Multilateralism at its worst
Reason #1819 why I'm not an isolationist.
Confronted with the murder of 50,000 in Sudan, we eschewed all that nasty old unilateralism, all that hegemonic, imperialist, go-it-alone, neocon, empire, coalition-of-the-coerced stuff. Our response to this crisis would be so exquisitely multilateral, meticulously consultative, collegially cooperative and ally-friendly that it would make John Kerry swoon and a million editorialists nod in sage approval.
And so we Americans mustered our outrage at the massacres in Darfur and went to the United Nations. And calls were issued and exhortations were made and platitudes spread like béarnaise. The great hum of diplomacy signaled that the global community was whirring into action. Meanwhile helicopter gunships were strafing children in Darfur.
1 Comments:
I don't really remember a whole lot of outrage mustering. Darfur has been for the most part roundly ignored by the media and by politicians. Now the same people who opposed going into Iraq would probably support going into Darfur. But there's a difference between using American blood and treasure (boy do I love the old timey grit of that phrase) to stop a very contained non-threat, and using it to stop a genocide. Last time things were as bad in Iraq as they are in Sudan, the US was selling them the weapons.
The world is too complex for any debate that the public will sit still for. The switcheroos between 90's and 00's foreign policy have been a little crazy, but my guess is that only about 1/3 of them have to be explained by blind partisanship rather than actual complex positions.
Post a Comment
<< Home