The new focus on irregular warfare at the Pentagon, driven in large part by the wars on terrorism have made non-kinetic operations very important. Reconstruction and rehabilitation — both in their political and physical dimensions — are now recognized as imporant in themselves. Saddam’s army was defeated by kinetic forces within weeks. But it was largely the lack of a political and reconstructive plan which made what followed harder to handle.
Steve McGregor also writing at the Small Wars Journal, addresses the question of what happens when humanitarian aid becomes, in effect, part of the war effort. The US military is now becoming one of the primary providers of aid.
Humanitarian aid is increasingly becoming more important to US military operations—not only because the military works more closely with aid agencies than ever before but because the military now implements great amounts of aid.
The civilian humanitarian community — the international relief organizations and the NGOs — are bound to resent this, not only because it provides professional competition but because it threatens to sully the ‘purity’ of humanitarianism with a military association. Some anthropologists and social scientists have criticized colleagues who have worked in Afghanistan and Iraq as sell outs who have prostituted themselves to the Big Green Machine.
But as Steve McGregor points out, humanitarianism has long been politicized and even its insiders have become uncomfortable with what it has become. “David Rieff, when speaking before the Carnegie Council in support of his book A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, argues that in Sudan aid organizations were “logisticians to the war effort of the belligerents, that in effect what Operation Lifeline Sudan was doing, whilst doing a great deal of good by saving lives, the humanitarians were in effect allowing the war to continue.” In another article, anthropologist Alex de Waal charges the aid community with over-estimating damage, creating false need, and unnecessarily complex programs” The editorial reviews at the Amazon site have summaries of Rieff’s basic point, which is that by separating humanitarianism from its causes, aid workers very often wind up either prolonging wars or becoming co-opted by one side or the other — it doesn’t matter which because they continue to be funded either way.
Noted journalist Rieff (Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West) presents a painful, urgent and penetrating discussion of a crisis most of us didn’t even know existed and yet which cuts to the heart of the West’s role in some of the most violent world events of the past decade. He will shake readers’ complacency about the relief work done by organizations like Oxfam, CARE and Doctors without Borders, crushing the belief that humanitarian aid is a panacea for all the world’s ills. Rieff rejects “the false morality play” that, in any given conflict, there are victimizers and innocent victims, and that it is always clear who is who. In Rwanda, for instance, he reports that aid workers went into refugee camps threatened with cholera-but the “victims” they helped, the Hutu refugees, were in fact the killers who had committed, and were planning to resume, the genocide of the Tutsis. Rieff’s despair over such incidents is palpable, but his rage is reserved for the Western governments that fund, and exploit, the aid organizations. In his most potent chapters, Rieff excoriates the U.S. and its European allies for hiding behind a “fig leaf” in Bosnia and Rwanda, offering humanitarian aid in lieu of taking effective, i.e., military, action, to end genocide. Rieff shows how humanitarian organizations have colluded in their own exploitation by Western donor governments, as they have become confused about their mission and purpose. Originally, he explains, these groups were independent, politically neutral agents, with the limited goal of bringing relief in famine or war. But simply bringing relief-and making no change in the political and economic realities that create need-can be frustrating work. Hoping to increase their effectiveness, some aid organizations have espoused larger goals, such as human rights or even opposing oppressive governments-as in the war in Afghanistan, in which aid groups took orders from the U.S. and in effect became part of the military effort that brought down the Taliban. Much of what Rieff says will be unpalatable particularly to some on the left-for instance, his assertion that development aid creates dependency in recipient countries and that humanitarian aid is a latter-day version of the “white man’s burden”; and his conviction that wars-including the war in Afghanistan-can be necessary and just.
Nevertheless, Rieff wants to maintains the firewall between humanitarianism and nation building. While humanitarianism cannot be a substitute for moral diplomatic and military action, he argues that it cannot become part of it. At the heart of the problem discussed by McGregor is the question of whether humanitarian aid can and should be used as part of the stabilization process. McGregor points out that humanitarian aid in Iraq is not given because it is a good per se but for a definite purpose. “Humanitarian aid implemented by the US military in Iraq is reinforcing stability and quickening the peace”
This purposeful nature is in stark contrast to the general altruism of humanitarianism, “which is charity, which is to give relief,” as defined by David Rieff. According to Rieff’s perspective, this charity is so inviolate that modern humanitarian aid suffers from the interference of state organizations and private interest.
However, the direct approach of the army provides for long-term stability in a way that aid organizations cannot. Task Force 3-187 incorporated its projects into a coherent strategy as opposed to isolated acts of goodwill and, consequently, avoided succumbing to potential pitfalls of aid organizations described by Rieff and De Waal.Conversely, aid organizations struggle with creating false need. De Waal observes, “The population and family-planning agencies, for example, locate a crisis of population almost everywhere they cast their institutional gaze. Environmental agencies are comparable. The food aid business is a classic example of a solution searching for problems.” Providing aid was not 3-187’s primary or justifying purpose so there was no encouragement to create false need. Aid was simply a means to an end.
In one instance, the Task Force initiative to clean irrigation canals through American funded projects was met with resistance by the local government Irrigation Director. He claimed the Ministry of Irrigation would clean canals if three local sheiks would sign paperwork agreeing to safeguard the digging machines. The Task Force agreed to support the Director—saving thousands of American dollars but delaying the canal cleaning by almost a year. Still, it was an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem. Even though the Task Force was only a passive contributor and received no credit, Rohling considers this one of 3-187’s greatest achievements during the deployment because it empowered the Iraqi Ministry of Irrigation.
Part of the difference in attitudes might be attributed to a dissimilarity in incentives. Aid agencies have a long-term monetary interest in the continuance of a crisis. Military organizations have an incentive to end the crisis so their soldiers can quit dying and go home. My guess is that both traditional humanitarianism and relief in the furtherance of combat operations will continue to co-exist because they can serve two different sorts of needs. There are many crises in the world (caused by natural disasters like tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones and the like) which are purely humanitarian in character. Military Forces are not appropriate for these. Moreover, the effects of natural disasters are eventually overcome with time and there is less of a chance of humanitarisnim in such cases becoming perverted into a self-sustaining business. Irregular wars are another matter. In such situations, the control of the aid pipeline is a fundamental factor in combat operations. Civilian humanitarian organizations may not want to become deeply involved in these conflicts because there is no way to stay neutral in wars of this type.
One place where these hypotheticals may soon be put to the test is Darfur. President-elect Obama’s nominee to the Ambassadorship of the United Nations has been an advocate of a forceful solution to the genocide in the Sudan. Should any forceful solution eventuate, destroying any force Khartoum can field will be less of a problem then what happens afterwards. But the distinction will be far from neat because man himself is far from simple. Do you deny food to a child because doing so will aid the enemy? Do you provide food for a child who is training to become a killer for an African gang like the Lord’s Resistance Army? Alexander Solzhenitsyn, quoting Dostoevsky, posed the question clearly without providing much of an answer.
It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.
…If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?
Most everyone, Alexander. Most everyone.
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35 Comments
1. Zim:“This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”
John 3-19
“It was a pleasure to burn…”
F 451
Both lines sum up man very well, though from different perspectives.
Our founders were smart guys. They knew men couldn’t be trusted, so set up government branches that watched over the others’ shoulder. People delude themselves by believing their motives in anything are pure, and filled with nothing but moral goodness.
Dec 6, 2008 - 3:47 pm 2. Morton Doodslag:We have focused on the notion that once toppled, our enemies societies must be rebuilt into our own image. This worked well enough with industrialized societies such as Germany and Japan in the post war period. But haven’t we seen the antithesis of this notion in the Islamic nations? We have squandered upwards of a trillion dollars to see a nation at the epicenter of the Arab/Islamic world take everything we can throw at it tossed on the ground, end there’s every sign that once we withdraw, given the slightest provocation, Iraq will revert back into a completely anti-American bastion of Islamic fascism and threat to world peace.
Our military demolished Saddam’s threat in a mere three weeks. It would have been decades before Iraq posed a serious threat to us again — and aside from the ephemeral promise of stabilized oil supplies — a promise which didn’t manifest itself after spending our trillions dollars and sacrificing over 4,000 lives — wouldn’t it have been better to topple the vile regime of Saddam, and withdraw to watch the Muslims slit each others throats?
We must re-thing our notions of nation building — and jettison the idea that once conquered, we must stay to rebuild a shattered society. We would have been far better off stopping at 100+ deaths and prior to squandering a trillion in treasure. The Muslim world would have been a generation at rebuilding its shattered momentum at global Jihad — instead we have shown them that we will bankrupt ourselves attempting to persuade the unpersuadable Muslim masses to love us. Their Islam forbids it. It will always forbid their loving the infidel. In the end, they cannot emulate us, and never will. Their Islam forbids it. We need to use our might to topple them, and keep them off balance. The costs of fighting their Jihad could be seriously reduced if we stopped arrogantly imagining that we can fix their unfixable societies.
It is also possible that after repeated humiliations, the Jihadists would eventually abandon their absurd projects to conquer the world and abandon Islam altogether. Instead, our idiotic projects to rebuild the Islamic world in our image guarantees the life blood of Jihad for generations to come. We are insane.
Dec 6, 2008 - 4:09 pm 3. RWE:When U.S. troops first went into Somalia, their initial objective was to protect the food relief effort. And very quickly they found they had to do more than just do that. The plentiful supplies of the drug “cat” led to widespread intoxication, which in turn led to evening gunplay that would have embarrassed the wildest Old Wild West town. The troops started confiscating the drug. This brought complaints.
As one Somali doctor put it – a DOCTOR, for heaven’s sake – “You are here to help us. You are not here to interfere with our culture.”
Of course, their precious culture was pretty much the whole basic problem why they needed food shipped there in the first place.
The Clinton Admin was roundly and rightly criticized for expanding the role of the U.S. military in Somalia and for not providing forces commensurate with the redefined mission. But you can understand their dilemma. To fix the food problem you had to fix the security problem and to fix the security problem you had to fix the country and to fix the country you had to fix their crummy culture. You don’t know where to stop. If people from Vermont went to, say, Oklahoma, they would not know where to stop, either.
So I think that the biggest problem the “Humanitarian Industry” faces is that it Must adopt a posture of “Listen up, maggots! Do as we say, and we mean right this effing minute.” And of course, that is innate to the military but the very antithesis of the “all cultures are equal and who are we to judge” attitude that is part and parcel of Modern Liberalism.
Dec 6, 2008 - 4:17 pm 4. RWE:Morton: I think you are partially right. Turning Iraq into a functioning Democracy, at least by Middle Eastern standards, was a worthy goal and may produce big dividends. But that does not mean we have to do the same thing everywhere else.
Our national objectives can be met very well by trashing Iran and not bothering to flush the toilet before we walk out the door. Let the Kurds or Iraqis walk in and take over the joint. Of course, there will be the inevitable TV specials about the suffering people there and how the NGOs are trying to clean up our mess and how many children were maimed by U.S. bombs. But there is no reason to shake hands with that tarbaby.
Dec 6, 2008 - 4:37 pm 5. Norm:Morton: Thanks for an excellent analysis. Do you include the Kurds in this?
Dec 6, 2008 - 4:39 pm 6. wretchard:The whole question of humanitarian aid is tied up with the larger question of managing failing states which are the incubators of terrorism. Take the NWFP in Pakistan or the pirate havens on the Horn of Africa. These places export violence and people to the West which thereafter become problems on their own. I don’t know how these problems will be solved but it seems pretty clear that the post-World War 2 institutions — international aid agencies, development banks, diplomacy — are no longer getting traction. They are shoveling stuff against the tide and losing. We need a new way of doing business simply because the old way doesn’t work. But the old ways have powerful guilds supporting them. However, we are now being forced to make changes, whatever those changes turn out to be.
Dec 6, 2008 - 4:48 pm 7. Insufficiently Sensitive:The civilian humanitarian community — the international relief organizations and the NGOs — are bound to resent this, not only because it provides professional competition but because it threatens to sully the ‘purity’ of humanitarianism with a military association. Some anthropologists and social scientists have criticized colleagues who have worked in Afghanistan and Iraq as sell outs who have prostituted themselves to the Big Green Machine.
But as Steve McGregor points out, humanitarianism has long been politicized and even its insiders have become uncomfortable with what it has become.
Well noted. I recall that the news stories about Bosnia in the early 90s occasionally let slip that the ‘humanitarian’ donors and deliverers were paying to the Serbs a goodly chunk of the ‘urgently needed supplies’ of food and fuel (which we’d all chipped in for, on the understanding that they’d go to the oppressed victims) – meaning that we ourselves were fattening up the oppressors themselves from Milosevic, Mladic, Karadzic on down. And alongside said opressors, the paid staffs of This’n'That Without Borders, with the victims taking the leavings from the vigorously leaking trickle-down process.
Good to see someone taking an appraising look at the NGO business, and putting it in context with what the (demonized-to-infinity) US military can do.
Dec 6, 2008 - 5:01 pm 8. Foobarista:One problem is that dictators and brigands realize that humanitarian aid can be co-opted into cashflow for their regime. Mugabe and Kim Jong-il are particularly good at this little trick.
Here’s an old blogpost of mine that may be relevant:
http://foobarista.blogspot.com/2005/11/being-dictator-ten-step-plan.html
Dec 6, 2008 - 5:14 pm 9. SpeakEasy:I completely disagree Morton. You contend that no Muslim country could become westernized. Until Jimma Carter left the Shah twisting in the breeze, Iran was our best hope for a democratic-type country (over time of course). Our initial failure was going in like we were their friends- Would you consider anyone invading the US a friend? Our model was Japan and Germany (and many, many other numerous wars) where you TOTALLY DEFEAT your enemy, then gradually show them how to effectively govern. Especially in the middle east, ONLY power is respected. You do not give them an option. That is the only way to change the mindset of the populace- you become the only game in town. Too brutal? Too bad. It is the only way to change it. How else can you possibly break them of the idea of world domination. Of course you may not believe this to be their goal. At your peril.
Dec 6, 2008 - 5:23 pm 10. Utopia Parkway:I didn’t realize that humanitarian aid was an ism. Wikipedia gives a definition of this ism Humanitarianism is an active belief in humanism (the idea of the value of human life) whereby humans practice benevolent treatment and provide assistance to other humans, in order to better humanity for both moral and logical reasons. It is the philosophical belief in movement toward the improvement of the human race in a variety of areas, used to describe a wide number of activities relating specifically to human welfare.
The behavior of various NGOs in recent conflicts has made clear to me that most, or all, of them are political in nature, contrary to their stated policies of even-handedness and being non-political. I guess that the nature of the kinds of people that are attracted to NGOs has resulted in their all being leftist politically.
The military has been forced to take on many tasks usually thought to be humanitarian. In the case of natural disasters the military has the necessary logistics, which the NGOs may not have.
In the case of shooting wars the NGOs and other humanitarian agencies often head for the hills. The UN fled Iraq after having their headquarters targeted. While I can’t really blame them for not wanting to be shot at they will be ineffective if they are hors de combat.
Dec 6, 2008 - 5:42 pm 11. Steve McGregor:Bravo. Glad you liked the piece–and insightful comments too. Rieff is a brilliant thinker but apolitical aid is fiction. Perhaps they don’t need to advocate a party (democrat, republican, etc.), just an end state. And that might mean choosing sides.
Dec 6, 2008 - 5:54 pm 12. Cannoneer No. 4:NGOs Gone Bad
There are many problems with NGOs, and more are becoming visible to the public. The Western employees of NGOs, while not highly paid, and infused with a certain degree of idealism, do come to disaster areas as a bunch of outsiders who have a higher standard of living, and different, sometimes dangerous (according to the locals) ideas. Several years ago, all these outsiders brought with them was food and medical care. The people on the receiving end were pretty desperate, and grateful for the help. But NGOs have branched out into development and social programs. This has caused unexpected problems with the local leadership. Development programs disrupt the existing economic, and political, relations. The local leaders are often not happy with this, as the NGOs are not always willing to work closely with the existing power structure. While the local worthies may be exploitative, and even corrupt, they are local, and they do know more about popular attitudes and ideals than the foreigners. NGOs with social programs (education, especially educating women, new lifestyle choices and more power for people who don’t usually have much) often run into conflict with the local leadership.
The NGOs are very media savvy. They know what kind of stories the TV and radio crews are looking for and will provide it in return for a little favorable coverage. The media often found that the NGO staff were the best source of leads and stories in crises zones. The NGOs didn’t work for any government, so had less reason to just dish out the official version of what was going on. The NGO staff were pushing their NGO, but the press generally didn’t mind that, for the NGOs were doing good works and who could criticize that?
So it’s hard to beat up on NGOs. However, NGOs have a tendency to take better care of themselves, than the people they are supposed to be aiding in a time of great need. The NGO life attract a lot of outfits with hidden agendas. You have the anti-globalization organizations, and other outfits where orphaned leftists and anarchists have found a new home. Some of these political NGOs are open about their advocacy, but many keep it hidden. One thing NGO staffers do not hide is the attitude that they are serving a higher purpose and must be given special treatment by any mere government organization.
Dec 6, 2008 - 6:05 pm 13. 3Case:“…co-opted by one side or the other….”
Yeah…right…I’d like to see examples of NGOs co-opted by a non-Marxist side. NGOs are, basically, Marxist supply chains; been that way for 40+ years.
Dec 6, 2008 - 6:13 pm 14. SpeakEasy:Utopian, I wonder if the majority of self-professed Humanitarians (I have met anyway) realize the irony of defining themselves in this manner yet believe in a “woman’s right to choose”, or more plainly the right to kill a human being for the sake of convenience? Most lack the courage of convictions and simply write a check to make themselves feel superior but do not actually put their lives on the line as you noted. Still if that is all they are capable of contributing at least some good can be done so I do not condemn them entirely.
Dec 6, 2008 - 6:19 pm 15. Cannoneer No. 4:The Backlash Against NGOs
The mass media made it all possible, for most NGOs live or die by the amount of attention they get in the press. While many NGOs deliver services, the money to keep them going comes from those that see those services being delivered. NGOs are pressure groups, and with so many of them out there hustling for a headline, the pressure has some strange results. Because most of these NGOs have an international outlook, and an agenda, they want to get their point of view across world wide. And many NGOs with a lot in common will pool their resources to put tremendous pressure to do just that. There have been many good examples of how that works, especially late in the century when the number of NGOs became so great. The 1997 international treaty to ban land mines was the result of hundreds of NGOs applying political pressure to do something they wanted. No government by itself could have pulled this off. Because the NGOs were international, not affiliated with any single government, and pushing a humanitarian measure few could oppose (except on the pragmatic grounds that is was unenforceable and likely to be counterproductive), they got their way.
More common is the call by NGOs for military intervention into some war torn area. The NGOs have a vested interest in such intervention, for the United Nations and many wealthy countries hire NGOs to deliver humanitarian services in disaster areas, in order to avoid the risk of government employees getting injured or killed. While other NGOs come in on their own, using funds they have collected, to deliver aid, all NGOs in a crises area still need military protection. Thus it should not have been so surprising to find several hundred NGOs operating in Aceh, or even combat zones like Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan. Each of the NGOs showing up in a combat zone is spending some of its resources lobbying for government intervention to protect their staff in what is usually a very dangerous areas. The NGOs also know that by getting any media attention for their efforts will not only increase pressure on governments to get more involved, but will make it easier for the NGOs to raise money.
Dec 6, 2008 - 6:27 pm 16. njcommuter:Merging security and humanitarian roles makes the US Military more like the world’s policeman. This won’t be a popular phrase in this forum, but if it wins wars, if it wins conflicts before they become war, if it creates allies out of chaos, then we should be prepared to do it.
The problem is retaining our capacity to wage full kinetic war against an opponent who can threaten us with it. We have to make sure that any such opponent will consider the matter and decide instead to get rich trading with us.
Dec 6, 2008 - 6:33 pm 17. Cannoneer No. 4:There are many crises in the world (caused by natural disasters like tsunamis, earthquakes, cyclones and the like) which are purely humanitarian in character. Military Forces are not appropriate for these.
Expeditionary Strike Groups are pretty good at tsunami relief. Military humanitarian aid missions are also influence operations.
Dec 6, 2008 - 7:02 pm 18. Josh:Beautiful quote from Solzhenitsyn, wretchard, but just as you say, it is not an answer. Nor do I have one. And yes, the battle is forever, eternal vigilance, and all that, is not news. And I suppose, with the same reluctance that Dubya expressed eight years ago and slowly learned better, I don’t want to get engaged in nation-building in the heart of Africa (or elsewhere), but that may just be the burden of our times.
And yet, I suggest accepting that low-grade armed conflict and terrorism is a thing to get used to, is a wrong answer, because whatever you accept, you will get just a little more, that is the nature of the beast. It has never been our style, and I do not see it should be our style now.
This is not, btw, that we should look to “bug bomb” our enemies. I doubt it will come to that. I look to the example of how Jordan dealt with Palestinian terrorism twenty (?) years ago. Yes, the point had to be made, clearly, but on the scale of things, it was made quickly and at relatively (!?) low cost – lower cost in human terms than a low-grade terrorism going on for twenty years, anyway, especially if you count the burden on civil society living with violence.
Indeed, that is the basis of my position, I think it more merciful to all involved, and involving less carnage, if we get it over with. Anything else is at best a false economy – of violence.
Dec 6, 2008 - 8:21 pm 19. Morton Doodslag:The problem with our approach in Iraq and Afghanistan is that we’ve abandoned the idea of destroying the ideology of our enemy before we march in to reconstruct their society. Nazi and Japanese Racial supremacism were utterly destroyed before we endeavored to rebuild their countries — and they posessed superbly functioning industrialized infrastructures prior to the war — infrastructures that were prepared to receive our input and our largesse.
Compare that to the Islamic nations we’ve recently conquered — in both cases we encouraged the underlying system of Islam to remain intact — even allowing Sharia in both cases to become the de jure systems on which both nations were reconstructed. It should come as no surprise that their enmity for us remains and will always remain intact.
A poster above suggests that Iran prior to the fall of the Shah was a model Islamic nation which had the potential to become a Western-friendly democracy in the Islamic world — this is a myth. The extent to which Iran, (or Pakistan in its day, or Turkey in its day) could declare solidarity with the US was in direct proportion to the extent to which each of those nations abjured Islam and embraced secularism. But the fall of the Shah happened at the exact time that monies were beginning to flow back into the coffers of Islam after nearly a century of self imposed strangulation — and the flame of Islam became re-ignited.
Turkey is rapidly regressing back to an inimical Islamic nation, and Pakistan is well on its way to being a complete terror state. The notion which is still embraced by Westerners that Muslim nations in the past were both Islamic and friends to the West is extremely faulty. A resurgent Islam means nothing but ongoing war for we infidels.
This wouldn’t pose much danger to the West if Muslims didn’t reside here now in such large and menacing numbers. In the early 1970s, when Muslims first attempted to assert their Islamic will against the West through the warlike actions of the “Arab oil embargo”, they were feckless and ineffective. Since then they have not only extended their financial claws into our affairs, influencing everything from our media, academia, and financial institutions, bust most importantly having successfully exported millions upon millions of pious Muslims into our midst to wage Jihad. It is this, more than anything else, that makes the re-invigorated Islamic Jihad an existential threat to us. Does anyone think for a moment that we would endure the constant erosion of our security and freedom to travel if Muslims weren’t among us? To make them feel comfortable among us and not feel singled out, we all endure increasing levels of invasion and security as if we pose the same terrorist threat to our society at large as they do. It’s absurd.
Until Muslims began hijacking planes in the 1960s and 1970s, there was no such thing and no necessity in the West for “airport security”. Are Hindus hijacking our planes? Buddhists? Mormons? Sikhs? Catholics? Atheists? Of course not. Do those groups pose any serious global threat for WMD attacks or general atrocities against innocents? Of course not. Yet we all are treated as potential terrorists simply because terrorist Muslims live freely among us — and must not be singled out or expelled lest we appear intolerant.
Dec 6, 2008 - 8:25 pm 20. lc:John Donne, in his youth a rake and a failed government employee:
“Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die…
Dec 6, 2008 - 8:53 pm 21. wretchard:All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some be war, some by justice;
…No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
…Another man may be sick too, and sick to death, and this affliction may live in his bowels, as gold in a mine and be of no use to him; but this bell that tells me of his affliction digs out and applies that gold to me, if by this consideration of another’s dangers take mine own into contemplation…”
The Archbishop of York has called for the ouster of Robert Mugabe. “Inflation is at 231,000,000 per cent and the Reserve Bank has been unable to print money fast enough to keep up with prices, which double every 24 hours,” says the Guardian. Well there’s no doubt that Mugabe is a disaster. But who will bell the cat?
Listening to this kind of talk is a little bit like finding yourself in one of those movie scenes where all the helpless villagers describe the dreaded approach of the bandido El Bruto then tearfully look at you. It’s a long windup for what you dread is coming. Just what exactly does the “international community” want to do about Robert Mugabe? Marty Ivins at the Times Online looked at the options and none of them will come as a surprise.
The essence of proposals to topple Mugabe will be to let America do it but to keep it on a tight leash, lest it do things its own way and go out of control like Cowboy Bush. And America can’t say now to barking at the end of a leash, otherwise it would be guilty of abetting another African tragedy.
Given the fact that Zimbabwe is only one of many failing states, how about the EU setting aside some of the money it is devoting to fighting Global Warming and hiring mercenaries whose job it is to topple Robert Mugabe-like leaders under UN Security Council mandate and supervision? Only they won’t be mercenaries given that they will be acting under a legitimate mandate and under specified Rules of Engagement? Then the EU can engage in stabilization operations afterwards.
The problem with this approach — and it will be the critique all the relief, nation building and reconstruction activities which are adjuncts to military operations — is that such activities were once known as colonialism. The idea of sending an armed force into a barbarously governed place to set things right really requires a rejection of many of the things the UN originally stood for. It will require recognizing two tiers of nations and two tiers of cultures. Robert Mugabe’s contribution to history may be in rehabilitating the idea that imperial actions are sometimes justified. If this is to be avoided then regional powers in Africa should get their act together and dump Bob themselves.
Dec 6, 2008 - 9:02 pm 22. Derek:Blame Canada.
A number of years ago, the Commonwealth conference attempted, with Blair giving the impetus, to censure Mugabe for his actions at the time. Chretien, the Canadian prime minister blocked the move. The Commonwealth conference lost it’s relevance, but Mugabe survived to do worse.
Oddly enough, at the time there existed a modicum of societal and governmental structure that simply removing Mugabe may have been sufficient. Now there exists only a terrorized people and no institutions. Any solution now requires nation building, wholesale assumption of the basic function of government, because none exists.
Derek
Dec 6, 2008 - 10:07 pm 23. Cannoneer No. 4:Rhodesia was a better place than Zimbabwe will ever be. Many of the people who sold Rhodesia out are still around, pontificating and advising Kenyan-American presidents.
Dec 6, 2008 - 10:15 pm 24. ADE:On the same theme, we don’t always have to look to the Global.
I am a member of Rotary. Quite often I have to caution my fellow memebers, when a request for funding is received, that they should look carefully to see if they are becoming part of the problem rather than the solution.
I have in mind excessive expressions of “empathy” to complete wasters, and of course their quartermasters in leftoid govt departments. The homeless would be a good example.
I have a simple test for social problems – could this be solved by one week of starvation?
At some point, it is permissible to say to somebody that their current course of action is self destructive and that, given the limited resources on the planet, there are better alternatives.
ADE
Dec 7, 2008 - 12:11 am 25. lc:I have to rush off to work and can’t give the thought to the subject it requires.
The label of colonialism is identity politics’ bastard child’s bastard child. The bad and the good (as in everything). Identity politics is not the answer some might want to make it (perhaps a symptom of something as a measure of perceptions but it is too often a lever (false) of those perceptions).
The US is the great country it is today because it was once a colony of Britain….many of our best traditions and practices we can thank the imperialist British for….
Gotta run. Merry Christmas.
Dec 7, 2008 - 6:06 am 26. RWE:“Listening to this kind of talk is a little bit like finding yourself in one of those movie scenes where all the helpless villagers describe the dreaded approach of the bandido El Bruto then tearfully look at you.”
Except in those movies there was no Barbed Wire News Network there ready to describe the horrors of the U.S. Calvary or Allen Ladd stopping El Bruto by shooting all the members of his merry band. The villagers would have to look tearfully at you and also explain that they are committed to nonviolence and that if you can’t stop El Bruto by talking to him then you must be doing something wrong.
And then, after the carnage, Jesse Jackson would show up with La Raza and condemn this ruthless act of barbarism by a bunch of gun-crazed NRA members, perpetrated on People of Color who were Undocumented Citizens.
In “Shane” the hero’s pacifist wife picked up a gun. Today she would have divorced him and rode around the country calling for gun control on a tour sponsored by the NAGs.
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:05 am 27. RWE:By the way, does anyone know if a Nobel Peace Prize has ever been given to someone who achieved peace by killing a bunch of the bad guys?
And Happy Pearl Harbor Day, everybody.
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:09 am 28. winslow:Many of our problems in dealing with the rest of the world can be traced to our own schizophrenic government. The entrenched bureaucracy of the State Department is seldom aligned with the intentions of the administration. The fiasco of nation building in Iraq cam be attributed to the appointment of Paul Bremer who carried out the policies of the State Department rather than those of Rumsfeld/Bush.
Talking about what we should do is like talking about angels on the end of a needle when it is our own house that needs to be put in order.
Dec 7, 2008 - 7:49 am 29. marymcl:RWE – I was just thinking about Pearl Harbor. Last year while on vacation I visited the USS Arizona Memorial, and I urge anyone who has the opportunity to do the same. It was extraordinary. The tour takes place in silence, and when you look down at the water from the observation deck the movement of the tide is such that the ship itself seems to disappear and then come back, over and over again. Being there is a humbling experience.
On the back of my ticket is a picture of Ensign Frank C. Flaherty of Charlotte, Michigan, who served aboard the USS Oklahoma and was postumously awarded the Medal of Honor. It reads:
“For conspicuous devotion to duty and extraordinary courage and complete disregard of his own life…When it was seen the USS Oklahoma was going to capsize and the order was given to abandoon ship, Ensign Flaherty remained in the turret, holding a flashlight so the remainder of the crew could see to escape, thereby sacrificing his own life.”
Dec 7, 2008 - 10:10 am 30. Neocon to the Max:Morton Doodslag (#2) is entirely wrong.
These arguments were made about Germany, Japan, Italy, South Korea, and the Philippines. Wrong then. Wrong now.
They boil down to: “Arabs are incapable of democracy — because I say so.” Wrong yet again.
The project is difficult. So what? America has been doing difficult projects since we freed our own slaves — by invading a foreign country.
America’s raison d’être and national history is about extending personal freedom to people who don’t have it.
Faster Please.
Dec 7, 2008 - 10:35 am 31. slade:RE Arabs are incapable of democracy
My two cents is half way between. Anybody can do or be anything, given enough time and resources, will and committed bodies. But, as noted by one of the early scholars (I think it was Huntington), Islam does not allow government, or man’s law, to co-exist with the law of Mohammad. That’s a conflict – a serious one – to those looking for democracies to flower.
Particularly if the desired government is to be predicated on universal rights, that would include women and children.
I agree with a previous poster that the only way out of the Arab-Democracy dilemma is an Islamic Renaissance. They need a modernized “King James” version of their belief system.
Anything short of that is kicking the camel down the road.
Dec 7, 2008 - 11:38 am 32. Morton Doodslag:Neocon to the Max — you’ve clearly misread my post, or misunderstand my thrust. You erroneously or disingenuously frame the debate in racial terms: “Arabs are incapable of democracy — because I say so.” I speak of ISLAMIC societies — not just “Arab” societies. As Richard points out elsewhere — this is a matter of software, not hardware.
Surely you’d agree that Islam has something to do with the fires raging along the entire periphery of the Islamic world? Whether Muslim populations abut Hindus (India,Indonesia), Buddhists (Thailand), Jews (”Palestine”), Christians or atheists (Europe, Russia, Philippines, Ethiopia, Canada…), communists (China) they are involved in a constant cold or hot forms of warfare to subvert and destroy the non-Muslims in their midst or on their boundaries. This is designed to shrink the House of War and grow the House of Islam. Due to the mandates of their Islam, Muslims are congenitally pre-disposed to wage wars of terror and subversion to extend the dominion of Islam Uber Alles. Pretending that Muslim nations defeated in war are anything like a defeated Germany or Japan, Italy, South Korea, or Philippines is wrong, and will be wrong forever. Allowing the very ideology of Islam to remain intact in those areas we have temporarily pacified will simply guarantee the eventual resurgence of all the enmities which caused conflict in the first place. Unless our actions result in the permanent destruction of Islamic institutions in those areas we contend with — our mission is a fool’s mission — and we are doomed to failure. Rather than destroying the mechanisms of Islamic fascism in those regions we have confronted, we empower Islam in the form of “Islamic Constitutions”, we rebuild their mosques with US taxpayer dollars after having destroyed them as weapons caches and terror operation headquarters — we hand out prayer mats and prayer beads to appeal to the locals, and generally destroy our chances at long term success.
Dec 7, 2008 - 11:45 am 33. Morton Doodslag:And Slade — as for an “Islamic Renaissance” — sadly we are seeing it in the insidious form of groups like Hamas — Al Qaeda — Jamaat Islamiya — the Taliban. This is your Islamic Reformation — this is Islam getting back to basics. In Christianity, the reformation, getting back to the basics of Christian doctrine largely meant going back to the original words of the four gospels and taking them quite literally. This sometimes resulted in extremely zealous overreach, violence and intolerance, but these can be demonstrably shown to be against Christian doctrine, not mandated by it.
Compare that to Islam, where getting back to basics means emulating the “Prophet” in every way. This includes waging war to spread Islam — beheading enemies and apostates — enslaving — using terror as a weapon of crowd control and to extend Islam’s influence — lying and betraying to gain advantage — and widespread theft — all of it primarily done to extend Islamic influence and to destroy “Islam’s enemies” — the”infidel” world. Understanding this, it should come as no surprise then to see pirates on the high seas taking infidel booty, to see terrorists beheading innocents and launching attacks against restaurants and Jewish centers, widespread deception as to their actions and intent from all Muslim nations and communities, and Jihad in virtually every patch of earth they occupy.
Dec 7, 2008 - 11:55 am 34. slade:Morton -
Two points. First, I agree that the religion contains toxic elements that translate directly into serious threat – much more so than the political players want to acknowledge with their “all camel and no turbin” rhetoric. If we all just go about our business Going Green and minding our own back yards, all this unpleasantness will just go away. It won’t.
Second, it seems to me – and I am back in my two cents territory here – but it seems to me that the western world squandered the negotiating edge by abandoning the hard-line at the front-end of confrontation for reasons of politically correct diplomacy. The immediate response to threats both verbal and “kinetic” must be strict and uncompromising, along the lines you advocate – to be pared back incrementally as concessions bring peace and restore order, along the lines advocated by those who counsel “tolerance”. Nothing much new here – except that there is room for both carrot and stick, but they must be properly balanced over time as the threat evolves.
(As I post this, I see someone is having some sport in another thread. It always amazes me how quick such bright people are to take these posts seriously. I won’t name names but there is no shortage of talented mischief-makers who can prick the bubbles. Neither here nor there, but …)
Dec 7, 2008 - 4:08 pm 35. The Expansion Of DOD’s Role « 36 Chambers - The Legendary Journeys: Execution to the max!:[...] with this idea is including humanitarian efforts in the military structure.
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