DingBat said:
There's a canadian strategic analyst type by the name of Michael Ignatieff (he just ran for, and won, a seat in the Canadian house of parliament) who's written extensively on human rights, war, strategic issues, etc. His basic point is this:
If you truly believe in human rights and the equality of humans, then you really should be the first person in line to invade countries that abuse their own citizens.
Now, mind you, Ignatieff belongs to a centrist/left leaning political party, NOT a conservative party.
It's an interesting point of view, isn't it? I see it as a pay now or pay later type of equation. Many people in the west claim too many civilians are killed in these types of wars, and this is indeed a tragedy. But if the world let it be known that the only end for a despot was invasion, and death or trial, then I suspect there'd be a quick exploration of democratic institutions in many countries. Do you pay now, or pay later?
There are also those that say we don't have the right to do this. I don't buy that argument. Despotic, non-democratic countries disrupt and destabilize the countries around them, to say nothing of the damage they do to their own citizens. Ignatieff might argue not only do we have the right, we have an obligation to do something about it.
I don't speak about the war in Iraq, particularly. That's a horse that's already left the barn. Now that the U.S. IS there, they are obligated to stay until the country stabilizes. The only thing I might ask is: "Where is everyone else"?
The biggest chink in this whole argument is that we prop up the same despots that we then say are "destabilizing forces."
Think about it. During the Cold War, and shortly after, Saddam Hussein was actually seen by the United States as a
stabilizing factor against the fundamentalist regime that had just seized power in Iran.
And speaking of Iran, it too had been a regime we acknowledged and fully supported, despite the Shah being a ruthless dictator, simply because he oppossed Soviet influence.
So the question you have to ask yourself is this:
was Saddam any less despotic when we supported him than he was when we toppled him? And with just as much importance,
were the people of Iraq any less oppressed when we supported Saddam than they were when we invaded?
As you can see, the answer to this question kind of places people in a pickle, because we must go on further to ask ourselves that if he and his regime was tolerable at a certain point in time, what factors made for him to become intolerable? Saddam did not just become despotic overnight. We fully knew his methods and supported him economically and through selling him military hardware.
The fact that he then turns around and invades Kuwait made him "fall out of favor," but then suddenly he is painted as the evil dictator that he always was from the get go...so did we really decide that Saddam had to be taken down because he was despotic, or just because he was no longer "playing by the rules?"
Further examples are prevalent throughout Latin America. For example, we criticize the regime of Hugo Chavez, while at the same time endorsing those of Mexico and Colombia. Why is that? Is it because Chavez's regime is someone "more despotic" or "more corrupt" or "more oppressive" than that of the other countries we support in the region? Or is it simply that we are not in agreement with his economic policies and left leaning politics?
All of this brings into question the notion that the United States truly is motivated to act militarily for the purposes of defending freedom or liberating the oppressed. Why have we not interfered in other regions where human suffering is occurring on an immense scale? What ever happened to Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, and other places? Why Iraq? Well, start looking at other factors such as the resources of the regions in question, and more light is shed.
I see your point about "pay now or pay later," and many have used good examples to advance this. For example, by theorizing what would have happened if the countries of Western Europe had put a stop to Hitler and Mussolinni early on, as oppossed to appeasing them through Munich and leaving Eritrea out to dry.
The problem for us as citizens though, is a matter of feasibility. I.E. is it really feasible to "take on the world?" Can one industrialzed nation, or even a coalition of them, take the fight to every despot of the earth?
If so, how long is this sustainable, both in terms of human cost and economics, for we do not directly as citizens derive any economic gain from such ventures. It gives us a "good feeling" inside that we are fighting oppression abroad, but is this at the expense of
our futures? IT woudl seem it is, when deficits go through the roof, the cost of living rises, and the United States cannot even adequately cover its own crisises, such as the Katrina aftermath.
Devoting all of your resources to fighing despotism abroad is not something any state in the history of the earth has ever done, and we must ask ourselves if this is for good reason.
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