kohenari:

I published this piece back at the beginning of February. I think the questions still stand:

In vetoing a Security Council resolution calling for Bashar al-Assad to step down in Syria, Russia and China have provided cover for the regime’s on-going brutal crackdown and, as such, criticism from the U.S., France, and a host of other countries and organizations was immediate and forceful.

So now what?

If the Security Council can’t even call for Assad to step down, it’s pretty clear that some more meaningful action isn’t forthcoming. Unless it comes from, for example, NATO. And some of the language we’re hearing today from Obama, Clinton, and Rice makes the possibility seem pretty realistic.

But the point of this post isn’t really to ask whether or not the U.S. — with NATO and the Arab Leagues as allies — will intervene militarily in Syria. Nor is the point to ask whether or not it ought to do so. If you want to know what I think, you can read some of my posts on Libya from last year (here and here, for example). Clinton has said, “military intervention has been absolutely ruled out and we have made that clear from the very beginning.”

But as I watched the social networking reactions to the Security Council proceedings, I started wondering about the reactions of progressives and (some) libertarians. From what I’ve seen from these groups, there’s condemnation of the Syrian crackdown and of the Russian and Chinese vetoes. But that condemnation doesn’t extend to a call for anyone to actually do anything. And that’s to be expected because these are groups who worry about what happens when people start thinking about acting rather than simply condemning. Indeed, I’m fairly confident that these strange bedfellows will resume their complaints about intervention as soon as planes are in the air; they’ll point out that the U.S. keeps targeting Muslims, they’ll insist that the U.S. has ulterior motives for its involvement, and they’ll point to all of the other places in the world in which the U.S. doesn’t intervene as proof for the first two arguments even as they demand that the U.S. stop dropping bombs on people entirely.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with those arguments, though it’s easy enough to disagree with them. The trouble is that it’s tough to want things you can’t have. In this case, it’s tough to want people to be able to choose their leaders and not to be murdered by their government while at the same not wanting to get too deeply involved when they can’t choose and when they’re being killed.

But let me be clear about this last point. I am well aware that, in the process of using force to help people in Syria, some of the people we intend to help will be harmed. This is the point on which my critics will hang their hats, as they did the last time we had this conversation. And so I’ll say again what I think is a pretty important point when it comes time to consider the costs and benefits of military intervention on behalf of people who are suffering under a murderous regime:

The choice we face is between people being killed and people being killed. I don’t want to sugar-coat that at all. In both instances, people die and it’s violent and bloody and awful. But in one instance — when we eschew intervention — the people who generally die violently are those who are attempting (and failing, due to inferior military capabilities) to throw off a tyrant. In those instances, it’s my position that to fall back on pacifism or isolationism because all warfare is awful or imperalistic or costly amounts to something of a moral failing insofar as it amounts to siding with the tyrant.

Choosing not to involve ourselves in what happens overseas doesn’t mean that people in Syria will suddenly be safe and happy and alive; it means that we can fool ourselves into thinking that we don’t have any blood on our hands because we didn’t directly harm anyone.

We can all be outraged with the choice that the Russians and the Chinese made today. And we surely ought to be outraged about what the Assad regime has been doing for months and months now. But if that outrage just means that we wag our fingers at Assad, the Russians, and the Chinese, rather than actually doing something about the terrible crimes being committed in Syria, then how outraged are we, really?

Most of the people who didn’t want the U.S. to get involved in Syria have gotten pretty quiet in the past six months because the U.S. hasn’t really gotten involved … at least not in the way that the U.S. got involved in Libya, to the endless breast-beating of these same people. In fact, there’s very little discussion of Syria from the non-interventionists these days, though the violence there continues apace.

Honestly, I’m curious: Do people think the Libyans are better off now than they were? And how do people think the Syrians would answer that question?

Personally I’ve always leaned towards intervention. I know it’s not in America’s interest to get involved in any quagmire again, but if you do look at the Libyan example… 

What they did was fly over and minimize the damage that Qaddafi’s forces could inflict on the rebels, and then washed their hands of it. Libya is a bit of a mess now but I’m pretty sure Libyans can’t claim any hand of imperialism to be involved in the choices they are making now. Indeed, Libya seems to get less disapproval than the drone flights in Pakistan. 

It might suggest that, if such a thing were possible in Syria, that such a low level intervention were implemented, and then the interveners would wipe their hands of any further military involvement… And therefore avoid further political fallout…

Maybe that would work. Just thinking out loud. 

kohenari:

Fox News once again provides the most insightful picture of the political and intellectual climate in America today.

On the one hand, we don’t know what we’re talking about. But, on the other hand, we’re also happy to lie about the things we don’t know in order to score political points.

Remembering Remi Ochlik

The award-winning photography of the photojournalist killed in Syria.

In Libya, when Qaddafi was marching on Bengazi and the people there cried out for help? 

It sounds a lot like what everyone was afraid was going to happen there, is already happening in Homs in Syria. 

But I don’t see Sarkozy gallivanting away. 

kohenari:

Behind the seeming inability to express what he thinks about the NATO intervention in Libya and whether or not he agreed or disagreed with President Obama’s decision, it seems that Cain was attempting to put forward an important part of his overall philosophy as a presidential candidate. He’s like a modern-day Socrates, so well aware of what he doesn’t know. Indeed, to sum up, directly from Cain, why he couldn’t bring his thoughts on Libya into clearer focus: “I’m not supposed to know anything about foreign policy.”

So, that’s fine then.

Obama’s “success” (at least in the eyes of American media at the moment) in Libya is a dilemma. Right now they’re not calling it anything but a success, and since the automatic stance of all the Republican candidates is to be against all things Obama, he can’t actually say “Sorry, but that was totally the wrong thing to do.” 

The irony is that there are plenty of big problems regarding Libya. Some people are concerned about the new provisional government, some are worried that the lack of any modern infrastructure will be crippling, and well, these are legitimate concerns and a good opposition candidate could ask important questions about those. 

But that’s assuming that Republican candidates will at all talk legitimate foreign policy points beyond “Fuck Yeah America!” within the foreseeable future. Whatever their real intelligence on the matter, it is apparently against their interests to do so. 

I also don’t think Herman Cain knows anything about it, but even if he did his hands would be tied. 

Of course they did. 

This whole concept of “humanitarian war” is a recent phenomenon made of dreams and Hollywood. 

War is bad. It destroys people. For the vast majority of history it is barely controlled violence. Armies loot, rape, murder, burn, and torture. They rob the dead, steal from the living and often use the living until they’re dead. 

It has changed in the last century or so because of many different factors, one among them being that armies can no longer simply forage for food from the area they’re occupying. They have supply lines, which begets organization, which begets a chain of command and therefore discipline. 

And then there’s also accountability, and a news machine which broadcasts their doings around the world in minutes. 

But even when armies don’t mean to rape, burn and murder, it can happen anyway. War is nasty, particularly to soldiers. Sometimes those soldiers go mad after too much blood, shit and cordite. That’s how we get the Rape of Nanking, and any number of other tragedies of war uncountable. 

It’s nice that things have generally improved, but never mistake that even liberating forces have the capacity for wanton violence, especially the Libyan rebels, who have almost no chain of command to reel them in. 

The question before Libya was: Could such interventions be successful while keeping costs under control - both human and financial.

Today’s answer is: Yes.

In other developments:

• Turkey has announced it is giving $300m (£181m) to the NTC, including funds to form the new government
• Nato says it has destroyed two rocket launchers that were aiming fire at the town of Brega
• The International Organization for Migration (IOM) said a boat it sent to Tripoli to evacuate migrant workers was unable to dock because of the security situation
• Egypt and Bahrain formally recognised the NTC as the legitimate government of the Libyan people

politicalprof:

This is the difference between journalism and commentary.

futurejournalismproject:

As Libyan rebels entered Tripoli yesterday, Sky News reporter Alex Crawford appeared to be the only Western broadcast reporter on the scene.

How’d she do it? How’d she broadcast from the capital?

According to the Daily Telegraph “the astonishing footage from the streets of Tripoli was produced using an Apple Mac Pro laptop computer connected to a mini-satellite dish that was charged by a car cigarette lighter socket.”

Somewhere MacGyver is smiling.

Here’s hoping to a swift end to the fighting. 

And I hope the international community is making plans to settle in for a long road to recovery. 

I read “Colossus” by #NiallFerguson. In it, he makes a case for liberal imperial policy by Washington. His idea is that America is very much an empire, despite its claims not to be. He sees “imperial denial” as one of the main drawbacks of American policy, and is the reason behind its setbacks in its interventions. 

I don’t agree with all of his points, but there’s something to be said for it. 

Someone posted in the Politics tag that American intervention in Libya was immensely costly in lives, destruction of property, and the spending of American taxpayer money without the consultation of Congress. 

It’s true. But is it worth it? 

Ferguson’s argument is that it isn’t enough. Ridding the world of a mad dictator is, in absolute terms, a good thing. But it takes a lot more than firing a few missiles and flying some jets over an area, as we’ve discovered time and again in Bosnia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya. 

What really changes things? Boots on the ground, and a long term investment in the countries involved. This has a lot of resistance though, not just in proto-nationalism on the ground, but also a highly libertarian public at home which is allergic to the idea of empire. 

Ferguson’s irony is: by minimizing our involvement, shooting the dictator, throwing some elections, and getting out feeling good about ourselves, we doom the government we put in place with illegitimacy and inefficiency in our rush to get out and not look like conquering invaders. 

His ideal of liberal empire sounds much too far fetched to be imagined from our current perspective. Politically and socially America is just not ready for that idea. Any interventions it makes in its current sense are flawed in intentions as well as its means. Invading Iraq, even if only to remove Saddam Hussein, was flawed in many ways which ruined America’s legitimacy. 

One way or another, however, America IS the world’s superpower, and the only one in any position to get involved in such situations. Like it or not, it’s the world’s only credible policeman, but is now content to sit in the office and tidy up his desk. For all everyone else’s huffing and puffing, they can’t do what America can. The rising BRIC powers, and the still-capable Western European militaries pale in comparison to America’s ability to project force anywhere in the world. 

And that’s where I do agree with Ferguson. I don’t like pointless war, and war is at best only necessary. But once you do get involved, you have an obligation to see it through fully. It’s just sadly not politically expedient. Pulling out, like it sounds like the other poster’s reference to Ron Paul is suggesting, is highly irresponsible to the global economic and political system. Isolationism didn’t work for the US in the 20s-30s, and it would be even more damaging in such a globalized world now. 

Iraq was, especially in hindsight, invaded on very tricky ground. I still don’t agree with the reasoning, considering the conjured up reasons which ruined its legitimacy. But once they were in, having ruined the country, pulling out too soon would only make it worse. What would America’s long term legacy be then? 

Intervening in Libya was probably the right thing to do, in the face of world opinion and a mad dictator, even if the claims of genocide were rather stretched. It was, if anything, civil insurrection and some mad ranting. But the slow, piecemeal contributions of NATO and other coalition allies only stretch the war out, kill more people, ruin the country even further economically, and make future stable recovery more and more distant. 

Do we feel good about ourselves, siding with the rebels in such small ways? 

Is it just me, or are the costs of the Libyan intervention, no matter how relatively small compared to Iraq and Afghanistan, curiously missing?