I’ve always found the issue of American intervention abroad to be sadly amusing. Whether delivering aid to a Japanese scene of natural disaster, messing the shit out of some Iraqi dictator, building schools and bridges in Afghanistan or clearing the skies over Libya, there’s nary a spot on God’s good, green Earth un-meddled with by—what I call—the American Swiss Army Knife of Global Justice.
American Swiss army knife of global justice
I’ve always found the issue of American intervention abroad to be sadly amusing. Whether delivering aid to a Japanese scene of natural disaster, messing the shit out of some Iraqi dictator, building schools and bridges in Afghanistan or clearing the skies over Libya, there’s nary a spot on God’s good, green Earth un-meddled with by—what I call—the American Swiss Army Knife of Global Justice.
And why not? Who else is ready to pick up the slack? The Russians won’t do it, the Chinese shouldn’t do it and Western Europe can’t do it. Who else will deliver aid supplies to tsunami ravaged nation, by way of its fleet of aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships? Who else will spend billions (arguably, trillions) ordering its military manpower to build bridges in third-world countries dominated by drug cartels and terrorist warlords?
It’s got to be America. No other country has the money, the manpower and the priceless combination of bravery/stupidity/recklessness/moral-certitude to get the job done. Sometimes we screw it up. Sometimes we do it the hard way, instead of the smart way. Sometimes we end up hauling our heavy asses up the steep, muddy side of the mountain, failing to notice the escalator on the other side.
Regardless, no matter how you try to get around it, for the here and now, the world needs the United States.
In all our excursions into the outside world, for a long time, the big name was Vietnam. But that’s grandpa’s America. Our America, the one Green Day identified so poignantly back in 2004, is an America with one foot planted stubbornly in the sands of the Middle East. Whether that foot is a combat boot, set to stomp out the all the little ants, or a negotiable, hippie barefoot half-submerged in quicksand, is a question for wiser men than myself.
Admit it. That analogy gave you the chills.
The Arab world is in an uproar. Some say it’s all about money: “It’s the economy, stupid.” The people just want jobs. Some say it’s about democracy, or some higher call for individual liberty. Some people—most of whom could stand to look a little more closely—say it’s all about fundamentalist Islam and a scheme for radical takeover.
I’ll say this—I’ve yet to see an expert on the Middle East/Islam/Arabs who endorses the view that these protests and revolutions are primarily motivated by fundamentalist Islam.
Moving on. Do you really care about how badly a bunch of Egyptian college kids want jobs? Of course you don’t. You’ve got other pressing social issues to attach your collegiate passion to—such as gay rights, or Palestinian rights, or animal rights, or the far less-popular fungal rights. You don’t care about what’s going on over there, so long as we aren’t there too.
The question is: should we be there?
How involved should we be in the popular uprisings overtaking the Middle East? Should we be involved at all? What do we stand to gain? Are we jackasses for looking at a moral issue from the standpoint of what we stand to gain? Or are we idiots for looking at a geopolitical issue from the standpoint of how much good faith to distribute?
Should we be there for the sake of democracy? Most Arabs in the region would disagree on two points.
First, that we ever cared about the cultivation of democracy in the Arab world. After all, we encouraged the deposition of an anti-American despot (Libya) in the name of democracy, yet we coddle the pro-American despot (Saudi Arabi) in the name of… something or other (it starts with “o” and rhymes with “boil”).
Second, that we’re any good at establishing a democracy in the first place. Justified or not, most Arabs are not impressed with our track record in this field.
That doesn’t mean we should forsake the humanitarian cause entirely. It was nice of us to throw our hat into the ring in Libya, topical as our efforts might have been. It was nice of us to depose Saddam and establish a parliamentary republic in a former dictatorship. It was nice of us to offer hearty encouragement to the Egyptian protesters…after encouraging them first to work with Mr. Mubarak. Hey, it’s called diplomacy.
Of course, any intervention into Middle Eastern affairs has, and always will, be met with cries of “imperialism.” I’ll save the historical irony of the Muslim world deriding any group of people, other than the British, for being colonialists or exploitative empire-builders for another day.
Likewise, the pegging of the United States as an imperialist power, especially as it relates to the Middle East, when America remains one of the only Western powers to never conquer/colonize an inch of Muslim territory (save for an embassy) is absurd.
It needed to be said, but that’s getting away from the point. There’s a strong argument to be made for either side.
It is a good thing for the United States to intervene in the event of humanitarian crisis. And it is good for us to temper such aims with a constant mindset of we-better-get-something-out-of-it-too.
The problem is when the investment, noble as it may be, outweighs the benefit. Unfortunately, lofty goals and rosy projections are an issue of both the Bush and Obama administrations and, honestly, politicians in general. How much more of it our economy can take, I don’t know. How much more the American people can stomach, I’m not sure.
But—and here’s my lofty projection—if the revolutions overtaking the Middle East carry as much substance as we’ve been led to believe, some day soon, this debate may not even be relevant.
Wouldn’t that be nice? ?
