Monday, May 01, 2006
Redemption
My apologies for slacking off recently. I've been too involved in myself to really care about updating this.
I read two amazing articles today, both dealing with (of course) the middle east!
The first is from the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal, entitled A Sage in Christendom, and discusses the amazing scholarship of Bernard Lewis, an old-world middle eastern historian. Lewis' works seem to give a unique and brutally honest account of what is happening in the middle east by showing the cause of Muslim strife to be it's subordination by the Christians. What we are seeing now is an attempt at a humiliated religion trying to regain it's glory. I think there's a lot more to it than just that, but certainly this guy has done a lot more research about this than I have.
The second is from (ta-da) The Weekly Standard: No More Vietnams. The author's thesis is that this is another Vietnam, and that we have a duty to see it through and to finish our job. I couldn't agree more, of course. I think that WMDs or not, invading and liberating Iraq was certainly what the United States was required by our own moral code. We certainly failed the Vietnamese people by pulling out of an easily winnable war. We didn't commit ourselves at the most fundamental level to a complete victory in that war, and it has cost the United States and all of the Western world a lot of power and credibility, especially when it comes to enforcing global policy (either through the UN or through the US itself).
This brings me to something that I've been thinking a lot about recently: the hypocrisy of modern liberalism and humanitarianism. Recently, a group of students from California went to Uganda to experience for themselves the turmoils associated with the LRA. The result of their travels is the film Invisible Children. On Saturday in cities throughout the world, this group of film makers sponsored the Global Night Commute, where politically savvy and interested people around the world camped out in large public areas and wrote letters to President Bush asking for US involvement to stop the violence there. I would have loved to gone, but it was raining, and I'm just a huge wuss about sleeping out in rain.
What strikes me as odd about all of this, however, is the impression I get of the political inclinations of the people who supported this event: mostly left leaning college students, the same kind who are adamantly against the war in Iraq. It seems to me that this is a direct contradiction in ideologies. What is it? Either you are for intervening in foreign affairs to fix egregious human rights violations or you aren't! The violence in Uganda, and even in Darfur are small-scale compared to what Saddam inflicted on his own people throughout his entire rule. The United States is now involved in a very delicate situation that could turn the tide of human rights standards throughout the middle east. If we set up a solid government in Iraq and instill in the Iraqi people that religious and ethnic differences should not be the basis for cruelty, people in other middle eastern nations may begin to support our cause. Will middle eastern security help the US more than the same in most parts of Africa? Of course. But we also don't have to deal with people in Africa involving in global terrorism or the acquisition of nuclear weapons, they are far to impoverished and technologically retarded to be a serious threat. The middle east, however, is a booming place for industry, even outside of oil.
I'm not attempting to excuse our lack of action in Darfur or Uganda or wherever else there is strife, suffering, and injustice in the world. I don't think the United States has been doing enough in the last twenty years to further the global good. We have been involved in the United Nations and it's farce of a Human Rights council, we stand by while people are slaughtered outright, we allow countries like China to do as it pleases in regards to workers rights and political speech. We have even helped bring to power the very people we now fear. This needs to change, dramatically. The Bush doctrine, which seems to be floundering right now, ought to be reinvigorated and applied more. As ¶ 5:11 PM
I read two amazing articles today, both dealing with (of course) the middle east!
The first is from the Wall Street Journal's OpinionJournal, entitled A Sage in Christendom, and discusses the amazing scholarship of Bernard Lewis, an old-world middle eastern historian. Lewis' works seem to give a unique and brutally honest account of what is happening in the middle east by showing the cause of Muslim strife to be it's subordination by the Christians. What we are seeing now is an attempt at a humiliated religion trying to regain it's glory. I think there's a lot more to it than just that, but certainly this guy has done a lot more research about this than I have.
The second is from (ta-da) The Weekly Standard: No More Vietnams. The author's thesis is that this is another Vietnam, and that we have a duty to see it through and to finish our job. I couldn't agree more, of course. I think that WMDs or not, invading and liberating Iraq was certainly what the United States was required by our own moral code. We certainly failed the Vietnamese people by pulling out of an easily winnable war. We didn't commit ourselves at the most fundamental level to a complete victory in that war, and it has cost the United States and all of the Western world a lot of power and credibility, especially when it comes to enforcing global policy (either through the UN or through the US itself).
This brings me to something that I've been thinking a lot about recently: the hypocrisy of modern liberalism and humanitarianism. Recently, a group of students from California went to Uganda to experience for themselves the turmoils associated with the LRA. The result of their travels is the film Invisible Children. On Saturday in cities throughout the world, this group of film makers sponsored the Global Night Commute, where politically savvy and interested people around the world camped out in large public areas and wrote letters to President Bush asking for US involvement to stop the violence there. I would have loved to gone, but it was raining, and I'm just a huge wuss about sleeping out in rain.
What strikes me as odd about all of this, however, is the impression I get of the political inclinations of the people who supported this event: mostly left leaning college students, the same kind who are adamantly against the war in Iraq. It seems to me that this is a direct contradiction in ideologies. What is it? Either you are for intervening in foreign affairs to fix egregious human rights violations or you aren't! The violence in Uganda, and even in Darfur are small-scale compared to what Saddam inflicted on his own people throughout his entire rule. The United States is now involved in a very delicate situation that could turn the tide of human rights standards throughout the middle east. If we set up a solid government in Iraq and instill in the Iraqi people that religious and ethnic differences should not be the basis for cruelty, people in other middle eastern nations may begin to support our cause. Will middle eastern security help the US more than the same in most parts of Africa? Of course. But we also don't have to deal with people in Africa involving in global terrorism or the acquisition of nuclear weapons, they are far to impoverished and technologically retarded to be a serious threat. The middle east, however, is a booming place for industry, even outside of oil.
I'm not attempting to excuse our lack of action in Darfur or Uganda or wherever else there is strife, suffering, and injustice in the world. I don't think the United States has been doing enough in the last twenty years to further the global good. We have been involved in the United Nations and it's farce of a Human Rights council, we stand by while people are slaughtered outright, we allow countries like China to do as it pleases in regards to workers rights and political speech. We have even helped bring to power the very people we now fear. This needs to change, dramatically. The Bush doctrine, which seems to be floundering right now, ought to be reinvigorated and applied more. As ¶ 5:11 PM
