Problems With Power, Part I
Following up on Richard’s critique of Samantha Power, I had a few thoughts on Power’s proposal that the United States ought to have intervened to halt the Armenian genocide. Besides the logistical difficulties this would have entailed (consider how long it took us to deploy our soldiers to France when we were actually at war), it seems that Power gave no thought to the political impossibility of Wilson sending Americans to the Near East in 1915, a year before he won re-election because “he kept us out of war.” She might as well say that Cleveland should have repelled the British invasion of the Orange Free State, and while we’re indulging in ridiculous fantasies we can say that Lincoln, otherwise unoccupied, should have supported the Polish rebellion of 1863.
As someone who has had a good deal to say about the Armenian genocide and the importance of recognizing it for what it was, I find Power’s proposal typical of the sort of posturing one expects from “humanitarian” interventionists: even when there is no realistic chance of intervening in time to do any good, intervention is still imperative just because it is. Indeed, the only era in which her sort of immediate, reflexive meddling in other nations’ conflicts is even practicable is our own, when there is arguably the least justification legally and morally for such interventions. Why would this particular proposal be so misguided? Well, consider the reasons why the United States did not declare war on the Ottoman Empire: Americans had considerable property in the empire and there were a large number of American missionaries who would have been endangered by such a declaration. Remarkably, even Wilson could see that there was no immediate American interest in going to war with the Ottomans. In Power’s world, evidently none of that matters. Ironically, many of the witnesses of the genocide were those same missionaries who would have been imprisoned or expelled had America set out to intervene, making it that much easier for the CUP to obscure the reality of their crimes from the world. If Power’s wish could have come true, tens of thousands of Americans would have perished making some equally ill-fated Dardanelles-esque landing in an ultimately vain bid to stop a mass slaughter, most of which had been accomplished within a few months from its beginning in April 1915, and the American witnesses of the crime who relayed their reports to the rest of the world would have been in no position to verify the genocide of the Armenians. If intervention is plagued with so many difficulties in one of the most open-and-shut cases of genocide on record, how much less tenable is the idea of “humanitarian” intervention when the cases are much less clear?
Comments
We would all prefer a true realist, but we are faced with the choice of a emperiaist or an interventionist who does oppose the Iraq war. You have little choice but to vote for the latter.
And keep in mind that Powers is NOT the candidate, and she is not longer with the campaign.
Obama will have to limit his foreign adventures in the end, and they will cost only a small fraction of the Iraq war in lives and dollars.
And perhaps when the public sees how poorly these adventures go there will be support to cut back on even those.
, although
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You’re right--Power isn’t the candidate. The candidate is on record doing and saying things far worse than anything I can lay at Power’s door. There’s no question of my voting for Obama--that’s just not going to happen, I can tell you that right now. There are always alternatives to accepting a bad candidate on a single-issue basis.
I think a case can be made that a successful extrication from Iraq by Obama will open the floodgates for many more interventions, and costly ones at that. That is why Obama’s overall foreign policy view is so worrisome. If McCain keeps our forces in Iraq for his entire term, the extremely small consolation this offers is that his ability to start those additional wars he talks about will be severely limited. The main advantage in having Obama win is that the GOP would put up more of a fight against his worst policies at home, but would hamstring him every step of the way if he tries to follow through on getting out of Iraq. By the same token, a Democratic majority would resist new McCain wars with much greater enthusiasm than if Obama were the President, but would embrace the worst of his domestic agenda. Viewed this way, I can see an argument for voting tactically for Obama to forestall amnesty, but that is riskier, because the Democrats will almost certainly have increased majorities in both houses. If someone is tempted to vote for one of the awful major party candidates, I urge them to contemplate the consequences beyond the short term of 2009-10.
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