America’s Place in the World (Discussion)

Hopefully, many of you have by now read my recent commentary entitled “America’s Place inthe World."

I have had a number of comments and exchanges as a result of that posting, and would like to share that discussion with you.

Janet Cooke of Philadelphian, Pennsylvania wrote:

I was just thinking about your blog and that I was missing hearing what you might be thinking about this budget/healthcare/threaten to shut down the government fiasco we are witnessing in Washington now!  I was planning to communicate with you this morning about missing your commentary -  and then I opened the email from you and found the comments from Eric re: Syria, etc., and your response.   

 Not the topic that was on my mind but good to hear your thinking!  I'm always glad to learn what you're thinking about situations and behaviors that amaze and overwhelm me.  The budget stuff and the ridiculous but dangerous(?) behavior of the Republicans is of great concern.  Maybe, because like you, I've wanted to expect so much better behavior from members of our government, it's especially upsetting. I am tuned in.

To which I responded:

With respect to the shutting down of the government and the even more serious imminent failure to raise the debt ceiling there is not much to say. It is akin to a father, (or a mother) taking one of their children hostage and demanding ransom for not harming such a child. Will the mother (or father) pay! Probably yes. But when that happens again and again, without any assurance of the safety of the child or even children, there comes a time when it is necessary to say no more. These are our children. This is our economy. This is the world economy. You can't use that for blackmail.

The trouble with paying ransom to hostage takers is that the more one pays, the more it encourages the hostage-taking. No matter what the cost, at one point one has to refuse or there is no end to it. The ransom will just keep going up. 

However, even though you feel this crisis is front and center, I would still like to have your input on my exchange with Eric Offner on the Syria debacle.

Nancy Vieira, who works for the National Institute of Health, and is domiciled in Silver Springs, Maryland, contributed the following:

So good to read your column once again! Thank-you for deciding to respond to your friend’s provocative email and for posting it on your web site for us (always!) interested readers.  

It never ceases to amaze me how cruel and barbaric the “civilized” human species can be. I will never forget watching a live broadcast from a hut in Rwanda and, as the journalist spoke in the doorway of the hut, seeing in the background, down the dirt road, 2 men with machetes hacking away at “something” on the ground (a fellow human being was my presumption). Striking with a machete and seeing up close what it is you are actually doing to a “living thing”, to me, is mind boggling enough. But, dropping a bomb of chemical weaponry on your own citizens, innocents, while comfortably sitting at home with plenty of food, water, all the comforts of modern day living and family and friends, not ever having to see the chemical damage inflicted upon the human and other animal species up close and personal, their suffering, is unconscionable.   

And, to turn one’s head and say, “it’s not my problem” is also unconscionable. I cannot imagine how a human being can justify condoning these acts of vicious cruelty. I can only hope that, one day, we will all live in peace on this planet.

Prompting me to reply as follows:

Thanks for taking the time to comment.

You are one of very few, who has seen barbarity up close. Every time we close our eyes we become accomplices. It is so easy to say there is nothing we can do. There is always something we can do. Where there is a Will, there is a Way. 

It is high time for us to take the words, "NEVER AGAIN" seriously". But it isn't only chemical weapons that should arouse our ire, as horrible as they are. Every time we condone atrocities, and in Syria we should have acted after the Hama murders in 1982, which few people even remember. (I might add that I had not remembered it until I read Thomas Friedman's book "From Beirut to Jerusalem" published in 1989, but not read by me until three years ago. It is still an eye opener.

Again thank you for taking the time to write.

And finally, Herb Reiner, of Cedar Grove, NJ expressed this view:

Glad to hear from you that you’re well and glad to see that you have not lost interest in expressing your political views despite the lack of response to your last commentary. I will just add a few observations to chew on. 

  

Firstly, the distinction between a civil war and a revolution is nebulous and in the case of Syria one can truly say it is both. The Syrians are certainly not fighting against a foreign occupying power. 

  

Secondly, even from the early stages of the conflict, Obama realized that the Opposition was fractured and disorganized. The most motivated and well organized among them were the Islamist, who today appear the strongest among the opposition groups. Obama was always left with bad choices, but I believe his reluctance to supply heavy weapons was justified.  The secular groups, it seems are welcoming all the support they can get from the Islamists and it is not clear who would control our heavy weapons.  Let's not forget how the Stinger missiles we supplied to Pakistan were used to shoot down our own aircraft.  

  

Thirdly, it may be beyond the power of even the most powerful military in the world to alone help "people being slaughtered," without engendering even worse consequences. We should be thankful that Obama did not have to carry out his threat against Assad crossing the red line with the fantasy of a quick in-and-out punishment, which would kill even more innocent victims and could plunge the whole region into chaos.  As for overthrowing Assad  -- be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!  

 Best wishes and keep writing and thinking.

Prompting this response on my part:

It’s so good to hear from you and to have the benefit of your views.

It is so easy to find reasons to close one's eyes. Maybe, because of my background as a Holocaust survivor, who remembers, and who has studied the history of that atrocity while the world found just as many reasons to close its eyes. There were worse things than Hitler they said. We should be worried about the Communists, not the Nazis. What business is it what happens to German Nationals? We must not interfere in their sovereign affairs.

Above all we have our own problems with high unemployment, and didn't we have enough getting involved in European affairs in World War I.

Even when Britain was on its last legs, they argued it is only about protecting the British Empire, what do we care. 

I fear that what we are witnessing is neo-isolationism.

Yes, I hear the arguments that you are making. But that was not true in the beginning. In the beginning we witnessed peaceful demonstrations of an oppressed people and we saw Hama of 1982 all over again. That was the time to say NO - NOT AGAIN! This will not stand!! At the very beginning a no fly zone, which could have been attained with weapons fired from off shore at airbases, should have been imposed. It would not have been 100% successful. So what. It would have made a difference.

Yes, a lot of extremist elements have reared their ugly head. But that is because we stood aside. If we wouldn't help them others will jump in. And so they did. But even now we see battles between secular groups and religious ideologues. Why don't we help the secularists? The longer we don't help them, the more a desperate people turn to the Jihadists. Our failure has helped the Jihadists and continues to help them. But above all where is our sense of compassion; our sense of justice.

Now as to Stinger missiles. The problem is not that we supplied them to Pakistan. We supplied them to the Taliban to shoot down Soviet planes in the Soviet-Afghanistan campaign. Was that a mistake? NO!!!!! At a time when we were in a life and death struggle with the Soviets, handing them a major defeat was the first, and possibly only, priority. In any case Stinger missiles have not been our major problem in Afghanistan. Very few of our planes have been shot down by Stinger missiles. In fact we have lost very few planes. The weapons that have bedeviled us are IEDs, the roadside bombs, not Stinger missiles. That is a phony argument that is being used. But, carefully selected groups would minimize the risk if any. 

Does anyone really think that if we stand aside and don't try to influence events that things will turn out better than if we do? That doesn't work in private life and it doesn't work in public events. Trying, even if sometimes failing to influence events, is almost always the better course. 

As for "plunge(ing) the whole region into chaos" this is not what our action would do. It is our non-action that is doing this. Our non-action is destabilizing Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, and possibly others. Both Turkey and Jordan have been begging us to help.

This argument is essentially one to be left to the Right. Laissez-faire is an argument that should be left to the proponents of the Right. Pacifism sounds good. But is has never worked. Isolationism has its appeal, but it too has never worked.

I continue to invite comments, questions, or corrections, and will respond to them. I will distribute such exchanges with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.

America’s Place in the World

As some of you may have noticed, (I fear that most did not even notice) I discontinued my blog postings following my post of "The Silence is Deafening" when that post did not end that silence.

I have no desire or intention to discontinue that self-imposed exile, since my efforts continue to be unrewarding.

However, when I have an exchange on a topic of interest with a friend and the work of writing is already largely done, I intent to post for whatever readership may still remain. And so my exchange follows.

Eric Offner of Manhasset Hills, NY sent me two e-mails that I quote below:

Sorry about your blog when you could analyze Obama's Tuesday speech and the horror of chemical warfare in Syria and US greatness. You could have explained ten million gallons of Agent Orange, which are killing people to this day. We can include napalm on list of chemicals; depleted uranium munitions can also be included. You know well that one needs clean hands to obtain equitable relief.

And then in a separate e-mail:

Common Dreams: "Halliburton Pleads Guilty to Destroying Evidence in Gulf Disaster." 

  

Another item for your blurb. 

$200,000 fine. 

I hope this encourages you to resume.

My response to Offner, who is a Holocaust survivor like me, but first fled to England and then to Brazil before coming to the United States, was:

Your comment makes no sense at all. To savage the country that gave you and me refuge is a travesty. You particularly had many choices. You could have made England your home, or Brazil. But you chose the U.S. There must have been a reason.

Ditto for my relatives who came to the United States after World War I and whose presence here saved my family and me. They chose the U.S. over all other countries, despite the fact that it always had a lot of warts, not the least of which was its racism and its anti-Semitism. After all this country was born in slavery and has never completely shed its past.

But like what Winston Churchill said about Democracy, i.e. "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried." can also be applied to nations, i.e. the U.S. is the worst country in the world until we look at the others, most particularly in foreign policy. 

You talk about this country’s sins in Vietnam! Have you looked at the atrocities committed by the French? I have been to Vietnam, they are bitterer about the French then about the Americans.

Btu whatever sins we committed more than a half century ago are rather irrelevant on the question of our role in preventing atrocities in todays world.

But if you want to go back in history, the most relevant period occurred almost four score years ago. As Hitler besieged Britain, threatened the whole world and slaughtered Jews, Gypsies, and countless others, FDR's desire to assist Britain with arms shipments were opposed by these same isolationist voices, who wanted us to turn inwards, who proclaimed that our racist policies at home gave us no warrant to criticize others and besides with unemployment at record highs we should worry about the home front. Roosevelt had to employ subterfuge in what he chose to call "lend/lease" to hide the fact that there was no loan and no lease. He was aiding Britain in its hour of need. It wasn't enough! Without our entry into the war before it was too late Hitler would still have prevailed, Russia's heroic defense notwithstanding. But American isolationism tied Roosevelt's hands, until Japan foolishly solved the problem for Roosevelt by attacking, followed shortly by a declaration of War by Germany and Italy. Even then there was little desire to aid the Jews. It was not our problem.

After the war we declared: "NEVER AGAIN". It was meant not just to apply to Jews, but to all atrocities against mankind. But the voices of nationalism, the voices that spoke of "National Interest" domino theories, and exit strategies, caused us to engage in all the wrong conflicts, including Vietnam. But even before Vietnam we foolishly arranged for the CIA to overthrow the Democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran, Mohammed Mosaddegh and installed the hated Shah; we overthrew the duly elected government of Chile in 1973 and since Vietnam, we foolishly intervened in Lebanon in 1982, invaded Grenada in 1983, and invaded Panama in 1989. 

But when the Rwandan genocide occurred, much to our shame, we sat on our hands while Tutsi's were slaughtered, but there was no national interest, just as there was no national interest in preventing the slaughter of Jews and Gypsies. Much to our credit, we intervened when the breakup of Yugoslavia led to slaughter in Bosnia and Kosovo. When Clinton with NATO decided on a bombing campaign that eventually led to a breakup of the country and the end of the slaughter, we heard "where is the exit strategy", where is the "National Interest." But it was our finest hour! No boots on the ground, no American casualties, but mission accomplished!! Not the phony "Mission Accomplished" of Bush after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Libya too, despite its warts, stopped the slaughter and belongs in the success column.

Obama is up in arms about the use of chemical weapons in Syria. He is right to be up in arms, because better late than never. But where were we when Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against the Kurds in his own country. Where were we when Saddam used chemical weapons in his war against Iran? Where were we when Hafez al-Assad, the father of Bashar al-Assad, massacred 20,000 of his own people in Hama in 1982? To quote from The Guardian, "The 1982 massacre is regarded as the single bloodiest assault by an Arab ruler against his own people in modern times and remains a pivotal event in Syrian history."

We are told that Syria is a civil war that we should not get caught up in. But so was Spain a Civil War in the 1930's. Had we taken sides there or when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia, or when Hitler occupied the Rhineland, the whole history of the Holocaust and WWII might never have happened.

But is it a Civil War? Have we forgotten its beginnings? How people peacefully demonstrated, and Bashar al Assad mowed them down just like his father did 30 years ago. We fight the wrong wars and then use that as an excuse not to fight the right ones. Bush I was right to fight Iraq for invading a peaceful neighboring country. Clinton was right to enforce a no-fly zone over Iraq and sanction them for their treatment of the Kurds. Bush II and the Congress were even right when they decided that unless Saddam gave up weapons of mass destruction we would do it for him. And the build up of weapons was successful in forcing Saddam to let the inspectors in. But when the UN inspectors found that there were no such weapons the raison d'être was gone, but Bush didn't care. He wanted the war, and all else was pretense.

And so because we fought a wrong war, nobody wants to help a people being slaughtered. When the Left and the Right agree something is wrong. Syria is not a civil war. It is a revolution. Our failure to arm the secular revolutionaries has empowered and strengthened the fanatics. Arming the rebels and enforcing a no fly zone was and is the right thing to do.

It is late, but not too late.

Why should the U.S. be the policeman of the world? Because we can and no one else can. The world desperately needs a policeman.

As for your comment about laches, you well know that laches applies to a party seeking relief. The U.S. is not seeking any relief from any judicial body or from anyone.

Even though I have discontinued my commentaries, Comments, questions, or corrections, are welcome and will be responded to and distributed with attribution, unless the writer requests that he/she not be identified.