If I hear "killing his own
people" one more time I'm going to scream. Who else, if you're an embattled ruler, are you going to kill? That's what all embattled rulers do. That's battle. Civil war. Find a civil war in which somebody isn't killing his own
people. In the latest New Yorker piece on Syria (8-27-12)
Assad has "bombed his own cities." Should he have bombed somebody else's cities? Should
Muammar Gadhafi have killed somebody else's people? The fact is, Gadhafi was killing people who took up arms
against him. Were they still his
people? They didn't want to
be. Who were his people?
"OK, but whoever they were,
did he have to kill them?"
Of course. They forced him to. Citizens who won't stop short in their
defiance of the government ("Give me liberty or give me death!")
force the government to kill them.
It's either that or turn the government over to them. How well the Chinese government knew that
at the time of Tiananmen Square.
"So Gadhafi's actions are
justified? As would be Bashar
al-Assad's and Saddam Hussein's?"
In what those autocrats share with
all rulers, yes, though I'd use the words "logical" and
"understandable."
They are exercising the "monopoly on violence" granted every
government by a horde of philosophers and acknowledged by our own president
(see YouTube clip www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3r0akZgvIA). The grant comes easily once you feel the pain of
the alternative, unrestrained private violence. "Will you unleash private contractors, like Blackwater,
in Iraq?", that was the question President Obama had to face. It's the same question rulers needing
to control warlords face, "Will you leash them?", where
"leash" requires killing and the answer, by the law of forced
response (above), has to be "Yes." Behind everything granted to Obama by fixed institutions and
long custom, what he is saying to Blackwater is what Mao Zedong said to the
warlords he took sovereignty from: If you kill I'll kill you.
"I see.
It's what Roman emperors said to all the nations they took dominion
over. "
Yes. You can't
have an empire if the parts war with each other. So you enforce peace and the bigger the empire the more
peace you have. Do it long enough
and your period gets a good name, like Pax Romana. Most peace, least killing. Because everybody knows that if they kill they'll get
killed.
"Kill. Kill. Why are you always talking about killing? There are so many other ways to get
control and have peace. And so
much more talk about them, so much diplomacy, so much done by negotiation and
compromise. You don't hear anybody
saying, 'Back off or I'll kill you.'"
No, that's ugly talk. We prefer nice talk. "Back off or I'll send a
peacekeeping force." That's
OK as long as we don't take nice for real. We did that in Lebanon and got our nice peacekeeping force
blown sky high by the ugly realists.
Might not have happened if we'd had somebody saying, "This force,
to get peace, will kill and get killed.
Fix on that word 'kill.' The reality. Kill, kill, kill."
"The Middle East autocrats
certainly don't need any instruction in that."
No, because they have been so
thoroughly taught by their past.
To win a contest for power you have to kill, kill, kill. That's the lesson of our past, too — up
to a certain point.
"Up to what point?"
The point where rulers had to take
into account the feelings of large numbers of their people. Rulers of democracies. People who had been affected by
Enlightened ideals, Christian revivals, Romantic illusions, who knows. In any case, humane feelings. Something that kept a ruler from saying
"kill, kill, kill" in front of his people. Probably have to fix that point of ruler-influence sometime
in the 18th century. About the
same time, I'd say, that people started to have guilty feelings about slavery.
"Interesting, but I don't see
what it has to do with the expression 'killing his own people'?"
Well, maybe not much, and
certainly not very directly, but it does have a connection. If you think you are different from
those who play the old power game, if you think you are more humane, more
enlightened, more Christian, you have lost your grip on reality — the grip your
own larger history could have given you. The only difference between you and the Middle Eastern (or
Asian or Balkan) ruler you face across the table is that you play the power
game more guiltily.
"Guilt? Where do you see that?"
In the reproach game, the natural
sequel to the humanitarian game.
"That candidate showed little feeling for those poor
victims." "This leader
tolerated torturers."
"That nation looked on as thousands died." "He kills his
own people. We Americans don't do
that."
No, we don't have to any
more. We won our Civil War a long
time ago.
Combined with your grand tour of the Balkans and its culture, this was one of your better posts recently.
ReplyDeleteI remain deeply concerned about the Arab Spring that we, in the west, so eagerly embraced as a rise of secular humanist democracy in the Near East.
In Egypt it has resulted in dire religious fundamentalists stripping power from the conservative, tame and western friendly military. Where as once the government spoke of new infrastructure and economic reforms now it speaks of a great martyrdom filled march upon Israel, bloody purges of Christians and its president dances to Hezbollah fighting songs on in his inauguration.
In Libya our coalition airpower and special forces operators ousted one tribal power group and replaced it with one that had been out of power for decades, but who was woefully unprepared for the burdens of leadership.
Democratic policies are non-existent, each region now ruled over by its own largely autonomous warlords. The only nation-wide power blocs being those of an especially radical Muslim Brotherhood. There are no friends of Gaddafi on this blog, but a little realpolitik was in order.
Tunisia, once a Cyprusian like blend of Near East and Western influences is now dominated by Ennahda, a Islamist party which dominates the electorate and has begun to rollback liberties enjoyed by women. Their first public stoning to death of a woman accused of adultery happened just last month.
Everywhere the Arab Spring, so oft celebrated, appears to have resulted in tame Western semi-vassal-states-by-another-name exploding into religiously motivated regimes with hardline views on Israel, the West in general and the USA in particular. Cultural freedoms are being purged as demonic influence.
Even in those few examples where a modicum of democracy was installed, like Iraq, all the people did was vote in the radicals in overwhelming numbers. Muqtada al-Sadr, et al.
We have destabilized a region we spent the past five decades taming.
Syria was one of our successes. A leader educated and fond of the west, who was in no way aggressive towards Israel, who supported our power projections into the region. Assad has spoken fondly of the American Mid-West, of cheeseburgers and mustard based BBQ, and who most importantly kept a firmly suppressive grip on any religious fundamentalists in his area. Only Jordan was more pro-western.
Now, the new rhetoric would have us demonize him, to cast him in the same vein as Saddam or Khomeini. I write no Apology for Assad or his regime. But realpolitik must prevail. Thus far I have seen no upside to our encouragement of this Arab Spring. The only place it seemed was a genuine secular, intellectual and pro-democratic movement was in Iran and we watched it be bloodily crushed (Where are you Persiankiwi? http://tinyurl.com/nuh6ag).
We are going to turn Syria into yet another Libya, Tunisia, or Egypt with potentially grim ramifications upon the stability of the region.
The Near East has always been a precarious powder-keg. Now we have both lit the match and continue to fan the flame.
Can I share your skepticism without going so far with your pessimism? I have the feeling we'll muddle through, as usual. We're a democracy, a raft which, as Mary Anne just reminded me, never sinks, though your feet are always wet.
ReplyDeleteWonderful details about Assad in the Midwest. Thanks.
Our democracy may be a raft, but in the Near-East it may be a bit more of a cork, where the theocratic and oligarchal forces are always bobbing above the water and everyone else is getting dunked.
ReplyDelete