The international community flunked its first genocide prevention test in Rwanda. It failed again in Darfur. Now comes another chance at redemption — in Kenya, where, mercifully, there is still time and opportunity to keep one of the few peaceful, stable and prospering countries in Africa from jumpingover the precipice of ethnic warfare. It will require a swift and concerted effort to help the Kenyan people and institutions eager to save their own nation. It can still be done, but only if we learn the lessons of ethnic cleansings past: The longer the killing goes on, the harder it will be to stop the cycle of atrocities and revenge.
Re-colonize them.
It should not escape notice that the very people who will soon call for military intervention in Kenya think that the Iraq war should never have been, and that everyone would have been much better off if Saddam had remained in power. This apparent discontinuity is comprehensible once the underlying conception regarding the legitmate use of military power is understood. The Original Sin of the Iraq war is that it was initiated as an act of sovereign power, and not as an act of international law enforcement. There are many who wish to see failure in Iraq precisely for that reason – humanitarian consequences be damned. But the United States military does not exist to enforce civil rights in other countries. That never has been, is not now, and never should be its mission.
In my more cynical moments, I ponder how fitting it would be for the US should create an All-Volunteer International Intervention Force to perform missions such as will soon be recommended for Kenya. Founded in the spirit of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade that went forth to fight Franco, such a force could (I am certain) attract scores of volunteers; a truly progressive armed force of progressive volunteers that would leave behind the food co-op, pick up a rifle, and actually do something besides writing editorials urging that other peoples’ sons be put in the crosshairs to right the wrongs in the world.
The Ralph Nader Brigade – coming soon to a college campus near you. Yes, that will happen.
carl
#2
And as with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, it will be deployed on the wrong side.