Killing me softly
Young people are sometimes thought of as pacifists – that is, people who are principally against the use of wars or violence. However, our data show that, when they find the pretext suitable, these young people, age 18-29, are more likely to advocate the use of force than are older adults.
For example, in a Zogby Interactive survey last summer, data show that, of all age-groups, First Globals are the most likely to say that the U.S. has an obligation to intervene militarily in foreign countries to protect basic human rights, with 49% expressing this view and 31% disagreeing. For comparison, just 29% of those over 65 endorse this view and 51% disagree with it.
Defenders of this view usually argue that there are some violations of human rights that are so clear-cut and egregious that they demand that national sovereignty be violated for the greater good. Others believe that simplistic narratives of good vs. evil are likely to be manufactured by warring factions in order to have major powers intervene on their behalf. In your view, were there any justified military humanitarian interventions in the past few decades? If so, what were they?
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This is a good example of the foolishness of the youth. Just feed them some idealistic BS and they will be happy to swallow it.
“In your view, were there any justified military humanitarian interventions in the past few decades? If so, what were they?”
no, there were no such interventions, though intervention in bosnia and kosovo serve as examples in the imagination of many. in reality, rather then protecting such abstractions as “human rights”, the US simply sided with assorted factions and helped them achieve their military goals. and now we are involved in the balkans for no clear reason. it’s funny how angry liberals are about iraq, yet how happy they are with the mess that clinton created.
@Cata
Quite right. I’ve been involved in a few of these so-called “peacekeeping” or “peacemaking” humanitarian operations. In the end, while the military does bring certain capabilities to humanitarian operations — primarily the ability to move a lot of stuff quickly and protection for the governmental and nongovernmental organizations that should be doing the humanitarian missions — in the end militaries are manned, trained, and equipped to fight wars.
Politicians who’ve read Clausewitz’s “On War” no further than the part that talks about war being, “…merely a continuation of politics by other means,” need to be far more judicious when deciding to involve the U.S. military in humanitarian operations. They need to try harder at the diplomatic approach before resorting to armed excursions into countries or parts of countries that hold little or no strategic significance to the U.S. Solely one guy’s opinion and definitely not the position of the U.S. government.
I think I have been a very long time “First Global” even though I am a good deal older than they are.
I have had several friends who came to the United States for their university education, and they have a rather different perspective on the entire idea of spreading American type government around the world. Some, from nations in Africa simply stated “First my people want food, and then they will worry about voting after they have had three square meals a day”.
The “First Global” generation is basically a post-cold war generation, and attempts to diffentiate between socialism and capitalism tend to fall on deaf ears.
I feel that the ideas of “self determination” that were popularized after WWII really had less to do with real self determination, and more to do with the western ideas of self determination, which was simply the idea of changing other countries to suit western ideals, rather than to allow them to really have a form of self determination that was more in keeping with their historical and cultural values. The term “Human Rights” itself can be subject to a rather wide degree of variation. In some places, property rights are considered a human right that trumps the right to adequate food, adequate housing, clean water, and access to basic health care. Thus even the term “Human Rights” can be subject to a good degree of abstraction, depending on who is discussing it.
My personal opinion rather falls along the line of the futurist and science fiction writer “Gene Roddenberry”. The “Prime Directive” of the Star Trek programs seems to me to be a good starting point for any future ideas about how the international community should make decisions.
Roddenberry himself based this idea on the Peace of Westphalia.
Basically the concept of the sovereignty of states,the legal equality of states, and non interference with the internal development of states is a fine place to start.
But to me this also means that no state of group of states should impose their own political ideals onto another state or group of states. They should be allowed to develop, internally, along political and economic lines that are determined by their past history and culture.
For all of the efforts to overthrow the Soviet Union, to all intents, the sort of governments that have come into existance in the ex-Soviet bloc do not even come close to resembling western style democracies.
What seems to be the case is that nations that had closer involvement with the European Enlightenment, tend to be developing governments that more closely resemble the western concepts of democratic republics, and those that had little part in the enlightenment seem to have a rather difficult time moving in that direction. The idea that a relative “free market” capitalistic economy can only develop in a democratic republic seems to need revising when one considers the rise of market economies in places like The Peoples Republic of China and even India.
The idea that the young will “swallow” any idea that is fed to them leaves out the second part of the equation which is that some people who have grown older have completely swollowed and digested other b.s. and cling to it in spite of empirical evidence that the ideas which they cling to simply do not work. In many cases, they will still assert that their ideas and beliefs are correct, but they they did not work in “this particular instance because…(fill in your favorite excuse)”. The political and economic ideas of those who deem themselves mature are more often than not as incorrect as the idealism of those who are younger. They will more often than not cling to these ideas out of inflexibility, rather than any sense that what they beleive is in any way effectual at all.
Recently, I read an interesting book about the Hague Trials written by Slavenka Drakulic, called “They Would Never Hurt a Fly”. A quote by Hannah Arendt is on the inside cover, and this quote indicates something about people who have created such a dichotomy between their private life and their public life, their family life and their careers, that they can justify almost any action, from warfare to ethnic cleansing, because it is simply part of their jobs, and not because of some natural inclination on their part.
The flip side of this argument is usually that there is some attempt to define such behavior as monsterous, rather than simply a part of human nature that anyone is capable of. When one takes the stance that depending on conditions, anyone may be capable of terrible actions, which are usually then justified by abstractions.
Sometimes liberty or democracy, or patriotism or nationalism become those justifications. Usually in world capitals. Often in a single world capital.
that book is misleading psychobabble that takes the west’s version of the war (in which it fully participated) as well as the role of the court in hague for granted.
Free market is not the same as capitalism. Moreover, your examples are not “free market” economies. For example, China slaps a “We Love the Free Market” bumper sticker on its less-controlled, but still state controlled, socialist market economy and calls it “free market.”
Maybe some young people, the ones who think hot dogs are born in plastic wrappers, think war is like computer games – no one actually gets hurt.