Friday, July 13, 2007
Kobayashi Maru: Fire the Police to Promote Public Safety: The Logic of 21st Century Liberal Reactionaries
...So in Iraq we remove the only force even attempting to keep the NYT's own long list of terrible things from happening and... what? The UN will come to the rescue? Tell that to the Rwandans, or countless others whose last flickering vision on earth--as their blood seeped out into the ground from a machete wound, or as they pitched forward into a mass grave from a shot to the back of the head--was of a light blue helmet keeping a careful, peaceful, un-biased watch, with nothing but words to back up their indignation and concern.
If this is what passes for logic at the NYT then it's a strange one indeed. Strange, that is, if those subscribing to said logic want to call themselves 'progressive' or regard themselves as 'enlightened'--as the paper and its readers tend to like to do. It's a logic in which humanistic, and yes liberal principles are completely turned on their heads in favor of something small and frightened and selfish and more than a little ashamed of itself...
Yeah, well, what do you expect from the newspaper that buried the Holocaust on the back pages?
"Liberal reactionaries," exactly.
It amazes me that people can work for progressive reform at home but are content with a repressive, violent status quo abroad.
Worse, political correctness and cultural relativism have resulted in "liberal reactionaries" actually defending the abuse of women, kids, gays and minorities on the basis that they're practices of "indigenous cultures." I've even seen defenses of female genital mutilation on those grounds.
This is astonishing. It goes hand in hand with the blatant antisemitism being fostered on so-called "progressive" websites, or the phenomenon of "progressives" goosestepping around with the banners of far right wing theocratic militias.
How can people so committed to human rights and respect for the individual, for women and minorities here at home, for democracy here at home, endorse groups whose philosophy is violently repressive of those ideals abroad?
Do individuals here have a value they don't share abroad? Isn't that an extremely racist point of view? Meanwhile it begs some important questions: how can societies which still depend on goats and camels be integrated into the world of the 787 and the supercomputer? Should they just be destroyed willy-nilly as we see in Sudan, where little villages are bombarded from the air and janjaweed militias rape and murder at will? Should we set aside "reservations" for people, try to maintain primaeval cultures on principle?
Or should people - individuals - be provided with the tools to choose for themselves: education, basic security, sufficient food and water and medicine and essential, universal human rights? What if progress itself creates conflict? We see this in some of the hotspots of the Middle East, throughout the Mediterranean basin and in the Gulf: modernity itself is creating conflict simply by existence in contrast to traditional systems, and meanwhile booming populations stress fragile ecologies and obsolete, inadequate economic structures.
There is ample room for argument as to means. In fact this argument - between radical, revolutionary methods versus evolutionary change - is central to Leftist and progressive philosophy.
Many of us reject war and violence as appropriate tools of reform. We do respect the fact that culture and religion are important factors of local politics and that it's arrogant to assume that a Western state can simply drive up in an aircraft carrier, drop a few bombs, and expect a magical transformation to a 21st century Western democracy. Insensitity and simple ignorance of different cultures and different peoples ARE an ongoing problem - though of course this doesn't apply just to the West. Xenophobia and fear of the other are global problems. They manifest in local situations as well as international conflicts.
We can expect to confront more conflict as the world shrinks and changes. Eventually, our shared humanity should help overcome many of our differences, just as in Europe the EU has been healing centuries of war wounds.
In Iraq, the B2 probably wasn't the right way to introduce democratic principles IMO - nor has it (unsurprisingly) fostered prowestern sentiment. Women's rights have actually suffered there along with civil society and simple law and order. Religious and ethnic conflicts have reawakened.
That said, we are there now. We need to deal with the consequences of what we've unleashed. Simply turning our backs on it and assuming that the UN will fix it is naive to the point of immorality.
To the extent that our mere presence is inflaming violence, we should consider a pullback strategy. However, pretending that all will be well if we simply abnegate our responsibility is the height of ignorance.