we should be doing in the future, not about bashing on Clinton’s mistake.

Okay, point taken (I guess a little of the Richard Clarke 9-11 syndrome rubbed off on me).

Misha:

Never again should we allow genocide to occur without the detailed writing of resolutions to condemn the massacres.

Never again should we stand by and do nothing, when surely paper threats will force the evil doers to cease their evil ways.

Never again should we allow hundreds of thousands of innocents to die without holding proper debates to discuss all the alternate possible actions we might one day undertake.

Never again should we simply stand on the sidelines when instead, we might be able to send a small team of investigators to sleuth out whether any specific codified resolution points are being broken (ie is something really really a material threat, or could it somehow be twisted into being seen as something else).

Never again should we stand idly by, but rather, we should work to get not only a consensus, but unanimous support from all nations of the world to take action against the most obvious of evils.

Never again should we take appropriate action unless we are assured that no casualties on OUR side will take place, since the winning of freedom should come at no cost, other than office supplies, copiers, and of course the requisite amount of paper.

Perfect.

when surely paper threats will force the evil doers to cease their evil ways.

You act as if paper threats were even made. After reading Samantha Power’s A Problem from Hell I’m convinced that paper threats could have saved lives. Little things in most genocides can save lives. Romeo Dallaire’s pathetic excuse for a force may have saved thousands of lives just by being there. You’re acting as if we wanted to go in but that darn UN wouldn’t let us. Clinton dodged it, Dole blocked it and we all tried to ignore it.

Everyone acts as if the UN is it’s own entity. The UN is made up of nations. And one of those nations is the United States (and another is France, and another is Russia). It’s so easy to place the blame on the UN as a way of absolving ourselves. We pushed for a troop reduction (along with others). When Romeo Dallaire was calling for APC’s, we dragged our feet (along with others). The UN is run by nations, 5 nations to be specific. It is not some monolithic institution that we have no control over.

Everyone seems to be using this anniversary as an attempt to deflect blame from our country, or attack Bill Clinton or justify Iraq or get us out of the UN. I’m not here to defend the UN for Rwanda or Iraq or a hundred other situations where they have set by and done nothing in the face of atrocities. And I’m not really looking for an argument because I agree with what everyone has said. I’m saying let’s look at ourselves first when assigning the blame (even if we aren’t the “most” to blame).

Misha, for a capitalist, you appear very quick to depart from that allegiance when it comes to blood, bodies, death and destruction. Economy - definition - allocating finite resources to an infinite demand for them. A capitalist maximizes profit and lets that motive dictate the battles to be waged, deals to be brokered, and defense lines to be drawn in the marketplace.

Now subsitute greatest good, for profit, and one has an excellent model to follow in determining which, when, and how intercession against evil regimes and civil conflicts abroad should be undertaken. Rumsfeld in 1991 said there would be no net gain in deposing Hussein. And indeed, there will not be. We are going to lose “profitability” in the long run by remaining the dominant military occupier in Iraq. As CEO, President Bush should be fired, and replaced by someone capable of weighing American costs in a risk assessment for positive outcome when determining which battles to fight overseas.

Bush was right, absolutely to invade and destroy the source of the organization which attacked the U.S. on 9/11. He deserves respect and credit for that rather obvious move and decision. But he threw economy, risk assessment, strategy and tactics to the wind when it came to invading Iraq. His own Secretary of Defense is on record for knowing that the cost of deposing Hussein would be incalculably high and yet, this President, whatever his true agenda might have been, absolutely made the wrong decision in invading Iraq without a U.N. umbrella. Perhaps he assumed the U.N. will be willing to come aboard after the initial heavy fighting was over, who knows?

The fact is, we have destabilized the middle east, increased hostilities against U.S. targets, and committed to costs to secure a peace in a country that has an unalterable course toward civil war. If this were the marketplace of profit, I suspect you would not be so supportive of this “chiefs” decisions. Perhaps I am wrong, though, about your support, that is.

Fact is Iraq was not, and is not Rwanda. Iraq is an entirely different situation. We are creating the civil war that will kill thousands upon thousands of Iraqis. Rwanda was already in a civil war of its own making. Iraq was part of an immensely larger cultural and religious community which would react negatively, hostilely, to U.S. intervention with long-term immensely costly consequences. The cost of incursion into Rwanda would have paled in comparison and bordering nations, cultures, and religions would not have responded as Arab, Islamist and jihadist fundamentalist are as a result of invasion of Iraq.

Apples and oranges, Misha. This CEO will hopefully be fired in November for this failed leadership and decision making. I do however, entirely agree with your assessment of the Clinton administration’s response to Rwanda. You get no argument from me there.

Misha a few points if I may:

The truth of the matter is, the world cares little about Africa for various reasons, foremost having to do with the color of the African people’s skin. This is why the world can stand by time and time again and watch as hundreds of thousands are slaughtered, starved, and ill used without writing so much as an editorial to voice distain at the practice, or introducing a single resolution to condemn the evil undertakings.

And again, how morally repugnant is it for the nations of Africa to stand by and do nothing while their neighbors are ill used in the multitude? What responsibility do the nations of Northern Africa have to their central African brethren?

I understand your ire, but implore you to reserve it not just for the U.S. and U.N., but to spread it evenly upon the brow of all the peoples of the world.

On Edward Martin’s point, I agree that every nation that could have done something in Rwanda and did not is morally blameworthy. The thing is we are U.S. citizens and we need to hold our government accountable. There is nothing we can do to insure that Egypt or France will act like a responsible nation in the world (except to the extent that we change the character of the U.N. drastically), but there is something we can do to insure our nation doesnt sit by and let genocides happen. Even if one believes that our elected officials dont care about human rights, they care about being reelected, so if we send them a message that helping the people in Rwanda would be BETTER for them, they are more likely to get involved next time. thats how a democracy works when its at its best.

Also, I think maybe a couple of people did not read what I wrote carefully:

1. Jeff, I placed blame on us (as well as the U.N) in fact, i said:

“The article I cited concludes with the fact that we are now offering 5 million dollars for information that would lead to the arrest of one of the monsters who financed this genocide. If only we had cared that much in 1994, where a well-trained force of a couple thousand of our soldiers could have prevented this genocide from ever happening.”

We messed up big time, lets make sure it does not happen again.

2. David- I think I addressed exactly what you are saying when i finished my article with- “So the next time the president comes out and says a particular dictator needs to be taken out, by all means you can oppose him on all kinds of reasons (saying its impractical, saying our resources should be used elsewhere, saying we need a better exit strategy), but please don’t say that we need the U.N.’s permission.”

Basically my only point here is that there are many good reason to oppose the war with iraq (you mentioned some of them- i agree with some, although I believe the good reasons for the war outweigh the bad, as I have spelled out a couple of times here). If we could spend our finite resources better somewhere else, then that is a very very important consideration, and you are right for pointing that out. But what is NOT a good reason to oppose the war is that we didnt have the U.N.’s permission. That is really the main point in this article.

Misha, it is a pleasure to be in agreement with you such substantive issues. I think I may not be conveying my point about invading Iraq and U.N. auspices successfully. It is a fine but significant point I am trying to make. The issue is not whether the U.S. needed U.N. approval to invade Iraq. The U.S. does not need U.N. approval to do anything.

My point was and is, that had this administration waited, bargained, and persisted in pushing the U.N.’s hand another 6 months, 9 months or a year, U.N. allied forces, even if only partially representative of U.N. nations, may have been obtained. That effort would have been worth the wait. Why? Because if the U.S. could have invaded under U.N. auspices, the case made by jihadists that a Christian Army has invaded an Islamist nation and intends to dominate how it is governed would have been seriously diminished. That in turn would have diminished insurgent recruitments, funding and safe harbor in Iraq.

This Administration knew as Rumsfeld has indicated, how highly improbable maintaining a unified Iraq under a democratic government would be, and yet, impatience dictated they not fully pursue all options for diminishing our losses, our costs, and harm to our global reputation. This administration wanted to be the Leader of the invasion and to have as Rumsfeld said, command authority and control of coalition forces in Iraq. They got it, and now we are responsible, instead of the the U.N. for all of the consequences, repercussions, failures and costs that will ensue.

I don’t believe the U.S. needs U.N. sanction for any and all overseas operations, offensives, or defensive actions. I do believe, in the specific case of invading Iraq, pursuing U.N. sanction, even if partial, was the only wise course to have taken and this administration wanted no part of such a pursuit other than a salutory request which implied the U.N. was irrelevant in the asking.

Misha, I agree with your main point in principal, but disagree with it in practice.

In Iraq, we are further destabilizing the region by the “go it alone” , you’re “with us or against us” stands we seem to have taken.

A truly international coalition is badly needed if we are not to make Iraq another dismal failure of American foreign policy.

I am not of the opinion that we can be the policeman of the world. We can ill afford such a lofty and possibly arrogant stance.

I don’t believe for a second that we invaded Iraq for purely altruistic motives. The nexus of oil, terror, and israel were the presumtive American interests behind our policy .

Sadly, I fear politics, demagogery and even a personal vendetta may have driven these decisions.

Rwanda, Cambodia, the Sudan, even Bosnia makes one wonder about the political calculus that goes into military intervention by the supposed civilized world.

Jeff, I placed blame on us (as well as the U.N) in fact…

Misha,
My post was directed toward joebagodonuts. I thought it was clear when I quoted him. Sorry about that.

I was basically responding to what I thought was an attempt to discredit the UN and “internationalism” and absolve the United States in his “never again” statements. Let me make it clear though, I don’t absolve the UN for anything. I also agree that if we feel threatened or there is genocide occuring and there is nothing else we can do about it then we should go to war. joebagodonuts is correct, in my opinion, in chastising the UN (or maybe you weren’t just going after the UN). I just didn’t want it to turn into a UN-bashfest and no one talks about what we can do.

I would sum my position up with Misha’s statement:

The thing is we are U.S. citizens and we need to hold our government accountable. There is nothing we can do to insure that Egypt or France will act like a responsible nation in the world

It is reasonable to expect our government to at least consider the perspectives, values, and concerns of other nations before we plunge into international actions which will affect, or appear to other nations to affect them. It should be part of the decision making calculus. International affairs are often infinitely complex and a host of variables have to be considered, of which other nation’s perspectives and response should be a part.

‘Never again’ indeed. Except that it will happen again. And again. Forever.

People do this to each other and it can never be stopped.