[DEBATE] : Sorry, it's not our job to save Africa from itself

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 9/22/07, Russell Grinker <grinker at mweb.co.za> wrote:
> I can't help getting the feeling that there's a sneaking tendency on this
> list to support some sort of western intervention in Darfur. I can see
> nothing objectionable about Hume's essentially traditional
> anti-interventionist/anti-imperialist logic. This was once ABC for the old
> left.  However one needs to ask why a number of correspondents, including
> Patrick, are falling over themselves trying to find some other way to
> disagree with him - in Patrick's case the ridiculous objection that Hume
> hasn't mentioned climate change and oil. Of course nobody will come out
> straight and admit they're in favour of intervention.

If I'm not mistaken, Patrick's jab was mainly aimed at Spiked's
skepticism about climate change.  I have a lot in common with you (as
well as our friend James Heartfield) about opposition to Western
interventions in the Third World, but I do not share Spiked's
commitment to classical Marxist celebration of development of
productive forces in the quantitative sense, unqualified by insights
from later scientific findings.  I am not, however, as exercised as
many leftists are about the Spiked view of nature, for, truth be told,
nothing substantial will be done to moderate climate change or take
actions to mitigate its negative impacts, no matter what anyone says.

As for the question of interventions by _leftists_, not by the US-led
multinational empire, here's a useful anecdote:

     Before the Civil War, Sir Robert Peel warned Parliament
     about the grave danger of an American war; during it,
     the secretary of state, William Seward, wanted to declare
     war on England and was supposedly restrained only
     by Lincoln himself ("One war at a time, Mr. Seward"). . . .
     (Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "Our Imaginary Friend," 19
     September 2007,
<http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/19/news/edwheat.php>)

Given the chronic shortage of our troops, leftists might take a page
from Lincoln: one war at a time.  And make that war one against our
respective ruling classes.
-- 
Yoshie