the Iraq one

The United States Constitution is the oldest functioning constitution in the world. It is the founding document of the oldest functioning democracy in the world. It and the nation it helps define have been throughout history an inspiration to peoples around the world.

I come neither to praise nor to bury the US and its government, but rather to ask some tough questions. Tough for me to answer anyway.

As I previously blogged, the US Constitution is built on principles of protecting the weak from the abuse of power of the strong. The power of the executive itself is separated from the power of legislation, which itself is divided between the funding power of the masses (House taxation) and the policy power of the states (Senate advise and consent). Power thus distributed is harder to abuse. Further, protections against abuse of power are enforceable by an independent judiciary.

The people of the United States grow up believing this is right and good; that people must be protected from abuse of power by intrusive government. Even debates about the role of government in areas like abortion are framed in terms of protecting the the weak (poor women, helpless babies) from the powerful (state intervention, murder).

Leaving abortion aside (tempting though the digression is), here's where it starts to get problematic: We born in the USA are lucky. Our laws and the general cultural respect for those laws means that the abused can turn to the government for protection - from racism, sexism, ageism, violence, etc. But what about those living outside the USA? The journalist in China who is arrested for writing about a toxic spill? A dissident in Zimbabwe imprisoned for questioning policies that are starving the nation? Businessmen in Russia locked away for not supporting the government? Anyone criticizing the King of Morroco or the dictator of Turkmenistan? The women in Afghanistan who were terrorized for not wearing headscarves? The 800,000 Tutsis in Rwanda who were slaughtered? The people of Banda Aceh, devastated by the tsunami, denied aid due to the rebels in their midst?

I could obviously go on and on.

The question is, as people blessed by a system that uses the power of the government to protect the weak from abuse by the strong, what do we as a country owe to the abused around the world?

Notice what this question is not. It is not, "what do we do for the hungry of the world?" It is not, "what do we do for the poor of the world." While not simple questions (sending food to the hungry can destroy the markets for local farmers, fostering dependency on food aid), those complexities are technical, not moral. I'm interested in the moral complexity of achieving good Ends in situations with few if any good Means.

Firstly: most governments do not consider foreign policy to be an instrument of moral /ethical action. Foreign policy is politics on a larger stage, and like politics and sausage-making, it is generally ugly to watch. It is self-interested horse-trading.

The United States itself was generally isolationist up until the end of the second world war. After the first world war, (Democratic) president Woodrow Wilson suggested that maybe countries should sit down in a League of Nations to work out problems. The US public didn't support him though and the idea died. Only after a second war a couple decades later did the US come around to the idea that maybe to avoid future similar wars we needed to get involved in the rest of the world.

And here is the crux of the issue. What does it mean to be involved in the rest of the world? What should the rules be for the use of US power (diplomatic, economic, military) internationally?

I'm frustrated that few people, politicians or otherwise, seem able to articulate a foreign policy philosophy that acknowledges the inevitable tradeoffs in the world. They seem eager to point out the costs associated with the choices of their opponents, but no more.

Here are some policy options, the way our representatives *should* be explaining them.


Option #1. The USA is going to leave the rest of the world alone. We're bringing all our troops home. We're not even selling weapons to other countries. We'll still have lots of weapons, nuclear and otherwise, and if anyone attacks us we'll kill them. But if we mind our own business, few if any people will want to fight with us.

Of course, we'll have to live with the fact that China may take over Taiwan and restrict its freedoms, Russia's internal repression and hegemony over former Soviet republics will increase. Without our support, the pro-Western dictatorships in the middle east will fall to the militant Islamist movements (a la Iran) they have been funding, and at some point Iran then Syria will get nuclear weapons (probably from North Korea or Pakistan), increasing the likelihood of a war with Israel (started by terrorist group not directly attributable to any government). Meanwhile, genocides in future Bosnias and Sudans will be met with empty statements of outrage and dismay by governments (including ours) while people die. Political dissidents in repressive countries will rot in jail with no peep from us. Iraqs can invade Kuwaits, Indonesians can kill East Timorese, military juntas can overthrow Haitian governments. Talibans can blow up Buddha statues. Just leave us out of it.

If you want the dangerous people of the world to not want to harm you, then stop trying to coerce them to act differently.

Option 2. Actually I have about 15 more options, and I can't type that many. So let's go another direction...

I think we want our cake and want to eat it too. We want to go to the rest of the world, explain why something is the right, moral thing to do, and have the rest of the world say "well done, here's a check and some troops, let's go do some good."

And I think that never happens. Foreign policy is quid pro quo. Take the current conflict in the Darfur region of the Sudan. It's halfway to being another Rwanda. We've sat by for years watching the janjaweed militias slaughtering civilians. But the government is backing the militias, so they don't want the United Nations to come in. The United Nations doesn't want to be playing the role of the US in Iraq, so they say they want an invitation. The Sudan instead accepted African Union troops, ill equipped to stop anything. The UN says it will come in if asked by the African Union, knowing the African Union is composed of mostly dictators who don't want to set a precedent of allowing international intervention against a dictator.

So we sit by and watch as thousands of people die each month, as women living under siege wander out into the desert and are raped and have to return, day after day, to get food to survive.

My point is, in the world we live in, most countries consider that tragic, but say we live in a tragic world. One European diplomat said (off record) that the only reason anyone is talking about it is that the US is making a fuss about it, and that the US foreign policy is very naive and idealistic. The news analysis that followed that comment discussed the role of evangelical religion in US foreign policy. I was reminded of the role of the church in the abolitionist movement. There wasn't a lot of sympathy in the religious community for the economic need for slavery. It wasn't about practicality, it was about ideals.

Before the Iraq invasion, I agonized about the moral implications of the war. I still come back to the hard questions I could not answer then, and cannot answer now:

1) Are we morally obliged to intervene in some way when we observe "bad things" happening around us, assuming we have the ability to effectively intervene?

2) To what extent if any does the presence of a socially-constructed boundary (relationship, family, nation) that does not include us lessen any moral responsibility to take effective action? (Acknowledging that being on the other side of such a boundary often limits the effectiveness of such action.)

3) What moral value if any does ineffective action carry?

4) In the absence of economic and/or military pressure, can diplomatic pressure exist and if so can it be effective?

5) If moral obligations exist to take effective action where possible, and if economic or military pressure is a prerequisite for effective action, what are the moral implications of economic and military pressure? To the point, does the fact that the impact of military pressure (i.e. dropping a bomb) can be more precisely controlled than the impact of economic pressure (i.e. sanctions starving babies) mean that in some cases military pressure is the more moral course?

Monday-morning quarterbacking is easy. A lot of Democrats opposed the first Iraq war, but because we "won" it must have meant it was a good idea and those Democrats were wrong. Now we're in a war that we are in danger of "losing" and thus it was a bad idea.

I'm not saying it was a good idea. I'm saying that the moral question of what action is right or wrong has little to do with success. If the invasion had included 300,000 more troops, and the Iraqi army had not been disbanded, if order had been maintained and a political settlement reached early that did not disenfranchise the Sunnis, if the weapons everyone thought were there (including the French and perhaps Hussien himself) were there, we might be sitting here today with a functioning democracy, a burnished US reputation with few soldiers on the ground in Iraq, etc. The fact that this did not happen is a testament to the incompetence of the administration, but says nothing to me about the moral content of the action.

It may be that, ethically speaking, we are not our brothers' keepers. It may be that we keep our families but not those of strangers. It may be that it is enough to acknowledge the injustice of the world as we watch it. Maybe simply acknowledging it can change it. Maybe if action is required, indirect starvation is less morally culpable than accidental shooting. Perhaps there are ways to impoverish the leaders without starving the masses. And maybe no military action that results in the harm, of a single innocent person can ever be the most effective solution to a problem.

Maybe the world is that simple. Sad, perhaps, but simple.

I suspect not. I look at our country. There are bad people out there. Parents who abuse their children. Criminals who steal and murder. And we avoid reenacting the wild west by investing the government with a (relative) monopoly on the use of force, because force is necessary to maintain order and safety.

There is no world government. Thus there is no global monopoly on the use of force. The United Nations is by far the best we have, but it may not be good enough. Power is apportioned based on the results of a war over 60 years ago. Countries vote based on realpolitik and not based on what's in the best interest of the world. This makes sense, as most people care about their families, then their towns, regions, and maybe their countries. That's about where it stops. There is little domestic constituency for sacrificing national interest for international benefit.

So what is my conclusion? I don't know. I guess I'd say let's not mix up the question of when it is right/smart to go to war, with what to do about the war we are now in. Trying to summarize/process/condense as I go, I'd say to those that opposed the war (and I consider myself partially in that category), was it wrong because the UN Security Council didn't approve (illegitimate), and/or wrong because it was poorly planned (incompetent), and/or wrong because it was preemptive? My objections, such as they were, were mainly on the last point, but even that was tricky. I don't think that is a moral/ethical objection, but rather a practical one. Preemptive action is dangerous in many ways, not least because you may guess wrong (as we did). So the bar should be much higher.

If preemptive military action was my main practical objection, my main moral quandry were the ones above, especially the question of the sanctions. I still have no doubt that Hussein wanted weapons (as many many leaders do), and that without sanctions he would have had them. So the options as I saw them were (a) let him have them, (b) let him starve his people, or (c) remove him from power and then let his people eat.

I realize that we let lots of other bad guys have weapons, and we let lots of people starve or worse. That doesn't change the moral question for me that will still exist next time a foreign government is doing something we find objectionable. Do we say "we can't really stop them" (as most European and other countries do), do we starve their people, or do we blow things up?

There are no good options. And yet choices must still be made. Clinton tried to build nations. He succeeded in Bosnia. He failed in Somalia. Bush mocked him, then ended up trying himself in Afghanistan and Iraq. Perhaps he was right the first time? Bush has most often been compared to Wilson, an idealist who didn't understand world politics. Wilson was a Democrat. Hillary Clinton supports the war. Kerry did then he didn't. Kennedy got us into Vietnam, and Nixon promised to get us out.

Maybe my point is that foreign policy is not a Democrat/Republican thing. It's a question of the relative appropriateness and effectiveness of morality and self-interest in dealing with other nations. And I would love to hear our leaders of both parties talk about that question honestly, rather than trying to score points at each others' expense.

Then there is still the little matter of what to do with the mess that the current administration has gotten us into.

I'm pretty disappointed in most Democrats' current approach to foreign policy. The Republicans are already paying a political price for their foreign policy, so they are forced to defend it and point out the trade-offs. And to be sure they are fear-mongering all they can.

The only Democrat I've heard articulate a coherent foreign policy is, interestingly, President Carter's National Security Advisor Zbignew Bryzinski. He said, in short, we should tell the Iraqi government to tell us to leave, then do it. The current government would fall, and the Ayatollahs there would take over, and yeah the women would all be back to wearing head scarves and we wouldn't have a Western-style democracy there, but in the long run they're gonna do what they're gonna do, and anybody that has anything to do with us will be viewed as a puppet government so we are wasting our time.

I don't know that I agree with him. But he acknowledges the trade-offs, and says what he is willing to sacrifice. Many of the current crop of Democrats seems to be saying, effectively, if we were in charge we'd bring the troops home and let the government collapse and that's okay because it wouldn't be our fault it would be Bush's fault. I think that makes Democrats look irresponsible in the public's eye.

Let's review the public mind:

1. If we have won, let's bring 'em home


2. If we have lost, let's bring 'em home


3. If we are winning, things should be getting better on the ground


4. If we are losing, let's change strategy

The Democrats are alternately arguing #2 and #4. Politically they are afraid to say we've already lost, since (a) that looks defeatist and (b) if it proves wrong it will look even worse. So they argue #4, but then don't propose any real changes to the strategy. This of course sounds like Johnson and Nixon with Vietnam, that is, wanting to leave but not wanting to lose. The public knows the Republicans want to fight to win, except those few that have very clearly said they want to leave. The public doesn't know if the Democrats think Iraq is still worth fighting for.

Hell, I don't know if Iraq is worth fighting for, but I expect my representative to have formed an opinion on the matter. At this stage, if I were a Democratic candidate, I'd be saying that Bush is clearly going to do what he wants to do, and we need divided government to ask the tough questions necessary to force needed changes to the policy. Then give Bush 2 years (since he'll take them anyway) to turn it around. By the 2008 election it should be clear if our presence is helping. And then we'll have an executive election about the conduct of the war.

That's the tip of my iceberg, anyway. What's yours?