In Space, Forced Conversion Is Exactly The Same As Ecumenism

[bellatrys]

I have to say, I am a little surprised at all the suggestions of the Vulcan non-interference proto-Prime-Directive being posited as examples of the Ming-the-Merciful "liberating" conquest of Earth with saucers and death-rays and giant robots and powered battle armor, moving into "Destroy the planet to save it" territory

Comments

[randwolf]

Cortez cried when he realized that the only way he would rule Mexico was by destroying Tenochtitlán, the most beautiful city he had ever seen. The Mexica would not surrender, because Cortez had already proven himself treacherous.

On the other hand, there are already 130,000 dead (estimated) in Myanmar, and 2.4 million in need of aid--if the government of Myanmar does not accept aid, there could easily be another 500,000 deaths. In this very extreme circumstance, I might support a carefully planned international military intervention; I would not support a Bush administration intervention, because the Bush administration has proven spectacularly incompetent at it, twice.

So who would you support in it?

[bellatrys]

Where will you find your army of angels, instead of your bunch of people who despise poor people for being poor and foreign people for being foreign and don't even realize that they do, because this is our culture bred in the bone? Where will you whistle up ten-thousand Romeo Dallaires, so as not to create another Amritsar, another massacre in Mogadishu, and hence the blowback that led to Blackhawk down, and further US scorn/hate/fear of those we were supposedly "helping"?

Abstraction is all very well, but we don't live in the world of the Platonic forms. (I leave aside the problems of how contemporary Myanmar is greatly the result of colonial British messes post-WWII and Western oil baronies perfectly happy to allow any tyranny so long as the barrels of oil/money keep rolling back and forth, because I am strapped for time.)

How will you not make things worse by sending in conquerers?

or, shorter P@L

[bellatrys]

Geez, you've only got three of the Horsemen, let's give you the Fourth to make it a complete set! How come you're not grateful?

Re: So who would you support in it?

[randwolf]

The UN, which is multicultural. That said, it's extremely unlikely that the UN will intervene militarily--China, Russia, and perhaps the USA would oppose it, or insist on running the operation to their taste. (Permanent members of the Security Council was a really dumb idea.) It would be hard, but it doesn't have to be conquest; UN peacekeepers have overseen elections before, and Myanmar even has a legitimately elected President, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who the junta is keeping under house arrest. One would have to weigh the strategic alternatives, but the truth of the matter is--and we all know it--that diplomacy has failed in Myanmar for decades and there are millions of lives at immediate risk.

The UN is not a nation (q.v. Slactivist on this as well)

[bellatrys]

It is many nations, which means you're just going to picking people from a country (could be ours, could be anyone's) to go and lord it over people from another country, whose self-interests and cultures are not theirs, no more than the interests and self-cultures of Somalia were ours - and who in fact may be old economic and political rivals if they're neighbors, meaning just more incentive for abuse; and if you've been following the feminist blogs this past year, or the BBC, you would be aware of some of the horrors inflicted by multicultural teams of UN peacekeepers on the people they've been "protecting." (There was also a scandal about UN peacekeepers who happened to be Canadian torturing some prisoners to death in iirc East Africa a few years ago, but I'm not at home and don't have my bookmarks.)

One would have to weigh the strategic alternatives, but the truth of the matter is--and we all know it--that diplomacy has failed in Myanmar for decades and there are millions of lives at immediate risk.Well, no duh, but that doesn't

Re: So who would you support in it?

[lyorn]

Classic paradox: Only one clever enough not to do it.

[fridgepunk]

So what you're saying is: ignore the will of the ideologically pacifist opposition government who won the last set of fair elections with an overwhelming majority, and invade, thus reulting in the loss of life of at least the people forcibly conscripted into the military by the junta, and probably leading to the mass loss of life from the usual hamfisted attempts by the airstrike happy western militaries to fight a "just" war.

Oh and remember that when the NLD run democratic government doesn't continue to give foreign businesses the same cushy deals* the myanmar junta did, it will probably find itself not actually in power anymore and another junta erected in its place.

Oh and China might invade the north like Turkey is doing in Iraq right now.

* "cushy deals" = slave labour and reduced prices for land deeds and supplies and support from the junta.

[randwolf]

Why does it have to be Western militaries? Why not a UN force? There are millions of lives at immediate risk. As I said, the alternatives would have to be weighed carefully, but I think it's at least possible that a military action might, if well planned and executed, save many lives. Besides, I see little political hope of a successful intervention of any sort, so I think you win the argument. Me, I'd like to save some lives instead.

The UN has no army, it is a collection of countries

[bellatrys]

and it's dominated by the ones with the most monetary and military power, namely, us, jostled by the other big countries with big militaries. Do you think the multinationals are going to allow the US to cede away their interests in the region? Or the US to give up its veto power? Almost sounds like you see the UN as having the sort of power that LaHaye and Jenkins imagine it to have!

Re: The UN has no army, it is a collection of countries

[randwolf]

I think a better parallel is with domestic abuse. Intervention is always problematic, even in a horrible situation, and sometimes nothing helps. But to do nothing is to align yourself with the abuser--at some point inaction upon the part of a bystander is enabling, and I think the world crossed that line years ago in Myanmar. (Politely worded requests do not count as "action"--the point where there is hope in diplomacy is long past.) We talk of protecting the culture of Myanmar, well, I don't believe that mass murder is a value of that culture. I also know that any military action will harm innocents; I still don't want to be complicit in mass murder.

BTW, I think you are unduly critical of the UN in general; their social service and science agencies, UNICEF, WHO, the WMO, and so on, do excellent work, despite the attitudes of the member countries. It is not a perfect organization, and it survives partly because the authoritarians think it is weak and so ignore it, but it is hopeful.

The problem is...

[deiseach]

... as you've mentioned, Myanmar already *has* a democratically-elected government.

How do you, after liberation, prevent another junta seizing power again? That's the tricky part. Either you have to have a - let's face it - occupying army in place to make sure there are no more attempted coups, or you declare victory (a la Afghanistan), pull out, and then the traditional warlords start doing what they've always done?

I have no solutions. I am not adverse to a peace-keeping force, but unfortunately, current U.N. peace-keeping forces seem to be moving towards more of a 'peace-making' (i.e. military intervention) model; currently Ireland has such a contingent in Chad, and there has been much debate and opposition expressed here at home about this.

This would have to be evaluated as part of strategic planning

[randwolf]

If there seems no realistic strategy for making a lasting peace, I would not support military intervention. Part of what has been done wrong in Afghanistan and Iraq (aside from the basic insanity of invading Iraq) is that there was no plan for making the peace work, after the invasion. After World War II there was a great effort made to rebuild the defeated powers, and reintegrate them into the world, and something like that would be required. Winning the battles is only the first step; afterwards a peace must be made.

Put simply, slapping a blue helmet on Charles Graner

[bellatrys]

doesn't magically turn him into a decent human being.

And the US is not the only producer of Charles Graners, nor has ever been.

(For one example, according to a Vietnamese-American friend of mine whose family fought on both sides in their Civil War in which we interfered, there were a lot of Vietnamese citizens during that time who felt that their sufferings in that war were karma for what they had done a generation earlier to Cambodia. IMHO karma doesn't work that way, given that it didn't spare Cambodia either, but that was how bad they had treated their neighbors, when they had the upper hand.)

[fridgepunk]

Military intervention wouldn't actually save lives much faster than a much more boring political solution that'd allow foreign aid workers to get into the country - the reason the aid isn't getting around to where its needed is because the junta is really incompetent, not because it's evil, and it's trying yo keep foreign aid groups from getting into the country because it feel insecure and threatened after the protests that went on a few week prior to the cyclone.

The UN also couldn't form a peace keeping force because only France, the UK and the US actually support the notion of direct military intervention - any military intervention would just be those three countries, with the rest of the UN objecting to it.

And I want to stress, again, that the true, majority elected government of the country is actively asking that people don't invade, and I don't know about you but when trying to help people I tend start by listening to what they want help with, rather than attempting to scan the aether and guess what they really truly need

oh, pshaw

[bellatrys]

you're not seriously suggesting that TEH NATIVEZ actually know better than Honky Saviors out playing Robin Hood, what will benefit them? Absurd!

[randwolf]

"the reason the aid isn't getting around to where its needed is because the junta is really incompetent, not because it's evil"

They are letting people die through what you believe is incompetence and insecurity. How is that not what you call "evil"? But I don't think it's true either; now that they know that military intervention is not in the offing, they are confiscating the food aid, harassing relief workers, and trying to extract as much money from the situation as they can. At this point, I regard hopes of reform as false. And, you know, the legitimate government can't publicly say anything else--if they did, they'd all be in jail, if not executed.