It’s about time, Part II
I received this e-mail yesterday:
Nick, You say its time to send troops to the Sudan. There are plenty of recruitment offices in every location. They will be happy to have you sign on the bottom line. In fact, this would help one of the poor disadvantaged inner city young men stay home. Especially since he did not have your advantage of parents who paid for all your schooling. It would then appear that you had learned what is meant by the term hypocrisy. The old professor, San Luis Obispo</blockquote>Wow, OK. First things first: I have paid for all my schooling. My first repayment of the nearly $23,000 loan begins next month, actually. I’m proud of the fact that I worked to pay the bills while in school (for the last two years of it, anyway). And while I wouldn’t say I never got help from my parents, it simply isn’t true to assert that I had some sort of ultra comfy, silver-spoon college experience.
Secondly, I am in no way apologetic about feeling like something should be done about the Darfur sitation. And, given our country’s system of a volunteer military, it is not strictly hypocritical to support a deployment of troops without at the same time asking to be one of them myself. This, after all, is a political issue. There have been plenty of military actions I’ve disagreed with recently which have required U.S. troops, including a recent one involving just over 1000 of them. Perhaps you heard about it? I think I have enough dove credits saved up to ask for this and not feel like I’m being unreasonable.
(Incidentally, thank you for giving me a reason to figure that out for myself. That feeling of hypocrisy I alluded to earlier seemes to have vanished.)
Thirdly, if the e-mailer had been listening to the news, they would be aware that the African Union has already deployed some troops to the area. I think an African solution to an African problem is great, and I totally support it. In fact, I support whatever will allow over one million people to return to their homes. If that means Western troops with blue helmets, so be it. If that means troops from neighboring countries, so much the better.
And lastly, who the hell are you?
stephen Said,
September 16, 2004 @ 19:56
You’re correct that the hypocrisy charge is counted by the volunteer status of American soldiers. However, I think this has (rightfully) been challenged, both in terms of “backdoor drafts” (e.g. sending National Guard to Iraq) and in terms of economic pressures. In medicine and research, we are asked to consider the inelastic demand for money: hunger is coercive. Given the employment situation, and the welfare situation, it may be that some people in the military aren’t there because they decided freely, but because they needed to get food on their tables somehow.
Of course, with that said, I basically agree with you: The Darfur crisis calls much more clearly for military intervention than the ongoing war in Iraq. “You break it, you buy it.” Way to (un)balance the budget, George.
I think we’re generally agreed in support of multinational peacekeeping missions. We’re currently in pretty dire straights, though. We have serious commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we’re badly underpreapared for operations that don’t involve blowing shit up.
This is why we need more troops on the group, and much better training for peacekeeping missions: it’s clear from the insurgency in Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s clear from the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. Hawks, isolationists, and pacifists should cede the point: we are insufficiently prepared to maintain order in these countries, and this would have been true whether we warred at whim, by necessity, in self-defense, or at humanitarian imperative.