The Obama Doctrine

Oh dear: it's only my second day as a guest-blogger at Andrew Sullivan's place, and I'm already getting into a disagreement. My co-guest-blogger Jamie links to an article he wrote in the Providence Journal about something he calls the Obama Doctrine. From his article:

"Judging from his statements thus far, it appears that Illinois Democratic senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama — though many steps away from becoming leader of the Free World — has presciently formulated his own doctrine: The United States will remain impassive in the face of genocide."

This would be strange if it were true -- after all, one of Barack Obama's foreign policy advisors is Samantha Power, a human rights activist and scholar best known for her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. Luckily, however, it's not. I'll try to explain why, and provide evidence, below the fold.

Jamie cites as evidence of his take on Obama's views an article that the AP published about a month ago. The relevant passage:

"Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

“We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea,” he said.

Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, said it’s likely there would be increased bloodshed if U.S. forces left Iraq.

“Nobody is proposing we leave precipitously. There are still going to be U.S. forces in the region that could intercede, with an international force, on an emergency basis,” Obama said between stops on the first of two days scheduled on the New Hampshire campaign trail. “There’s no doubt there are risks of increased bloodshed in Iraq without a continuing U.S. presence there.”

The greater risk is staying in Iraq, Obama said.

“It is my assessment that those risks are even greater if we continue to occupy Iraq and serve as a magnet for not only terrorist activity but also irresponsible behavior by Iraqi factions,” he said."

This is one of those articles that makes me want to call up the author and ask to listen to the original interview. The writer is the one who comes up with the claim that Obama doesn't want to use the military to address humanitarian problems, and that preventing genocide is not a good enough reason to stay in Iraq. What Obama is actually quoted as saying, however, is somewhat different. First, he says that if the mere fact of genocide were a sufficient reason to keep armed forces in a country, we would now have forces in the Congo and Darfur. Second, he says that he wants to keep some troops in the region, just in case. Third, and most importantly, he says that he believes that the risks of "increased bloodshed" would be higher, not lower, if our forces stay in Iraq.

That last point is crucial. Suppose you believed that the best way to reduce the chances of a genocide in Iraq was to withdraw our armed forces. You didn't want to withdraw them precipitously, and you planned to keep some residual forces nearby, perhaps in Kuwait or Kurdistan. Nonetheless, you believed that their presence in Iraq was making the fighting worse, not better. Now suppose that someone asked you whether you thought preventing genocide was a good reason to keep our army in Iraq. Of course not, you'd say. That would only make things worse. That's like asking whether my I care enough about global warming to swap my Prius for a Hummer.

That's how I read Obama's answer, in this interview. And I read the headline over it -- Obama: Don’t stay in Iraq over genocide -- as the equivalent of: Hilzoy: Don't change cars to stop global warming!

That's just my take on one interview, of course. Obviously, there are others. Which is right? The best way to answer that question, I think, would be to examine Obama's record on genocide. Just to provide a bit of background, however, consider this excerpt from a profile of Obama in Rolling Stone:

"One of the biggest names to work with Obama is Samantha Power, the scholar and journalist who was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide. "In 2004, I came out of election night just completely depressed," Power says. "We thought Kerry would win and we'd all get a chance to change the world. But then it was like, 'Nah, same old thing.' " Obama gave her a place to channel her energy. She advised him on the genocide in Darfur, an issue that most politicians at the time were studiously avoiding. "He's a sponge," Power says. "He pushes so hard on policy ideas that fifteen minutes after you've started talking, he's sent you back to the drawing board. He doesn't get weighted down by the limits of American power, but he sees you have to grasp those limits in order to transcend them."

Power is part of a generation of thinkers who, like Obama, came of age after the Cold War. They worry about the problems created by globalization and believe that the most important issues America will confront in the future (terrorism, avian flu, global warming, bioweapons, the disease and nihilism that grow from concentrated poverty) will emanate from neglected and failed states (Afghanistan, the Congo, Sierra Leone). According to Susan Rice, a Brookings Institution scholar who serves as an informal adviser to Obama, their ideas come from the "profound conviction that we are interconnected, that poverty and conflict and health problems and autocracy and environmental degradation in faraway places have the potential to come back and bite us in the behind, and that we ignore such places and such people at our peril."

Over the past two years, Obama has come to adopt this worldview as his own. He came back fascinated from a quick trip to a U.S. project in Ethiopia, where American soldiers had parachuted in to help the victims of a flood: "By investing now," he said, "we avoid an Iraq or Afghanistan later." The foreign-policy initiatives he has fought for and passed have followed this model: He has secured money to fight avian flu, improve security in the Congo and safeguard Russian nuclear weapons. "My comment is not meant to be unkind to mainstream Democrats," says Lugar, "but it seems to me that Barack is studying issues that are very important for the country and for the world.""

As I understand it, Obama's basic position is this: the need to work against humanitarian crises, like the genocide in Darfur, is first and foremost a matter of conscience. He discusses this in his speech "A Politics of Conscience":

"And until we stop the genocide that's being carried out in Darfur as I speak, our conscience cannot rest. This is a problem that's brought together churches and synagogues and mosques and people of all faiths as part of a grassroots movement. Universities and states, including Illinois, are taking part in a divestment campaign to pressure the Sudanese government to stop the killings. It's not enough, but it's helping. And it's a testament to what we can achieve when good people with strong convictions stand up for their beliefs."

But besides being a matter of conscience, dealing with humanitarian crises is also, on Obama's view, essential to our security. When those problems fester in neglected corners of the world, it provides an opportunity for hatred to flourish, and for terrorists to point to our neglect and define us through it. Obama believes that we should not grant them that opportunity. Here's a crucial section from his recent speech on fighting terrorism:

"When you travel to the world's trouble spots as a United States Senator, much of what you see is from a helicopter. So you look out, with the buzz of the rotor in your ear, maybe a door gunner nearby, and you see the refugee camp in Darfur, the flood near Djibouti, the bombed out block in Baghdad. You see thousands of desperate faces.

Al Qaeda's new recruits come from Africa and Asia, the Middle East and Europe. Many come from disaffected communities and disconnected corners of our interconnected world. And it makes you stop and wonder: when those faces look up at an American helicopter, do they feel hope, or do they feel hate?

We know where extremists thrive. In conflict zones that are incubators of resentment and anarchy. In weak states that cannot control their borders or territory, or meet the basic needs of their people. From Africa to central Asia to the Pacific Rim -- nearly 60 countries stand on the brink of conflict or collapse. The extremists encourage the exploitation of these hopeless places on their hate-filled websites. (...)

We know we are not who they say we are. America is at war with terrorists who killed on our soil. We are not at war with Islam. America is a compassionate nation that wants a better future for all people. The vast majority of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims have no use for bin Ladin or his bankrupt ideas. But too often since 9/11, the extremists have defined us, not the other way around.

When I am President, that will change. We will author our own story.

We do need to stand for democracy. And I will. But democracy is about more than a ballot box. America must show -- through deeds as well as words -- that we stand with those who seek a better life. That child looking up at the helicopter must see America and feel hope.

As President, I will make it a focus of my foreign policy to roll back the tide of hopelessness that gives rise to hate. Freedom must mean freedom from fear, not the freedom of anarchy. I will never shrug my shoulders and say -- as Secretary Rumsfeld did -- "Freedom is untidy." I will focus our support on helping nations build independent judicial systems, honest police forces, and financial systems that are transparent and accountable. Freedom must also mean freedom from want, not freedom lost to an empty stomach. So I will make poverty reduction a key part of helping other nations reduce anarchy.

I will double our annual investments to meet these challenges to $50 billion by 2012. And I will support a $2 billion Global Education Fund to counter the radical madrasas -- often funded by money from within Saudi Arabia -- that have filled young minds with messages of hate. We must work for a world where every child, everywhere, is taught to build and not to destroy. And as we lead we will ask for more from our friends in Europe and Asia as well -- more support for our diplomacy, more support for multilateral peacekeeping, and more support to rebuild societies ravaged by conflict. "

These are not the words of someone who would not act in the face of genocide, but of someone who believes that our fate and that of people far away in places we have never heard of are bound together, both by conscience and by interest, and that we will never be the country we truly want to be unless we recognize that fact.

***

Obama does have a track record on issues of genocide. He has written about Darfur, spoken about it, and introduced legislation to help deal with it. DarfurScores.org, which rates members of Congress on their work for Darfur, gave him an A+. From his website:

"Senator Obama wrote and passed legislation to build on this historic election and promote stability in the country. Senator Obama revamped U.S. policy in the Congo to include a commitment to help rebuild the country, develop lasting political structures, hold accountable destabilizing foreign governments, crack down on corrupt politicians, and professionalize the military. The bill also authorizes $52 million in U.S. assistance for the Congo, calls for a Special U.S. Envoy to resolve ongoing violence, and urges the administration to strengthen the U.N. peacekeeping force. (...)

Senator Obama has been a leading voice in Washington urging the end of genocide in Sudan. He worked with Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS) on the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act, a version of which was signed into law. Senator Obama has traveled to the United Nations to meet with Sudanese officials and visited refugee camps on the Chad-Sudan border to raise international awareness of the ongoing humanitarian disaster there. He also worked with Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) to secure $20 million for the African Union peacekeeping mission."

***

Jamie notes that Obama opposed sending US troops to Darfur unilaterally. He writes>

"Like every other presidential candidate save Joseph Biden, Obama also believes that the United States should not use military force to stop the genocide in Darfur, which has already claimed over 200,000 lives. “We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done,” he said, in further explanation of his doctrine. “Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea.” But “occupying the Sudan” is not what’s needed to stop the genocide. A few thousand Marines to protect the Darfur region would suffice. And Obama’s presumptuous claim to speak on behalf of “those of us who care about Darfur” ignores many people who have long been calling for unilateral U.S. military intervention, Senator Biden chief among them."

Luckily, Obama explained his position on this, and someone caught it on video. The YouTube is here; it's not the best quality, but it's audible. I've transcribed it below (sorry in advance if I got anything wrong):

"I actually visited some of the displaced persons in Chad. The Sudanese government wouldn't let me in because I had been such a fierce critic of what they've done and what's taking place in Darfur. It's hard to describe what it's like to sit and talk to a woman who has witnessed her children being slaughtered, and has been raped, and has seen her husband killed and her village burned. Those stories are all throughout the region as people have fled from these militias that were financed and supported and instigated by the Sudanese government.

I've been a leader in trying to pass legislation to tighten up economic sanctions on Sudan. We are way late in the toughest economic sanctions that we could apply. We have not applied the kind of pressure on China, which is one of Sudan's main patrons, that we should have applied. And there are some unilateral steps that we could take just on the economic front that need to be pursued more vigorously.

Ultimately, though, what we need is a no-fly zone which basically says that if you've got helicopter gunships that are supporting militias in their slaughter, then we are going to shoot those gunships down. And maybe we just shoot one down, or two down, we take out their airfields: whatever it is to stop permitting the Sudanese government to provide air support on these activities. That would be step number one. Step two is getting a protective force on the ground. And that requires us mobilizing the international community to be as outraged by this as they should be. And when we say 'Never Again', we should mean it. And we haven't meant it.

But this is an example of where us losing legitimacy as a consequence of our invasion of Iraq really hampers our ability to act diplomatically. Because if we start -- I know that a couple of people have suggested, maybe we should just send US troops in alone. Right now the Sudanese government would say: you already have invaded one Muslim country, now you're invading another Muslim country, and would further fan anti-American sentiment. That's why it's so important for us to send a signal to the world that we want to act in concert to end these kinds of horrible activities..."

Whether you agree or disagree with this position, it's hard to see it as reflecting a lack of concern, or an unwillingness to do anything to help the people of Darfur. Obama thinks that we should not put our own troops into Sudan not because he is opposed to taking action of any kind, but because he thinks that we have squandered our credibility in Iraq. Similarly, when I was in college and the fact about the Khmer Rouge began to come out, I thought: here is a situation in which all the arguments for invading Vietnam actually work, and yet we cannot possibly invade Cambodia to topple the Khmer Rouge. Not in 1977 or 1978. Not after Vietnam.

I think the same is true now -- and it's something we should never forget when we consider going to war: that if we go to war for the wrong reasons, the casualties are likely to include not just the people we kill and those of our soldiers who are killed, but also the people in the next crisis that comes around, people we cannot help because we have thrown away our standing to do so.

Interestingly, Obama also makes a point of the need to restore our moral standing and our good name, not by talking about it but by doing good. From yet another speech:

"There are compelling moral reasons and compelling security reasons for renewed American leadership that recognizes the inherent equality and worth of all people. As President Kennedy said in his 1961 inaugural address, "To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required -- not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich." I will show the world that America remains true to its founding values. We lead not only for ourselves but also for the common good. (...)

It was not all that long ago that farmers in Venezuela and Indonesia welcomed American doctors to their villages and hung pictures of JFK on their living room walls, when millions, like my father, waited every day for a letter in the mail that would grant them the privilege to come to America to study, work, live, or just be free.

We can be this America again. This is our moment to renew the trust and faith of our people -- and all people -- in an America that battles immediate evils, promotes an ultimate good, and leads the world once more."

Sounds good to me.

Comments

[DS]

Glad to see you write this post. I too read Jamie's piece in the RI paper and I gave my computer screen the puzzled dog look...as in WTF? Jamie's take seemed like such intentional misunderstanding that I was taken aback.

[ProfD]

I'll second that. Jamie's piece struck me as being either sloppy or mean-spirited or both.

[rilkefan]

You are (as far as I can tell) absolutely right above. Also note that he favors expanding the Army (which I'm rather leery of) - not I presume in order to ignore the next catastrophe.

But by your criterion in the other thread, wouldn't you like Obama to say "I will withdraw our troops and will not respond in case of genocide because we will be unable to make matters better, much as I wouldn't have intervened in the Congo" or whatever you think is his actual belief is? It's not at all clear to me what the leading candidates actually have in mind with their leaving-forces-there-in-case statements - I've been guessing that's political cover.

[obscure]

According to Scott Horton, Jamie is Martin Peretz's assistant over at TNR.

Explains a lot.

[Elvis Elvisberg]

I'm leaning Obama at this point because I think he is sincere about bringing America back, and I think he'll be able to go a long ways toward restoring our reputation. This rhetoric, and this judgment, that you point to are the sort of thing that makes me feel that way.

I was surprised to see Kirchick guest blogging for Sullivan. So much of what he's written at TNR has been so quickly debunked and so far off base that I thought he was not long for the world of punditry.

Yeah, I'm naive.

Keep up the good work knocking down his efforts at mythmaking.

[Warren Terra]

Surely the mistake - and I guess it's Sullivan's fault more than Hilzoy's - is trying to take Jamie Kirchik seriously, as being someone who actually merits a response.

[Steve Burgess]

Just to clarify something in the Rolling Stone quote - although Samantha Power came of age after the Cold War, it is clear that Obama came of age well before the Cold War ended.

[OCSteve]

I don’t know Hilzoy. Not intervening while people are dying daily because it might “further fan anti-American sentiment” just seems like an excuse. I’m not going to claim that unilateral action is the answer, because I’ve not been able to answer Gary’s question “and then what”. But then I’m not running for president (thankfully).

I’ll give him credit for being more visible on the issue than most. But sending a “signal to the world that we want to act in concert” is not a plan – it’s a fantasy because the “world” just doesn’t give a damn. Severe sanctions sound good. Pressuring China is a little iffy because in reality I think China has more leverage over us these days than the other way around.

But he is a sitting Senator. If this is seriously his position he could be introducing bills and resolutions every single day that the Senate is in session. He could be working to form a coalition that would start with sanctions but be prepared to quickly follow up with concrete military action.

All this other stuff just comes across as hand-wringing IMO. He is a Senator – he should do something more concrete. And I’m sure that “wait until I’m president and then I’ll do something” is a real comfort to the people dying.

[OCSteve]

None of that implies that any other candidate has a better position BTW…

[hilzoy]

OCSteve: the thing is, he did introduce one bill -- well, an amendment, actually, -- on Darfur, and worked on the main one for several years. And as best I can tell, he was one of the main people working to do something about the Congo, which is a ghastly nightmare that doesn't have anything like the visibility of Darfur. That was why one reason I found Jamie's piece puzzling: he actually does have a track record.

Also, about Darfur specifically: I think it's important to ask: what exactly would our troops do, and would unilateral v. multilateral affect what they had to do? The last thing we want to do, it seems to me, is create a situation in which the Sudan defies us to such an extent that we have to, say, capture and hold all of Darfur against the Sudanese army. (Not that we couldn't, but that it would be far better if they just backed off.) The extent of their resistance, I would think, depends a lot on what they think they can get away with, and that in turn depends a lot on the perceived legitimacy of the protective force. And I think that they would have a much harder time saying 'screw you' to a multilateral force than to just plain us.

And that's leaving aside the question: where are we going to get these troops from, exactly?

I have no idea what I would think we should do if we hadn't gone into iraq. But I think that the fact that we did drastically altered things, both in terms of the resources we have at our disposal (e.g., whether we have soldiers just hanging around waiting to be deployed) and in terms of the consequences of our doing something unilaterally, and in both cases it made unilateral action a much, much more problematic option than it would have been otherwise.

Note: I would never have supported unilateral action as a first option in any case. I think that in humanitarian crises, multilateral is always way better. The question I'm addressing above is: what if the world community won't act in the face of true genocide? What then?

[Steve]

I know you don't want to directly attack your (temporary) co-blogger, Hilzoy, but isn't the likeliest example, given Kirchik's track record, that he wants to devalue any response that doesn't involve swift and overwhelming use of American force? He out-and-out says it:

Simply put, the only way to end the Darfur genocide is by NATO intervention, and, failing that, unilateral American military involvement. Bombing government facilities in Khartoum may also be necessary.

[Oyster Tea]

OC Steve:

You wrote:

I’ll give him credit for being more visible on the issue than most. But sending a “signal to the world that we want to act in concert” is not a plan – it’s a fantasy because the “world” just doesn’t give a damn."

My daughter, when she was a child and pre - teen rode with me in a car trip to my parents home probably hundreds of times. Once she became licensed to drive and wanted to go visit them, she had to ask me directions. After that first trip, she absolutely knew the way.

What is the point? "The world doesn't give a damn" is just like saying my daughter didn't care about visiting her grandparents. She did care, obvious by her actions, once she was able to carry out her own agenda, so to speak. She did chose to go visit them often. Her inattention to doing anything about it while totally under her father's control made perfect sense, regardless of her motives toward her grandparents.

Similarly, when we have and constantly use a military larger than the next fourteen nations of the world to police whatever areas we unilaterally choose, why should anyone else waste any energy on the issue?

We have declared them irrelevant. We can back that up militarily. They are, currently irrelevant (relatively) militarily. Policing the world has de facto become our problem. It's not that they "don't give a damn", it's that we have told them to go play in the back yard, while we handle the world's problems.

I believe people in other parts of the world are, individually and collectively, no more or less concerned about atrocities and tradgedies than Americans are. This, to me, is a major difference between left and right thinking. I can't imagine thinking that people in the rest of the world "don't give a damn" about genocide and other forms of injustice. Can you give any evidence that only Americans care?

[Kent]

Well said, hilzoy. I also thought Jamie's piece was ludicrous. Thanks for taking the time to nail all the details.

Well said, Oyster Tea, too, btw. I agree 100%.

[bittern]

I'm a big fan of Obama's, but the notion that the people that have attacked us got that way from "poverty and conflict and health problems and autocracy and environmental degradation in faraway places" (from his think tank) seems a bit far-fetched if you look at their actual, mostly professional backgrounds.

[aimai]

Let us understand something about Kirchik and people like Kirchik. They don't actually think *anything*--Kirchick doesn't *think we should interfere in Darfur* and he doesn't *think we should stop genocide.* The whole point of this post, and his other work, is that it is propaganda for an unnamed and unnamable republican candidate for president. He picked Obama to slam as "not anti genocide enough" because he was looking for a line of attack on Obama that would discredit him with *liberals* and *liberal interventionists* and, fleetingly, with whatever conservatives actually care about stopping genocide (these are very few, if by conservatives we mean actual conservative leaders rather than voters).

The word genocide as it is currently being used, and Darfur, as it is currently being used in American political speech is simply a *proxy for what is predicted to happen in Iraq when and if the US pulls out.* So when a libertarian or conservative propagandist starts talking about genocide in the abstract, or darfur in the particular, the only point they are trying to make is that America should stay in Iraq for the foreseaable future until the problem of Iraq and its bloodshed becomes a wholly democratic/liberal problem. At that point Kirchick and poeple like Kirchick will forget any qualms they may have had about the lives of the Iraqis (or the people of Darfur) and begin campaigning against the Democratic administration on the grounds that no amount of bloodshed in far-off places justifies the loss of a single american serviceman.

Responding to Kirchick on his own terms and immiediatly is good. But realizing that what Kirchick does isn't done in good faith is even better. I'm willing to take bets that within a week of a Democrat--any Democrat--taking power in 2008 the Republicans and their paid stooges like Kirchick will start attacking them for wantonly throwing away our blood and treasure to prevent non-white people from carrying out their savage will and committing genocide against each other *as they always do*. All of Peretz and Bush's writers have always used this subliminal message as a secondary underlying the overall "democracy/whiskey/sexey" line they sell us at other times.

And as for the poster above (Bittern)--people who study insurgenices and terrorist groups know that both are necessary--poverty, oppression and hopelessness for the mass of civilians and education and rage for the elite in the terrorist movement. The elite can't last long without the support, however pathetic and passive, of the larger societies in which they hide. That is why so much of the energy of the various far right islamic groups is spent on social and human services that the states won't or can't provide. If the Muslim Brotherhood hadn't been funding hospitals and schools and human services, if the saudi's weren't funding the only schools available to people in poor countries, there wouldn't be places for terrorists to hide.

aimai

[OCSteve]

Hilzoy: The question I'm addressing above is: what if the world community won't act in the face of true genocide? What then?

Aren’t we already there?

Oyster Tea: Can you give any evidence that only Americans care?

That wasn’t my claim – I did not say “no one besides America cares”. When I say the world just doesn’t give a damn I include America as part of the world. At least no one appears to care enough to actually do something about putting an immediate stop to it. 400,000 and counting – I mean what’s the threshold?

The UN won’t even call it genocide because “the crucial element of genocidal intent appears to be missing, at least as far as the central Government authorities are concerned”. Sure individuals are perpetrating genocidal acts, but the overall situation isn’t really genocide. The Genocide Conventions exist for just such an occasion – but if you don’t call it genocide then you don’t have to actually worry about doing much about it. The cry of “Never Again!” rings pretty hollow today.

The US labeled it genocide three years ago. All we’ve done since is pass some bills that impose sanctions on responsible individuals, appointed a special Envoy, or “urge” this or “call for” that. Other bills (some with more teeth) are languishing in congress.

It doesn’t have to start with military intervention. Do we need to pressure China? I don’t think we have much leverage there, but we could certainly threaten to boycott the Olympics and ask other countries to do the same. The Olympics is probably the most significant leverage we have right now, but it will soon come and go.

This, to me, is a major difference between left and right thinking. I can't imagine thinking that people in the rest of the world "don't give a damn" about genocide and other forms of injustice.

As it drags on year after year with little or no concrete action to stop it, yes I’ve come to believe that the world does not care. Maybe for clarity I’ll change it to “don’t care enough to do anything substantial about it”. I’m sure that individuals all over the world feel badly about it, but that isn’t rising to the level of action to put a stop to it.

[trilobite]

Oyster Tea, I don't think your analogy is a good one, because nothing actually stops most other nations from assembling a military and using it -- with or without UN backing -- to stop genocides. However discouraging we may have been with regard to other nations adventures in areas we regard as our turf, we have not, AFAIK, told France, or Great Britain, or Poland not to invade Congo or Sudan for humanitarian reasons. We have not, AFIAK, voted down intervention resolutions raised by some other nation at the UN.

So these are not kids who don't have their own cars yet. It's more like the guy at college who kept mooching rides because he was too cheap to buy a ticket, but always seemed to have the latest CDs to play on his mondo sound system.

In other words, these nations have other priorities than keeping up a strong standing military for humanitarian purposes, which I guess is fine, but it's reasonable to say that in practice, they don't give a d-mn. It also makes them look pretty shabby when they criticize our priorities.

[aimai]

apparently, we don't have a priorty for a "strong, standing kmilitary for humanitarian purposes" since we have kept up an expensive, large, but not (apparently) very strong standing military that is *unable to intervene* for humanitarian purposes because we are already intervening for the purposes, variously, of:
revenge
oil
democracy
bases
flat taxes
junior AEI employment
etc...etc...etc...

The discussion isn't about who gets bragging rights about doing enough for humanitarian causes--because we'd lose that one--or who puts enough military muscle behind humanitarian causes--because we'd lose that one too. Its who builds and grows moral, economic, and military muscle that can be put behind humanitarian causes. And to those to whom much has been given, much is required. Lets try to at least live up to our own standards, before we whine about others not living up to our standards.

aimai

[trilobite]

amai, I never said we have much to boast about in terms of humanitarian intervention -- though we did our part re South Africa and much more than our part in Bosnia and Rwanda, to name the most recent examples. All I said was, nobody else in the world in practice cares even as much as we do, so nobody else has standing to criticize our failure to send our young men & women out to die for charity. Let them look to the beam in their own eye.

I for one would LOVE to see an EU force kicking butt in the Sudan. What's stopping them?

[Jillian]

Obama = Not ready for prime time.

'nuff said!

[Gary Farber]

Because what we need is more political reasoning that fits on a bumper sticker, and which embodies the sophisticated political wisdom and gravitas of Stan Lee.