Warning: Unpopular political opinions ahead.
I've just finished reading The Zanzibar Chest by Aidan Hartley. Hartley is a white journalist who grew up in Central Africa, and, after being sent to school in England, returned to Africa as a war correspondent for Reuters. He was in Somalia during the civil war and famine, and in Rwanda during the genocide. His story is interwoven with the story of Peter Davey, a friend of his father's who lived and died in Yemen, in defence of the British empire. I highly recommend the book, but you need a strong stomach to read the second half.
The theme of the book is summed up by something Hartley's father said to him shortly before dying: "We should never have come. But when we did come, we should have stayed."
Hartley reminded his father that they had, indeed, stayed. But it makes me think about the presidential election, and my dilemma over the candidates' foreign policy stances.
If Obama wins (as I know most of my family dearly desires), and he makes good on his promise to evacuate our troops from Iraq within months, will we someday be telling our grandchildren that, having come to Iraq wrongfully, we should have stayed? Are we really willing to destroy a country's stability and infrastructure and then just walk away because we're getting hurt? And won't pulling out make the world hate and despise us even more (if that's possible)?
But looking slightly further abroad, the most disturbing thing about all the candidates (as far as I can tell, except the Green Party platform) is the abject kowtowing they are all doing to AIPAC. I realize that a person can't get elected in this country without getting into bed with AIPAC. But is anyone else as terrified as I am that unconditional support for Israel will lead us to an even worse mistake than invading Iraq? Will we be saying in 4 years, "We should never have invaded Iran"?
Such is the stuff of nightmares.
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I started writing a list of all the reasons why we need to get out of Iraq, from the cost of American lives, the economic cost, the fact the to effect real change a vast expenditure of our resources would be required. How this war and living in a war driven state has changed our democracy and our very freedom... (the list went on and on) and then I found this by David Enders, an American journalist who has been in Iraq that I think sums it up for me:
* "It is [against] the will of the Iraqi people." Enders cites a recent survey by Iraqi pollster Saadun Al-Dulaimie, who found that 85 percent of Iraqi people want U.S. troops out of their country as soon as possible.
* "The U.S. does not provide security for the average Iraqi, and it never has."
* "The U.S. has not prevented a civil war from taking place. If anything, it has exacerbated it."
* "It is not morally derelict to pull out; it's morally derelict to stay. Returning real control and sovereignty to Iraqis is the most effective way to prevent the country from breaking apart. U.S. troops complain Iraqis don't want to stand up and fight for themselves, and a big part of the reason is the occupiers' presence."
Finally, for all the good we might be doing, I think we are doing much more harm in the long run. Oh and as far as the AIPAC goes, I think it is perhaps the second largest obstacle to peace in the middle east (the first being our presence in Iraq)
These are good points, and I (like you) wrote a couple of pages in rebuttal, but I think in the end I can make my point with three words.
Rwanda. Somalia. Bosnia.
Boy, I feel really torn over this issue, and guess that it's probably a situation where we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
The whole situation kind of reminds me of the way that the BB talks about the seemingly insurmountable problems that emerge from a life run on self-will. It's kind of an interesting comparison... don't have any idea of the implications of it, but the seeming hopelessness of the situation sure feels familiar. Could the way up and out possibly be the same? what a funny idea!
one more thought- I think that the common misunderstanding about these civil wars is that they are ethnic conflicts, thinking in this way makes it easier to catagorize them as irrational result of primeval forces at opposition when in fact they are more the result of authoritarian political extremists bent on political gain. Since the current model for humanitarian intervention seeks to restructure states along traditional state models of democratization and thinks in traditional terms of state sovereignty, national interest, and international security, this "Humanitarian intervention" ultimately only reinforces authoritarianism, rigid notions of sovereignty, and militarization. In short it is nothing more than a mirror of politics the rst of the world over. In order to effect change we must begin to think in nonconventional political terms that envision new types of states, that might include partial forms of sovereignty or democratization, and also incorporate nontraditional indigenous models of rule that mirror local customs and traditions.
I think I am too tired to comment as fully as I ought, because I agree with Patrick that we have to stop thinking in dualistic terms - stop thinking that the only choices are the choices laid out by this administration to pick from: go or stay, win or lose, etc. There are other options. But I actually came into the comments section to do something that will surprise you: I wanted to agree with you about our getting in bed with AIPIC. It is political suicide to say it out loud, but it drives me insane that to be elected in the United States you have to kowtow to Israel. So there is at least one point of common ground : )
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