Americans Are Wary of Retaliation against Brutal Dictators

[MineralMan]

People getting gassed to death by their own government using chemical weapons just isn't enough to get people riled up any longer. Maybe it never has been enough. It sort of depends on where it happens and who it happens to, it seems. We've been slow to react to all sorts of atrocities over the years, depending on where they happen and who the victims are. We've been here before.

If it didn't happen here and it didn't happen to people we know or care deeply about, we aren't supportive, generally, of retaliatory efforts by our military. It's not a new thing, and anyone who has a basic knowledge of history can point to a number of examples when the people in the United States were more inclined to turn away from atrocities and caution against punishing those responsible for them.

And yet, at other times we've reacted swiftly to even the hint of such things. Even when that hint was incorrect. It all depends, it seems. It depends on things like economic interests sometimes. Other times it depends on who is taking which side. What it doesn't seem to depend on is the atrocity itself. Other factors seem to make the difference. It's kind of hard to figure out, really.

And now, we're faced with yet another situation where a bunch of people died, apparently at the hand of their own government, and in a horrible way. And we're not sure whether we're supposed to do something or turn away and do nothing. Another difficult choice.

What will we do?

I don't know.

It depends.

[Bluenorthwest]

1. What would you offer as examples of times we moved swiftly at a hint of atrocity?

I'm not thinking of any right off the top of my head. Saddam used gas on his and other peoples and we reacted by sending Rumsfeld to shake his hand. 14 years later we attacked him.
The US did not enter WW2 at the first hint of bombs on London, or at the first hint of death camps, hell once we finally entered the war we still refused to bomb out the rail lines to those camps, we let them roll on.

[seabeckind]

4. Hint of death camps...

reading the history of the Farben company is a bit eye opening. The part where the US gov't decided to turn a blind eye to the pre-war activities of Standard Oil and Rockefeller once war actually broke out is just a bit disgusting. As were the activities of the Bush family.

As far as the camps themselves, their existence might have been known in some quarters in the US but they weren't common knowledge until the latter months of the war.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. They were not common knowldge until they were liberated.

Allies knew and did not bomb the rail lines to stop the transport. They knew early. It was not a factor to them.

[MineralMan]

14. Yes. Exactly. We tried not to see what was happening.

We reacted by covering our eyes. It's a fairly common thing for the US to do that.

That's my entire point. Our reaction depends. It depends on things it should not depend on, IMO.

That's the problem.

[MineralMan]

8. I was thinking of Sadaam Hussein's supposed WMDs, actually.

Despite their non-existence, we acted all too quickly in that instance. When it was discovered that they did not exist, we ignored that bit of information.

As I said, it depends.

We certainly did not act quickly in WWII. Not quickly at all. Again, it depends.

An atrocity is no guarantee of quick action by the US. It never has been.

It depends.

[atreides1]

2. It's not the atrocity that matters

It's how it was perpetrated that appears to be important.

[seabeckind]

3. One thing I am very wary of

is someone who explains to me what my feelings are and what my motives are.

Is this a fox news report? If "anyone who has a basic knowledge of history can point to a number of examples when the people in the United States were more inclined to turn away from atrocities and caution against punishing those responsible for them" I am sure you can cite those cases. In recent history the ones I can recall all occurred in Iraq and within the last decade. And were perpetrated by MY countrymen. Perhaps we should be a little careful being sanctimonious. Where's our Nuremburg trial?

I don't believe it's hard at all to figure out why there are differences in reaction. It all goes to credibility, source, and the context. The life experiences of the one viewing it also enters into the equation.

The presentation of this atrocity (if one can call it that) is intended for one reason and one reason only. To elicit a reaction from you. It is a dog whistle and you definitely heard it.

The fact is many thousands of people have been murdered in Syria. That is the atrocity. Not the means for their death. Dead is dead.

And there is absolutely nothing I can do about it. Nothing. And insisting that my gov't kill a few more just makes more deaths, not a solution.

[Bluenorthwest]

5. I have also asked the OP for citations of the events he characterizes but got no answer

It was an honest question, OP says we swiftly acted upon mere hints of atrocity but I sure can not think of any examples.

[EC]

7. Why dosen't the Hague take

a more active role in cases like these instead of us having to do it? This is a war crime isn't it?

[MineralMan]

9. That is an excellent question.

I have no answer for it, though.

The only answer I can offer is that it depends. On what it depends is open to discussion.

Some in this thread seem to believe that I'm supporting attacking Syria. I'm not. In fact, I'm opposed to it at this point. I'm just pointing out that we are inconsistent in such instances. I don't like the inconsistency, to be quite frank.

We used a "hint" of atrocity to enter Iraq, but let Darfour fester. Mostly, we don't do not engage. It depends.

[bluestate10]

13. The Hague is powerless without a powerful military force to back it up.

Many on DU love to talk about International Courts, I ask those same people to demand that International Courts and non-aligned countries take a stand on Assad. Our country has enough problems of it's own to deal with, the top of which is caring for men and women that will live the rest of their lives with the damage they suffered in Afghanistan and Iraq and caring for the families that got a corpse returned to them from those wars. If Israel is uneasy about Syria, Israel is a powerful country, it should deal with what it doesn't like seeing.

[MineralMan]

16. That is true. The US has been called on to be the

muscle a lot. Too much. It's time to let others handle these situations. We should not be the "enforcer" for the world.

It's not appropriate, helpful, or useful, really. It harms us and doesn't do much to help others, either.

We should completely disengage from the Middle East, and do it immediately. Let others deal with it. We're meddling where we should not be and where we have no real competence.

[bluestate10]

10. I say stay out of Syria. If Assad rolls up the rebels, so be it. If the rebels defeat Assad, so be

it. We have no more moral right to attack Assad than we have to attack other dictators that are at this moment killing their people. Let the UN perform it's job, including marshaling together fighting forces from every member country to go in and stop atrocities.

[MineralMan]

11. I would tend to agree with you.

In fact, I would like us to disengage from the Middle East altogether and immediately. We are not competent to interfere in that region, and always screw up when we do.

The conflicts there are very old and of longstanding. We are very mistaken if we think we can create any solution in that region.

But OIL! That's the entire reason for our involvement. That's our mistake. In fact, the entire Western world has interfered in that region to its detriment since the end of WWI. We've screwed up everything we've done there ever since.

We routinely ignore atrocities around the world, except when they affect our economic interests. We are inconsistent, and in a very ugly way, in my opinion.

[JRLeft]

12. The US does nothing unless there is a profit motive.

[leftstreet]

15. What 'atrocities' are you talking about?

[MineralMan]

17. In what regard?

There are always atrocities happening somewhere. Whether the US responds to them or not depends. Mostly, we do not respond. Only when we have some sort of economic interest do we respond, or when we're more or less forced to by dint of the magnitude, as in WWII.

My point is that we tend to ignore atrocities, unless we have some economic stake. That inconsistency is the point of my OP.

It depends.

[leftstreet]

18. You're confusing your 'we's

'We' the people are not affiliated with the wealthy elite who benefit from military interventions

[MineralMan]

19. That's the thing, isn't it.

The "we" I'm referring to is the United States of America as a country. That's the "we." And that's the conflict, isn't it?

See, I want US out of this clusterfuck in the Middle East. I have wanted US out of it as long as I can remember, and that goes back to the 1950s. "Us" is the US. I want US to disengage completely from the region. Further, I want US to disengage our military from just about every place on the planet.

Why do we (the US) have forces in Germany, Italy, Japan, and elsewhere? I have always been opposed to that.

We (meaning the US) engage when economic interests are involved. We, the people who don't want that, would rather that we (the US) did not engage in that way.

However, I'm not naive enough to think that I represent the thinking of the majority of people in the US. We (the US) elect some very strange people to office. We (the US) have elected a majority of Republicans to the House of Representatives. We (the US) make some very bad decisions.

We (the US) do some very, very stupid things. Those of us who disagree appear to be in the minority, though. And there's the dilemma.

We is US. They are interchangeable. When the US acts we are who act. If we do not change the US, then we are part of what happens. Will we do that?

It depends.

[MineralMan]

20. Some seem confused with my use of "we" in

my OP. I get it. But, it's a difficult thing. So, I wrote another OP that attempts to explain how I used "we," and why it's often a source of confusion. Read it, if you like:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023587781