An op ed piece in today's New York Times by Robert Kaplan talks about a military invasion of Myanmar by the United States as a moral thing to do.
France's foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, has spoken of the possibility of an armed humanitarian intervention, and there is an increasing degree of chatter about the possibility of an American-led invasion of the Irrawaddy River Delta.
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It seems like a simple moral decision: help the survivors of the cyclone. But liberating Iraq from an Arab Stalin also seemed simple and moral. (And it might have been, had we planned for the aftermath.) Sending in marines and sailors is the easy part; but make no mistake, the very act of our invasion could land us with the responsibility for fixing Burma afterward.
Did you or anyone you know think in 2003 that it would be simple and moral to invade and occupy Iraq in order to free it from Saddam Hussein? At least in this part of the country those who agreed that we should invade Iraq did so because of assurances that Iraq posed an immediate threat to the United States. If the stated purpose and only rationale for the invasion of Iraq had been that to do so would be doing a favor for the Iraqi people I don't think there would be much support for it outside of Washington and the part of New York where the NYTimes is written.
Most people I know would never believe that an armed invasion and occupation of a country by foreign troops is ever anything but a disaster for the people being invaded and occupied. What is wrong with these people?
2 comments:
I have relatives who supported the invasion of Iraq primarily because they believed it would free the Iraqi people and bring democracy to them. These people do exist.
lyrl,
Do those people still believe that we did the Iraqi people a favor by invading and occupying them or have they started to sour on that idea?
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