This week Hannah Arendt’s notion of “past and future” has been revealed at DC. We have addressed a variety of different issues, trying to orient our future action, by thinking about our experiences. We have looked at the headlines, but also looked elsewhere and thought about different experiences to support the imagination.
I was particularly happy to receive Sergio Tavolaro’s post on President Obama’s visit to Brazil. Following cable news logic, it was a big mistake for the President to go to Brazil, given the pressing problems at home, centered on the impending budget crisis and the great debate about jobs and the deficit, and the military engagement in Libya and the growing uncertainties in North Africa and the Middle East. Yet beyond news sensation, there are important ongoing developments in the Americas, with very significant changes and challenges. Paying attention to Latin America, not only connected to drug and immigration issues, is a necessity especially when there are problems elsewhere.
Brazil is an emerging global power. Brazil and the United States have a long, sad history, marked by domination and political repression. As Brazil has emerged politically and economically, it often has defined its independence against the United States. Obama’s trip worked to change this. The highlight: the historic appreciation of the first African American President of the United States meeting the first woman President of Brazil. Tavolaro reports that there is a fascination with a shared progressive heritage, working against racism and sexism. And he notes that Obama embodied the declaration of equal partnership between nations: the President of the United States visited Brazil before he had an audience with the Brazilian leader in Washington, reversing the usual order. Using a sad past, the Brazilian population could and did imagine a hopeful future with the great American superpower to the north. This is important news for them and for us.
Karl Marx famously said “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.” Gary Alan Fine shows how sometimes it works the other way around. First the popular entertainment show, “Candid Camera,” and now the grave dangers of the politics of surveillance.
I believe there is a need to distinguish between the public and the private. I think that targeted revelations about hidden injustice is necessary, but generalized invasions of that which is private will have a long time effect of diminishing democratic capacity, as Daniel Dayan, Elzbieta Matynia and I have noted here, as we each reflected on the WikiLeaks controversies. The new form of simulated revelations is even more pernicious. It has been associated with the left, directed at Governor Scott, but especially by the right, directed at wonderful organizations such as ACORN, Planned Parenthood and NPR. I always find Fine provocative, but I often disagree with him. On this issue, in his linking between a happy past with a frightening future, I am in complete agreement.
Esther Kreider-Verhalle reminds us of the long term effects of Chernobyl as we are observing the horrors of natural disasters in Japan and the failing reactors of the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. It is a cautionary note, about future dangers, especially meaningful to me as I live less than twenty miles downstream from the Indian Point Energy Center.
And when I wrote about enhancing nature and mission creep, I also was positioning myself between past and future, trying to inspire thoughtfulness about not only the perils, but also the promise of our times. I often find strength, facing public and private challenges and difficulties, at my favorite retreat, the Rockefeller State Park. I thought about its special qualities to get me out of my latest funk, trying to absorb and think about the painful news from Japan. Bridges old and new helped me think this through, helped me link past and future, reminding me that the human hand can create useful, beautiful and meaningful things. I am looking forward to more reflections on bridges as they enable us to make creative links. Elzbieta Matynia has written incisively about this in her book Performative Democracy. I hope she will adding a post on this here in the near future.
And on my hopes for mission creep, I must confess some deep concerns. I see real creativity and promise in the Middle East and North Africa. But as that promise is being met by violent suppression and as it is defended by violent resistance, I fear the promise is retreating. I will consider this further in my next post, but in the meanwhile, some thoughts related to Michael Corey’s reply to my post. I don’t have a highly elaborated justification of American actions. I am appalled as he is by the administration’s use of the term “kinetic military action,” although I understand why they don’t simply use the word “war.” This is an intervention, very quickly enacted with multinational support, to stop an impending massacre of innocents. As the international support for the action was elegant, the domestic enactment has been clumsy. Using newspeak to cover this clumsiness is not a good idea. Obama’s speech to the nation on Monday is the way to go. I look forward to it and will deliberately review it here on Tuesday. But in the meanwhile, please take a look at a series of posts by Juan Cole. He presents the facts on the ground which explains why action was urgent, how it has been successful and why the mission creep I hope for has a chance.
Juan Cole’s blog certainly presents an important counter-weight to the spin in the foreign press hat is presenting the intervention as simply an instance of Western bullying. Consider an article in the Chinese language “Oriental Morning Post”:
“For the past few days, the United States, France, Britain and other countries have already conducted several rounds of air raids on Libya. With the bombing of oil pipelines, civilian casualties, more anxiety and turbulence of Libya’s domestic situation, peace-loving people around the world once again profoundly realized that hegemonies only have an eye out for crimes against Western interests.”
Of course once we know that the Arab League pressed the UN for a No-Fly Zone over Libya, and that both Qatar and the United Arab Emrites have commited military assistance to enforcing the No-Fly Zone. Although the majority of airstrikes are being conducted by Western countries, this operation cannot simply be categorized as “Western Interventionalism.” Furthermore, Xinhua news added, “The civilian death toll from five days of Western-led air strikes had reached almost 100, the Libyan government said later in the day.” Civilian deaths obviously a very serious matter, and way way way way too many civilians died in the disastrous Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Yet, the number cited here are given by the Ghaddafi’s regime, not necessarily the most realiable source.
Consider also the surprising disagreement between Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev over this issue (found in Time magazine):
Putin: “In the policies of the United States, [military intervention] is becoming a stable tendency and trend,” Putin said, counting the conflicts in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq as examples. “Now Libya is next in line, with the excuse of defending its civilian population. But when you bomb a territory, it is the civilians who die. Where is the logic and the conscience in this? There’s neither one nor the other.” Then, borrowing the words of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, Putin said the U.N. resolution on the bombing raids resembled “the medieval calls for a Christian crusade.”
Then Medvedev: “Under no circumstances can anyone use phrases that, in effect, lead to a clash of civilizations, such as ‘Christian crusades’ and so on. This is unacceptable,” Medvedev said. Russia chose not to veto the resolution against Libya in the U.N. Security Council because, the President added, “I do not think that resolution is wrong.” Gaddafi brought it on himself, Medvedev said, when he used force against his own people, “and everyone should remember that.”
Notice that Putin implicates the generic “West” without conducting a deeper analysis of what is going on in Libya. It is important to remember Juan Cole’s words here: “Those who forget or cannot see the humanitarian achievements already accomplished are being willfully blind.” The Pakistani english-language Nation stuck a similar tone to Putin with an article entitled “Obama’s Fatal Jihad into Libya”: “It appears that Obama is looking for another Kosovo or Kuwait, although Libya is altogether a different ballgame.”
However it appears that Obama was no looking for no such thing as he is being criticized by Republicans for taking to long or being indecisive on the matter.
I agree however that from the perspective of the rebels in Libya, the military operation, or whatever you may want to call it, is a matter of “practical action.” The rebels indeed are greatful for the intervention, and now it appears as if Ghaddafi’s forces are in trouble.
Yet there are obvious problems with military intervention in Libya; for one thing, Barack Obama did not consult Congress before authorizing military force; and yes the United States has in the past over-played its Humanitarian Interventionist hand, as not only other nations, but the US public itself has grown tired of the military intervention abroad. Yet the nuances of the situation in Libya need to be considered before one draws hasty conclusions. Furthermore, it is no coincidence that some of the harshest, and I might I add most distorted, criticism of the intervention in Libya is coming from those nations who are harshest on the voices of dissent within their own borders. They too have their interests to look out for.
As for what happens after Ghaddafi in Libya, there is simply no guaruntee that Libyan civil society will produce a democracy. How much do we really know about the rebels, those with the weapons, and perhaps if the are victorious, the power, other than the fact that they want Ghadaffi gone? Yet there were in fact widespread calls for democacracy in Libya from the people (whoever that may be) themselves. The expectation is indeed democracy, yet not all democracies are in fact created equal.