A Yazidi man. (photo: AP)
10 August 14
hen
U.S. president Barack Obama began unilaterally bombing Islamist
militants in northern Iraq, some Americans and Europeans may have
thought he was doing the right thing to protect endangered Christians,
Kurds, and ancient Yazidis.
What will those folks think in the coming days or
weeks when Russian president Vladimir Putin unilaterally sends Russian
troops into eastern Ukraine on a “peacekeeping” mission to protect
pro-Russian dissidents from being wiped out by the oligarchs in Kiev and
their neo-Nazi henchmen?
Russian and American spin-masters will have no
difficulty differentiating their own “humanitarian” venture from the
imperialistic militarism of the other. But the similarities are
striking.
Obama chose to protect certain endangered Iraqis at
the very moment he was sending arms and intelligence to help the
Israelis decimate the Palestinians in Gaza, while Putin will be
defending his own kind – Russians and pro-Russians – from some other
kind who happen to be Ukrainians. Humanitarian? Hardly.
Obama is also acting without clear legal authorization
by the United Nations, much as George W. Bush did earlier in Iraq, as
Clinton did in the former Yugoslavia, as George H.W. Bush did in Kuwait,
and as Putin did in his “peacekeeping” defense of Abkhazia and Ossetia
against the Georgians in 2008. An international rule of law? Horse
feathers!
Far worse, we see the same old question that usually
goes unasked at the beginning of any military action, no matter how
humanitarian its proponents try to make their war sound. How are we
going to get out of what we have now gotten into?
In the Ukraine, the answer will likely depend on
whether German chancellor Angela Merkel can impose the deal her advisors
have already leaked. Pushing the deal through will not be easy, given
Ukraine’s long simmering nationalism, the new nationalism in Russia, and
the continuing eagerness of the United States, Britain, Poland, Sweden,
and others to expand the EU and newly rejuvenated NATO as far into
Eurasia as they can.
In Iraq, the problem could prove even more
intractable. Against a militant and militarily skilled movement like the
Islamic State, or ISIS, how does Washington continue to protect the
Kurds, Christians, and Yazidis? The U.S. has already increased its
arming of the Kurdish peshmerga and enlarged the role of American
Special Forces on the ground. Whatever Obama’s most heartfelt
motivations, what is he going to do when all this proves too little and
the government in Baghdad proves no less corrupt and no more able to
unite the country than it has been since the Americans and their allies
marched into Baghdad in 2003? What choice will he see as worse – a
humiliating defeat or a renewed ground war in Iraq?
The best answer, of course, is never to have gone into
the country in the first place. But that only works for winning an
argument. It does nothing to solve the problem. In fact, if Obama
insists on continuing the bombing, he should be forced to call Congress
back into session for a full-scale public debate. Do we want to limit
ourselves to humanitarian aid and lose small now with all the death and
destruction that would entail? Or, do we want to risk losing big later
with far greater death and destruction?
Better yet, let us consider a modest proposal. Now is
precisely the moment to make peace with Iraq’s Iranian neighbor and with
the Russians, and work with them and the other nations of the world to
rebuild an international system that can deal with humanitarian crises
without making them an adjunct to imperial adventure. I’m not the least
bit optimistic, but isn’t it well past time for global leaders to begin
acting like grown-ups?
A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and
the New Left monthly Ramparts, Steve Weissman lived for many years in
London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. He now
lives and works in France, where he is researching a new book, "Big
Money and the Corporate State: How Global Banks, Corporations, and
Speculators Rule and How to Nonviolently Break Their Hold."
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