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http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2011/03...al-imperative/How Killing Libyans Became a Moral Imperative
Patrick J. Buchanan March 24th, 2011
“Who would be free themselves must strike the blow.”
So wrote the poet Byron, who would himself die just days after landing in Greece to join the war for independence from the Turks.
But in that time, Americans followed the dictum of Washington, Adams and Jefferson: Stay out of foreign wars.
America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own,” said John Quincy Adams in his oration of July 4, 1821.
When Greek patriots sought America’s assistance, Daniel Webster took up their cause but was admonished by John Randolph. Intervention would breach every “bulwark and barrier of the Cons ution.”
“Let us say to those 7 million of Greeks: We defended ourselves when we were but 3 million, against a power in comparison to which the Turk is but as a lamb. Go and do thou likewise.”
When Hungarian hero Louis Kossuth came to request a U.S. fleet in the Mediterranean to keep the czar’s warships at bay, when Hungary sought to break free of the Habsburg Empire, Webster backed him.
But Henry Clay and John Calhoun stood against it.
“Far better is it for ourselves,” said Clay, “for Hungary and for the cause of liberty that, adhering to our wise, pacific system and avoiding the distant wars of Europe, we should keep our lamp burning brightly on this western shore as a light to all nations than to hazard its utter extinction amid the ruins of fallen or falling republics in Europe.”
When Hungarian patriots rose up against the Soviet occupation in 1956, Khrushchev sent in hundreds of tanks to drown the revolution in blood.
Hungary was behind the Iron Curtain, the Yalta-Potsdam line to which FDR and Truman had agreed. There were no U.S. troops on any Hungarian border. So Eisenhower did — nothing.
Indeed, that same month, Ike ordered British, French and Israelis to end their intervention in Sinai and Suez and get their troops out or face sanctions, including the U.S. sinking of the British pound.
Was Ike an isolationist?
Until the modern era, the idea of sending armed forces across oceans to kill and die for moral or humanitarian causes would have been seen as an insult to the Founding Fathers, an abandonment of a vital American tradition, and ruinous to the national interest.
Why are we in Libya? Why are U.S. pilots bombing and killing Libyan soldiers who have done nothing to us?
These soldiers are simply doing their sworn duty to protect their country from attack and defend the only government they have known from what they are told is an insurgency backed by al-Qaida and supported by Western powers after their country’s oil.
Why did Obama launch this uncons utional war?
Moral, humanitarian and ideological reasons. Though Robert Gates and the Pentagon had thrown ice water on the idea of intervening in a third war in the Islamic world — in a sandbox on the northern coast of Africa — Obama somersaulted and ordered the attack, for three reasons.
The Arab League gave him permission to impose a no-fly zone. He feared that Moammar Gadhafi would do to Benghazi what Scipio Africanus did to Carthage. And Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power conveyed to Obama their terrible guilt feelings about America’s failure to stop what happened in Rwanda and Darfur.
This is the three sisters’ war.
But why was it America’s moral duty to stop the Tutsi slaughter of Hutus in Burundi in 1972 or the Hutu counter-slaughter of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994? Why was that not the duty of their closest African neighbors, Zaire (Congo), Uganda and Tanzania?
These African countries have been independent for a half-century. When are they going to man up?
The slaughter in Darfur is the work of an Arab League member, Sudan. Egypt, the largest and most powerful Arab nation, is just down the Nile. Why didn’t the Egyptian army march to Khartoum, a la Kitchener, throw that miserable regime out, and stop the genocide?
Why doesn’t Egypt, whose 450,000-man army has gotten billions from us, roll into Tobruk and Benghazi and protect those Arabs from being killed by fellow Arabs? Why is this America’s responsibility?
When Spain had its civil war in the 1930s, in which hundreds of thousands perished, FDR declared neutrality. A million Ibos died in Nigeria’s civil war from 1967-70. No one raised a finger to help them or the million Cambodians who perished in Pol Pot’s killing fields.
Since Bush I, we have intervened in Panama, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Libya. Had Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman gotten their way, we would have been fighting Russians in Georgia and bombing Iran.
Add up all those we have killed, wounded, widowed, orphaned or uprooted, and the number runs into the millions. All these wars have helped mightily to bankrupt us.
Have they made us more secure?
The cons on the left and the right do not approve of this article.
Amen.
"All these wars have helped mightily to bankrupt us."
"us" of course excludes the UCA ruling plutocracy and controlling MIC that war-profiteer enormously, over and over and over, to insulate themselves from the bankruptcy and increasing poverty they visit on the non-plutocracy as they suck the wealth from the ATM furnished with taxpayers' $Ts.
When we were three million the French helped us.
Ike did not go into Hungary and told the UK to stop on the Arabian peninsula because it was pissing the soviets off.
Kazakhstan is right there.
Those are two horrible examples.
If you want examples of why intervention is bad look no further than South and Central America. Kissinger was a real bag.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42247045...deastn_africa/But the compromise that puts NATOin charge of clearing the skies still leaves the U.S. responsible for the more difficult task of planning attacks on Gadhafi's ground forces and other targets.
The whole NATO bit is just a bull smokescreen about where Obama can hide that we're really running the show. Its so ing annoying.
Really?
You obviously do not know about french politics. They have a hard on for Libya because a ton of immigration comes from there. Perhaps you have heard about the law about a veil or the muslim neighborhoods during the labor strike last year?
It's problematic to cite examples from 18th and 19th century America as reasons for why the US should stay out of conflicts in the 21st century. Society, government, and the Cons ution have radically changed.
One could argue that the American mandate, laid out in its founding do ent - the Declaration of Independance - shows this country is a champion of human rights, democratic rule of law, etc... not just here but abroad.
One could also argue that the historical results of liberal intervention seldom conform with the humanitarian intentions propelling it. Iraq and Afghanistan are notable examples.
That's not much of an argument - I'd be hard pressed to think of a single humanitarian intervention that conformed with said intentions.
The question then becomes - what do you do? There are those who would foresake the humanitarian cause because of said results. Others would insist on the perfectability of the laws and ins utions said to reflect these intentions and would keep fighting on.
Personally, I think too much is at stake to simply say it, intervention hasn't worked in the past so we should give up.
What's at stake for the USA?
I don't think that's the right question to be asking.
I understand I'm in a minority on this one though.
When reality shows the theory is wrong, disregard reality and keep the theory. Genius.
Do you think America has the ability to transform another country's politics for the better? If so, please provide examples, along with the amount of time and money it took to reform said examples.
Then, tell us which countries need reform and which don't.
You said there was "too much at stake" to do nothing. What did you mean?
You realize that your wishes would be supported by living and breathing Americans, right?
If America is always the first (and frequently, the heaviest) lifter on an international stage, what would possess other countries to do their fair share of the workload?
That's a matter of perspective. You could easily say "work to force reality to conform with the ideals."
Genocide.
My ideal is that we are able to make ice cream out of sand. Our government is not doing enough to make this a reality? Why do they hate our children!?!? [/snark]
I think it's more about working with and through international ins utions. So while it would involve US manpower, other countries would be obligated to shoulder the burden too. The burden has to be shared - and not be US-centric.
I'm speaking of what should happen - not what is the case, or even what is likely the case. My point is that international ins utions have the possibility of changing international relations for the better, and that is something the West should strive for.
Ice cream is delicious tbh, you raise a good point.
1) Why is America responsible for another country? Because we believe in freedom and liberty? Pretty sure we're not the only country.
2) Do you think we can prevent genocide indefinitely, without any other sort of negative consequences arising from our actions?
3) Where do you draw the line at who we should and shouldn't help?
There's been one going on continuously in the Congo for about 20 years. Millions have already died. Don't we owe them something too?
I can see that viewpoint. However, when push comes to shove, which side do we go with? Do we go with our ideals and do the "right thing" even without help? Or do we remain pragmatists?
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