Well, this little opinion is a day late, but I feel like I should write it down anyway. For those of you who care (and I believe that all of you should), yesterday, April 21, was Holocaust Remembrance Day. I don't know if my just mentioning this makes any difference at all, but it is really important that we keep this tragedy alive so that we can prevent anything like it from ever happening again.
And if you do not believe that it is possible for an evil like this to rise again, then you do not know human nature, or you consistently seek to deny it. Scapegoating is commonplace on the left and right politically, no one will ever blame themselves for their own inadequacies (GE), and so it is entirely possible that this level of crime against humanity could occur again.
I don't know who it might be against, but it has happened many times since the Holocaust, and it seems like we never learn. From Pol Pot, to Stalin's and Lenin's purges, to Sadam Hussein's near eradicationof the Kurds, to human rights abuses in Cuba, Afghanistan, Somalia, Bosnia, China, and all over the world. Yes we even have some here in America (but I believe that they pale in comparison to the rest of the world, and we work to try and stop them at home and abroad). This is one of the many reasons I bristle at people when they say that America acts too much the cop in the world and should mind its own business. There is a lot of evidence that America knew about much of the Holocaust before we went to war with Germany; we even denied entry into America to many Jewish refugees.
Had we "played the cop" a bit earlier, we might have spared the world a great part of one of the most monstrous evils ever committed, but we didn't. I think that human rights abuses do require us to take action - the more action we take, the less likely others are to follow suit with more abuses. All it takes is a few actions that show that we do not tolerate evil lightly, and others may start to fall into line because of fear of being acted against. This is why I will sometimes favor unilateral actions - if you know that something is wrong, should you wait for the rest of the world to get with the program, or should you do something about it when action is demanded.
I don't know if many of you remember the incident in the early eighties (I believe) where a woman was raped and killed in a courtyard where many people watched from their apartments above. No one took action, not even to call the police. All of them felt like someone else would do something. The same thing happens on the world stage, and millions of lives are crushed as a result. Sometimes we have to recognize that we have a duty to act.
I know that this seems like an extreme position, and many people might say, "How do you know that what you are doing is right?" This is a legitamite point, and can't be taken lightly - actions like these never can, but it is far better to take some risks than to risk consistent and depraved abuses against human rights. Others will say, "Who are we to act, when we have done so much wrong ourselves?" This is sophistry - merely acknowledging you have done wrong does not expiate your responsibility to act. If I admit to a mistake, and I know the mistake, that does not mean I cannot correct someone else. If we waited for perfection before tackling problems, no problems would ever get solved.
I know that I have wandered far afield, but I would like to conclude with this. There are very few Holocaust survivors left. We do not have much time to interact with firsthand observers of these atrocities. Help preserve their memories - if you know anyone, talk to them. This is not information that we can let die - trust me when I tell you that a firsthand source has much more power than you will ever encounter in a textbook. Every year there are fewer survivors around; soon there will be none, and we can't afford to let their experiences die with them. The phenomenon of Holocaust denial creeps a little closer with everyone who forgets; this view has an insidious way of worming its way into societies. 6 million Jews, 6 million other "undesirables" (including almost all European Gypsies) - people exterminated in the name of eugenics, "mercy killings", and other rationalizations; and we continue to give credence to those ideas, often dressed up or with substituted language to make them more palatable, but all coming down to that same reprehensible idea of "exterminating life not worthy of life".
Those are the words that I hear when I hear people making "quality of life" judgements on others, and I realize that we are closer to the brink than we might sometimes think. I hope that this is not too depressing, but just keep your eyes open and look around you, and be careful what you buy into - sometimes ideas can seem rational and reasonable but can actually contain a lot more...
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2 comments:
Absolutely no argument here...unless I play Devil's advocate re. how quickly, how "unilaterally", and how massively our military responses have been in situations when our economic interests are affected.
The lunatic finge would suggest that the US have done little in response to Chechyna, Darfur, Somalia, et.al relative to Iraq, Vietnam, etc, becuase, for the most part, US economic interests have not been impacted. But when you throw in the "Red Scare" and "Oil Interests", well, that has been an entirely different story, hasn't it?
Don't worry, I'm just channelling what I hear here at work.
I am not worried, and that is also why I said that our unilateral action has to be measured.
Of course we also protect our interests, but I would say that we do have interests in preventing problems in Chechnya, Darfur, and Somalia, but two of those three were under leadership in a democratic administration (Clinton), and his policies were more feelgood than anything else. Had he committed to the armored vehicle requests of the military, Black Hawk Down may never have happened, many warlords could be out of business, and Somalia could be in a rebuilding process now. He was too concerned with image and not enough with what was right, so there you go.
As far as economic interests we have very few in Iraq (though the French, Germans, and Russians did with Saddam - one of many reasons they opposed regime change).
Honestly, the best reason I see for taking out the Hussein Dynasty in Iraq is because we armed them so that we would not have to worry about Iran. When Saddam started using our weapons against his own people, we had a moral responsiblity to stop him.
On a personal level of morality - if your house is under seige from zombies and you have to give a rapist and murderer a gun so that all of you live, that is a reasonable thing to do. Once the zombie threat is neutralized, only a fool would let that criminal keep the gun. You would disarm him for your own safety and the safety of those he may encounter later. If he is unwilling to be disarmed, and you have to hurt or kill him in the process, then that is totally legitimate.
In case you hadn't noticed, I believe personal morality coincides with national morality in many ways - with the body politic being analogous to a person. This is not an absolute stricture, but it can be a guiding principle in the morality of nations.
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