Peretz on Obama on Iraq

Martin Peretz finally grows disillusioned with Barack Obama, over the Senator's totally correct remarks here:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

''Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now -- where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife -- which we haven't done,'' Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

''We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven't done. Those of us who care about Darfur don't think it would be a good idea,'' he said.

Right. Just because there's a very bad situation someplace doesn't mean you take action to halt it whether or not that action will work, makes strategic sense, or is likely to improve the situation. Occupying Iraq isn't working, and can't be made to work; the fact that more tragic days are likely ahead for the Iraqi people is no reason to stubbornly continue a failed policy.

Comments

Maybe we should respond to the problem of Islamic terrorism by jailing Marty Peretz. It wouldn't work, of course, but we'd be doing something about terrorism, and that's important . . .

Posted by rea | July 20, 2007 11:54 AM

What's worse, this doesn't even consider the limited physical capacity of the US military. We don't really have 300,000 troops to deploy to the Congo.

Oy.

Posted by Nicholas Beaudrot | July 20, 2007 11:55 AM

In his post, Marty asks (not rhetorically, I don't think): "If you can't fight a war over genocide and to stop genocide, what would you fight a war over? Oil?"

That statement is almost literally unbelievable. The answer, if course, is that you would fight a war to fend off an attack by another nation on your own nation. I'm not opposed to military intervention in genocides (backed Kosovo et al), but why does the concept that warfare can be something other than an offensive tactic just totally evade some people?

Posted by Daniel Munz | July 20, 2007 11:57 AM

Finally.

Next step: Obama pledging not to employ Michael O'Hanlon in a future Obama Administration.

Posted by Jerry Medium | July 20, 2007 11:57 AM

well, it always sucks when you cite the Raving racist of Cambridge, but Obama has a really nice pushback to all the "Save Darfur" stuff coming from the right. Why Save Darfur, but no Save Congo? The killing of non-combatants along ethnic lines is a few orders of magnitude greater, and yet where is the Save Congo movement (beyond the usual committed and underfunded NGOs) to stop the killing?

Maybe if the Congolese claimed that the Hutu's were in fact proto-Islamists then Marty's Minions would be all up in arms?

Posted by mrs. ibrahim al-jafaari | July 20, 2007 11:58 AM

the best part of Peretz's post is his one-upping of Obama's support for capital punishment for Bin Laden. Peretz wants to kill him better.

Posted by MP | July 20, 2007 12:00 PM

Well, yes and no.

It's certainly true that US military is neither morally responsible nor physically capable of being the humanitarian police of the world, intervening every time an ethnic genocide occurs.

However, there's a crucial distinction between that and the moral culpability for causing a humanitarian crisis. In other words, if you break something you should fix it.

Now I don't believe we can fix it. I believe, in fact, that our presence is making things worse. Sop that's why we should leave. But make no mistake, we are responsible for the atrocities-non and in the future. And if we could have prevented the ethnic cleansing and civil war then it would be our moral obligation to do so because its our fault that it is happening.

Posted by Joseph | July 20, 2007 12:34 PM

The right, with a few isolated exceptions, doesn't really want to intervene in Sudan. They just want to be able somehow to say, if you are against the war in Iraq, the blood of innocent Sudanese is on your hands.

Posted by kth | July 20, 2007 12:50 PM

Of course we could prevent possible genocide in Iraq. We could, for example, put every single Iraqi in solitary. And we could do that: we have the resources. If we wanted to, if we decided on a WWII-scale effort, we could spend five trillion a year on Iraq.

But Obama, that selfish bastard, is saying that he doesn't want to - not at those prices, anyhow.

Posted by gcochran | July 20, 2007 12:53 PM

The 5-ton elephant in the room is that averting genocide in Iraq will most likely involve concessions to countries like Iran and Syria in brokering some kind of security/influence share in Iraq or a splintering of Iraq into three or more sovereign, somewhat monocultural fragments.

This is something the Bush Admonstruation will not do and something the Democrats will have to do badly in order to "save the face" of American Foreign policy. The best way to avert further spiraling downward in Iraq is an abject mea culpa and throwing ourselves on the mercy of the region and the more sympathetic naysayers from the EU-- not to mention those growling gorillas Russia and China. This kind of self-recrimination and multilateralism is the kind of ego-busting any mainstream US pol would be loath to do in fear of career suicide. Our global stock has not yet fallen far for us to admit the entire wrongheadedness of our foreign policy agenda over the last half-century towards the Middle East. So if it does drag on to a Dem administration, as it likely will, they will try half-measures and arrogant dignified retreats and leave us with at best a mild genocidal civil war and at worst WWIII. Good on, Bushies. I would say you fuckers couldn't get laid in a whorehouse, but we all know that's not true.

Posted by Gregorio | July 20, 2007 12:56 PM

that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there

This is how the AP describes Obama's remarks, but I don't think their quotes him from him support it. It's only a few quotes, so it's hard to know exactly what he said, but it seems like the more charitable (and likely just as accurate) interpretation is that preventing genocide would be a good enough reason to stay in Iraq if we had a good way to achieve that goal. Without that, saying we need to stay in Iraq because we want to prevent genocide is just self-serving nonsense.

Posted by washerdreyer | July 20, 2007 2:01 PM

Agreed-- this is spin of the most pernicious kind. Soberly charactertizing Obama's remarks as minimizing genocide when in fact they merely highlight US culpability if genocide results and point to contemporary instances of US blind-eye. A better headline would be "Obama says US military will do more harm than good in Iraq."

Posted by Gregorio | July 20, 2007 2:41 PM

Even worse than the title is the first sentence of the AP article.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

There's a large gap between the view that a ground incursion into the Congo and Sudan is infeasible and that the U.S. "cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems."

Posted by mhp | July 20, 2007 2:53 PM

Something has puzzled me for a little while about these humanitarian conflicts. Why does the US have to go and do it themselves? I mean if there is an agressor and there is a victim why not arm the victim and allow them to defend themselves. In the case of Bosnia, instead of using the USAF, America could have armed and trained better Bosnian ground forces. Why isn't this being done with the Darfur refugees in Chad? You want to help then let them defend themselves.

Posted by Northern Observer | July 20, 2007 3:19 PM

Of course we could prevent possible genocide in Iraq. We could, for example, put every single Iraqi in solitary. And we could do that: we have the resources. If we wanted to, if we decided on a WWII-scale effort, we could spend five trillion a year on Iraq.

Is that a joke or not? Because yeah, that's true. The idea of turning what's left of Iraq into an archepelago of ethnic/confessional concentration camps in the name of "humanitarianism" is ironic and could be witty but what we've already done in the name of "helping Iraqis" has rendered me incapable of accurately seperating snark from inhuman stupidity and cruelty.

Posted by Ed Marshall | July 21, 2007 12:22 AM