Chaos is the default position of mankind. If we head toward the sound of it everywhere we hear it then we will be too winded to fight when it really counts....First this, via Wikipedia...
The Responsibility to Protect (R2P or RtoP) is an emerging norm that sovereignty is not a right, but that states must protect their populations from mass atrocity crimes—namely genocide,crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing.[1][2][3]Understand that your current Ambassador to the UN, and National Security Advisor are both proponents of R2P.
Now check out this news, via the Wall Street Journal...
President Barack Obama authorized targeted airstrikes and emergency assistance missions in northern Iraq, saying Thursday the U.S. must act to protect American personnel and prevent a humanitarian catastrophe in the face of advances by violent Islamist militants.Excuse me but the world has been, is and apparently always will be chaotic with people being threatened, killed, raped, tortured and displaced....with states not acting to protect their populations.
Why act to protect an obscure people but ignoring the slaughter of Christians in the same land?
Why the lie about protecting US personnel?
Why the rush to involve ourselves in another tribal conflict between warring religious factions?
Once again American blood and treasure is being used up in a fruitless conflict with poorly defined goals, to save people that quite honestly just aren't worth the effort. It is past time to take the training wheels off the entire world and to tell them that we have our own problems. Help yourselves or die.
The R2P concept is tailor made for continuous war...its PNAC just dressed up and refined to appeal to progressives.
Speaking of responsibility to protect... Did anyone see this?
ReplyDeletehttp://news.usni.org/2014/08/07/u-s-cruiser-returns-black-sea-promote-peace-stability
Yea, it has been there a few times, last time came in package with Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel
Deleteyeah, i can't get too excited by a cruiser that is only a PR mission and can't do a thing to affect issues on land. the crew is probably getting good experience but i think thats about it.
DeleteYou can call it PR. The ship is there because it's doing ELINT work. It's sniffing the air. The ship's probably got an augmented crew of Navy intel people.
Deletethey can get better work done by sending a sub into the area or even better by sending an Air Force ELINT airplane over there. hell, it would even be better to use a British or German bird to do the job. the ship is nice, the crew is doing there jobs but lets not make it more than what it is.
DeleteSol,
DeleteForgive me but I will disagree about sending a sub and/or an dedicated ELINT bird like Joint Rivet.
Permit me to start with the easiest: Joint Rivet. The major flaw with Joint Rivet is loiter time. Another thing, when you're in a very confined space (like the Black Sea) and all the sides are filled with SAMs, you don't want to give Putin a stupid excuse of "Ooops. Sorry we shot down your Joint Rivet. We thought it was another airplane." Remember the USS Pueblo? For those who forgot/don't remember (not you, Sol) Pueblo was in international waters when NK forcefully boarded the Intel ship and took the crews as "hostage" for almost 12 months. It was a humiliating affair for the US Navy. (Humiliating because no one sent help while the ship was under attack.)
Next, a sub. Same thing, Black Sea is a very confined space. One ingress route and one egress route. No sub driver is insane enough to venture there. Plus, Navy Ops would not want to risk a crowning jewel, in form of a multi-billion dollar sub, to run the risk of running aground while running away from a dedicated Soviet Navy's ASW force in the region. I remembered seeing a document about the shallow depth in that area and very limited area for a sub to hide. France and Italy both have ELINT ships that left after the 21 days as part of the Montreaux agreement. So now it's the US' turn to send in something.
An old cruiser (even though it's a Tico) foots the bill. Big enough to house ample weapon system. Big enough for an augmented crew of ELINT, SIGINT specialist. Take note I didn't say, "big enough to fight it's way out".
Sorry, Sol. My opinion. Not intended to "rock the boat".
How is it decided and who decides what is to be protected. What are the criteria? If we establish a set of criteria, does that mean we will be sending our people all over the damn place.
ReplyDeleteThis is just too open-ended.
I agree with you that this is just PR window dressing otherwise we would be committed to ignore sovereignty in any nation that had a mistreated minority.
exactly. this is a recipe for ongoing conflict for stupid reasons...or worse...heartfelt instead of US interest reasons. personally this R2P concept disgusts me.
DeleteI'm admittedly torn by this on one hand, I completely agree and am more than willing to let adult males slaughter each other for tribal reasons. Once you put kids into play (as is happening now), I tend to feel differently, I still think it's a bad idea in my gut.
ReplyDeleteThat said, what is worse? Do nothing and let genocide happen (in regards to the christian population in Northern Iraq and Syria) or intervene? Neither one is a good option, intervening sucks because as you have said, it opens us up for indefinite conflict which at this point is completely fiscally irresponsible, but not intervening means we are ok with women and children being slaughtered (silence is consent).
Let's not get carried away by R2P. First of all, it's not new, it's been around and promoted since early 2000 and was actually launched as an idea by the Canadians to put them back into play at a more prominent international level. then 9/11 came around and the whole thing was forgotten because of the war on terror. Now that that page is being turned, R2P comes back again, first in Libya, then in Syria. Tomorrow maybe somewhere else.
ReplyDeleteFrom an legal point of view (international and UN law), it has to be said that R2P is a concept that embraces not just military aspect (intervention from outside) but also the responsibility of States to protect their own population against threats such as genocide, massacre, etc. As or the means to achieve this, R2P focuses not just on military but first and foremost on political, economic and diplomatic tools.
What has happened in the real world, is that R2P is now bineg used as an alibi everytime we want to get a job done on some regime we don't like. Invoke R2P, possibly after we've stirred up unrest and trouble (and caused a crack down on "peaceful demonstrators"), and push our agenda (by ours i mean the West in general, and the Us in particular) in the media and international community.
Basically it's just the concept of "humanitarian intervention" revisited, call it humanitarian intervention 2.0, if you will. The only difference being, to never let the UN be put in charge of the operation itself, because that would be even worse.
The experience we had with this humanitarian interventionism in the Clinton era should teach us better though ... The lessons of Somalia should not be forgotten, or we'll have to face further loss of life among armed forces members in conflicts that we shouldn't get entangled in.
My opinion: stay away from this f*ed up thing called "R2P" when it's not our business to get involved. As Solomon put it, sometimes you got to let the fire burn itself out ... May sound cynical but such is the world we're living in.
You're right. The humanitarian themes are just excuses used to justify whatever policy the Obama's puppeteers want to pursue. Arguing about whether R2P is 'correct' or not misses the point. The real motives (monetary policy, energy competition, make-work for the war industry) are always hidden behind humanitarian themes.
DeleteDon't argue the smokescreen, show people the real motives.