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choco_froshIt's really kinda sick, the way that we all keep treating foreign affairs as though they were the most important issue facing us. (When is global warming, or even health care, goiong to get some face time?) Nevertheless, I felt I needed to say this. Bug me til I bug my representative about it, too.
A full page ad in the New York Times caught my eye as I was recuperating in the History common room earlier today. It was paid for by SaveDarfur.org, and called for world leaders to intervene decisively in the Sudan to end the genocide. Specifically, by removing self-appointed president Omar al-Bashir.
Now, I quite agree with the folks at SaveDarfur.org that we need to stop beating around the bush and treat what's going on in Darfur (and the rest of southern Sudan...and Chad) as a genocide, AND about the fact that the whole business is being done with the fairly explicit compliance of Bashir's regime. However, what struck me as...interesting is the fact that these guys are, I would be willing to bet, lefties.
Does anyone see the cognitive dissonance with Liberals demanding that we get rid of a brutal dictator by any means necessary? I mean, they may well not have thought this through all the way, but the only really realistic we're gonna get rid of him is by invading his country and deposing him by force, after which we can reasonably expect that we'll have to occupy it for some considerable time until we can reconstruct it (in every sense of the word.) Does this sound familiar?
Granted, it isn't quite the same story as with Iraq. With the US and the UN breathing down Saddam's neck and keeping a close eye on his doings, he wasn't particularly likely to commit human rights atrocities, slaughter whole populations, or invade his neighbors...any more than he already had. We'd likely have the support of the international community, partly because we wouldn't be pretending we were looking for WMD's. (Who needs 'em when you've got guys on motorcycles with AK-47's and grenade launchers?) But we'd be occupying a country, and thus making our troops the target of attacks by local groups, in order to try to create a democratic regime and prevent Islamic militias from slaughtering innocent people.
That, of course, is precisely what we're doing in Iraq. We may be doing it badly; we may be doing it for the wrong reasons; we may be horribly misguided in our thinking, both in Washington and on the ground. And we certainly shouldn't have been there in the first place. But our nominal mission in Iraq now is the same as what we would have to do in Sudan.
I, personally, hate George Bush. But I am reluctantly forced to agree with him, against the opinion of my fellow Democrats and many Republicans: we should stay the course in Iraq. (Probably by a very different strategy than what we're doing now, but that's another story). The alternative is having it turn into another Lebanon: chronic civil war, with horrible atrocities and suffering, spilling into neighboring countries who will then get involved as well, and providing a breeding ground for terrorist organizations.
That is my view. But as a Liberal, what really disgusts me is not the radical Left's race to get out of Iraq, but its inconsistency. If we should intervene in Sudan to prevent human rights violations, then we should stay in Iraq for the same reasons. If we're pulling our forces out of Iraq and damn the consequences, we shouldn't promptly re-deploy them to Sudan. And whichever course we take, we must acknowledge that the cost in human lives will inevitably be high.
(All this is a point better made by that guy whom Catilinarian cited. Like I say, this is just my $0.02.)
More stuff that isn't so good:
-Unexpectedly discovering that your bicycle tire's gone flat while you were in the library. (WTF??)
-Getting told that you now have to make an APPOINTMENT to submit a passport application at the post office; being charged $67 for the privilege of mailing one in instead.
-Being reminded that you have to submit a personal statement and letters of reference to the job-finding firm that you're working with. This was by no means clear from the online application form.
-Ongoing uncertainty about what to do with my life.
A full page ad in the New York Times caught my eye as I was recuperating in the History common room earlier today. It was paid for by SaveDarfur.org, and called for world leaders to intervene decisively in the Sudan to end the genocide. Specifically, by removing self-appointed president Omar al-Bashir.
Now, I quite agree with the folks at SaveDarfur.org that we need to stop beating around the bush and treat what's going on in Darfur (and the rest of southern Sudan...and Chad) as a genocide, AND about the fact that the whole business is being done with the fairly explicit compliance of Bashir's regime. However, what struck me as...interesting is the fact that these guys are, I would be willing to bet, lefties.
Does anyone see the cognitive dissonance with Liberals demanding that we get rid of a brutal dictator by any means necessary? I mean, they may well not have thought this through all the way, but the only really realistic we're gonna get rid of him is by invading his country and deposing him by force, after which we can reasonably expect that we'll have to occupy it for some considerable time until we can reconstruct it (in every sense of the word.) Does this sound familiar?
Granted, it isn't quite the same story as with Iraq. With the US and the UN breathing down Saddam's neck and keeping a close eye on his doings, he wasn't particularly likely to commit human rights atrocities, slaughter whole populations, or invade his neighbors...any more than he already had. We'd likely have the support of the international community, partly because we wouldn't be pretending we were looking for WMD's. (Who needs 'em when you've got guys on motorcycles with AK-47's and grenade launchers?) But we'd be occupying a country, and thus making our troops the target of attacks by local groups, in order to try to create a democratic regime and prevent Islamic militias from slaughtering innocent people.
That, of course, is precisely what we're doing in Iraq. We may be doing it badly; we may be doing it for the wrong reasons; we may be horribly misguided in our thinking, both in Washington and on the ground. And we certainly shouldn't have been there in the first place. But our nominal mission in Iraq now is the same as what we would have to do in Sudan.
I, personally, hate George Bush. But I am reluctantly forced to agree with him, against the opinion of my fellow Democrats and many Republicans: we should stay the course in Iraq. (Probably by a very different strategy than what we're doing now, but that's another story). The alternative is having it turn into another Lebanon: chronic civil war, with horrible atrocities and suffering, spilling into neighboring countries who will then get involved as well, and providing a breeding ground for terrorist organizations.
That is my view. But as a Liberal, what really disgusts me is not the radical Left's race to get out of Iraq, but its inconsistency. If we should intervene in Sudan to prevent human rights violations, then we should stay in Iraq for the same reasons. If we're pulling our forces out of Iraq and damn the consequences, we shouldn't promptly re-deploy them to Sudan. And whichever course we take, we must acknowledge that the cost in human lives will inevitably be high.
(All this is a point better made by that guy whom Catilinarian cited. Like I say, this is just my $0.02.)
More stuff that isn't so good:
-Unexpectedly discovering that your bicycle tire's gone flat while you were in the library. (WTF??)
-Getting told that you now have to make an APPOINTMENT to submit a passport application at the post office; being charged $67 for the privilege of mailing one in instead.
-Being reminded that you have to submit a personal statement and letters of reference to the job-finding firm that you're working with. This was by no means clear from the online application form.
-Ongoing uncertainty about what to do with my life.
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no subject
Date: 2007-01-31 11:43 pm (UTC)I wish you were more widely read.
Ongoing uncertainty about what to do with my life.
I suppose columnists make no money at all?
no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 01:59 am (UTC)"Of course you can make a living as a Republican blogger!"
"Uh huh. So what's your favorite brand of cat food."
"Well, I must say that Friskies makes a very...wait. Why are you asking?"
Seriously, though, I'm not sure whether anyone would be likely to pay me, even assuming I could make myself write a column every week. There are lots of other people who would love to have such a soap box; and many of them have degrees in PolySci and/or journalism.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-01 08:57 pm (UTC)I know. But I'm not as interested in reading most of them. Your travel accounts cause me to believe that the fine art of the essay is not dead in this century after all.
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 02:25 pm (UTC)Signed,
I guess I would be doing the proofreading if Josh became a pundit
no subject
Date: 2007-02-02 07:18 pm (UTC)I guess I would be doing the proofreading if Josh became a pundit
You could be a journalistic double act . . .
no subject
Date: 2007-02-05 11:00 pm (UTC)Remember Kosovo?
no subject
Date: 2007-02-06 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-16 03:52 am (UTC)True--which is why I didn't think Iraq was a good idea.
OK, out of the MANY reasons.
But: what DO you think about Sudan?
I don't think that we're succeeding in lessening - or even keeping a lid on - clashes between factions.
Oh, you're right. The counter-argument is: would we be doing better if we were pursuing a different strategy: systematic anti-insurgency work, instead of trying to get our butts out of there ASAP with the fewest casualties on our side? That, at least, was the argument of a columnist I read...in the New Yorker.
(granted, he must've written it about two years ago now, but still)