This has been bugging me for as long as I've read the news and history at the same time
Why on earth do people assume that post-WWII military intervention has a humanitarian goal? There's nothing to back up any claim that this has been the norm. Quite the opposite.
In "Voltaire's Bastards" (Vintage, 1993), John Ralston Saul argues that the current rational, reasonable arguments that make up political discourse have a couple disturbing problems. Simply, we've gotten enamoured with tight, logical, "bottom-line" reasoning, and we are crippling ourselves. We've moved from the "blind logic" of the pre-Renaissance, to reason and the enlightenment period, to a state of "blind reason" - Rumsfeld, and McNammara a generation before him, are excellent examples of people who fall into the trap of "it's cleanly reasoned, therefore it must be so."
"Blind reason", as it's become in western government, has no historical memory. There is no attention paid when people ask "what's the historical trend when we try this method?" Again, the parallel to the blind logic of the pre-Renaissance is striking - Gallileo dropping oranges and grapes on the dinner table, showing they fell at the same speed, before people who claimed that this empiricism was irrelevant is one great example case. Today, in Afghanistan and Iraq, the west is cheerfully repeating Vietnam's many mistakes, and we're saying that since it was so well planned, the simple questions that history answered before we began are meaningless.
However, we can change ourselves faster than we can change our countries. If we can take some lessons from history and use them, we will surely be better off. So here's my thought for the day: I will assume, from now on, that any claims of "brining freedom" or "spreading democracy" are as false as they were in any of the other post-WWII engagements. Like these...
China [1945-46], Korea [1950-53], China [1950-53], Guatemala [1954], Indonesia [1958], Cuba [1959-60], Guatemala [1960], Congo [1964], Peru [1965], Laos [1964-73], Vietnam [1961-73], Cambodia [1969-70], Guatemala [1967-69], Grenada [1983], Libya [1986], El Salvador [1980], Panama [1989], Iraq [1991-2004], Sudan [1998], Afghanistan [1998-2003], Yugoslavia [1999]
How many of these resulted in a democracy? Greater freedom for the people?
I will also assume that when a US State Deparment planner, George Kennan, spoke in 1948
"We have 50 per cent of the world's wealth, but only 6.3 per cent of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which permit us to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality . . . we should cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation."
he meant it, and people listened.
It's about the resources. It has been about the resources since the dawn of time. Can we please stop pondering whether or not Bush and Blair really want to bring democracy to Iraq? Just stop. It's a red herring, and it was put there to distract you. If you're still thinking that the US will let Iraq free after the elections, you've fallen for it. Maybe not for the first time. Could it be the last? Please?