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It is one of the founding principles of our party, The Revolution, that the
United States should stop "policing" the world. As American bombs drop on
Belgrade (and Iraq), global disaster lurks, as much the result of our inane
policies as the actions of Milosevic's fascist goons. We are (sort of)
functioning as the global police force, and we're doing a bad job of it.
Of course, policing the world is rather the nice way of putting it. In
point of fact, America--as the worlds pre-eminent power--has not so much
policed the world as policed its own "interests." Three words: access to
oil. Our Iraq policy is about access to oil. Our "Yugoslavia" policy is
secondarily about access to oil. We are strengthening an alliance with
certain oil-rich Arab nations by defending Moslems against European
genocide, and we are keeping oil routes open. But primarily, our bumbling
into the Yugoslavia situation is about NATO. It's about the stability of
Europe. And it's about genocide, or at least mass slaughter, and how our
media brings it into our homes. To wit: genocide in the third world is not
ready for prime time. Our media doesn't give it much play, so we don't
think about it much. Genocide in Europe is prime time.
When this nation was founded, our forefathers warned against entanglement in
the affairs of the world. I'm not exactly playing that golden oldie. Hey.
It was the 18th century. They were riding around in horse-and-buggies.
There was no telegraph, no airplane, no Internet. The Hutus may have
slaughtered most of the Tutsis during the 18th Century. We don't know.
Surely, even pogroms in Eastern Europe went unnoticed. Ignorance may not be
bliss, but knowledge brings with it a painful complexity. The world is
small now. Simple isolationism won't do.
How should the United States, and the world, respond to cases of mass
slaughter, or the invasion of one nation by another? Just because the US
has neither the right nor the responsibility to be the global police force
doesn't mean that the world doesn't need one. The UN and the World Court
has failed miserably in this. NATO puts the bulk of the military burden and
privilege on the United States, and its use of force without the approval of
a world body is nearly as arrogant as the US acting unilaterally.
The situation in "Yugoslavia" should-- first and foremost-- lead to a
functional global police emergency intervention force. I know that many of
our militia-type and/or libertarian supporters are reaching for their
revolvers right about now, but let's employ a bit of that much-touted
reasoning. The operative word here is *emergency.* I'm not talking about
UN-base camps in Wyoming flying around in black helicopters trying to take
away your God-given right to eat steak, smoke ciggies, shoot small animals,
advocate heterosexuality, or engage in peculiar ethnic white rituals like
playing golf, or drinking beer and watching black men compete in sports on
television . I'm talking about a global force that can ONLY respond in
cases of mass slaughter and invasion. Perhaps it would require an 80% vote
of the nations making up that global body before police action was approved
(NO VETOES!) If, out of this nightmare farce in Yugoslavia, we can figure
out how to actually stop mass slaughter, we will at least have gained
something.
It's clear that dropping bombs isn't a good way to stop genocide. This
US-bred non-solution to
bad-behavior-by-people-who-aren't-necessarily-our-allies is the result of
three things:
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Budget. Financial interests coalesce around the enormous military
budget in a much more profound way around the building of bombs than around
the training of soldiers. Bomb building is, of course, an enormous
industry. Training soldiers is basically a loss leader. And training
special soldiers who are well-paid and prepared to sacrifice their lives is
such a big free market loser that it has more or less been abandoned.
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Political fear and opportunism. The American people overwhelmingly
don't care if we drop bombs on foreign countries, particularly if they're in
the third world. Just throw out a good explanation and before you know it,
the mainstream media won't even be covering it. On the other hand, if one of
our fighting men receives so much as an overly-painful noogie from the
"enemy," the President's poll ratings take a nosedive and he either has to
withdraw or nuke the perp and anybody else who happens to occupy the same
continent. This has lead to a global policing policy that relies on bombing
the bad guy's military basis, and the odd occassional civilian target, to
scare him and make him return to the bargaining table. This has been almost
as ineffective as it is immoral.
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The arrogance of technocracy. We've all come to believe that there are
desktop solutions available to us at the push of a button. Technocratic
thinking has dominated our military at least since we beat the nazis to the
nuke. The Albanians in "Yugoslavia" needed a rescue force, not bombs over
Belgrade, but what kind of help can you expect from a country where you
can't even get a live human on the telephone? If you'd like them to stop
dropping bombs on Belgrade and start dropping food on the refugee camps
please press 2 now.
Finally, aside from turning the global policing function over to the world
community, we need to have consistency in our foreign policy. If
slaughtering the Albanians is bad, starving the Iraqi's is probably pretty
bad too. Helping our friends in Turkey slaughter the Kurds--a situation
that's probably the equal of what's occurring in Kosovo right now--seems
mighty hypocritical. US-supported murder in Nigeria, Columbia and Mexico
should cease.
The US and NATO should stop the bombing. And having worsened the situation
for the victims of the fascist Milosevic, they now have a responsibility to
send in troops and food to feed and protect the Albanians. This is VERY
unfortunate and should never have happened. Meanwhile we in the US have a
responsibility to no longer accept a government that would make even a dog
want to vomit.
Also see The Revolution® Part 6 - Crass Analyses, Victory Over Horseshit! in 2000
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