This morning at the doctor's office, I walked in to find a surprisingly crowded waiting room, full of an unusual bunch of people -- men and one woman, of various ages (mostly well over thirty) and assorted ethnicities, waiting for the doctor, clutching a handful of forms, chatting away together as if they knew each other -- when it was clear from overhearing bits of their conversation that many of them did not, or not well. There was an air of camaraderie that was hard to place until enough references to ships and the Persian Gulf made everything clear -- they were sailors, merchant marine.
The unofficial leader of the bunch was a heavyset, fiftyish guy with the deep, easy drawl of Southern guy of a certain generation (by his accent, I'd put him in South Carolina or Georgia), wearing a USMC cap and a surprisingly mod pair of eyeglasses. He looked me over -- "sailor?" he asked. Then he stopped me before I could reply. "No, you look more like a doctor." I told him that I was a writer (always an occupation I feel strange about claiming, but what the hey), and he turned to his acquaintance from the same ship-- a slender Latino man about ten years his junior -- and said "Lots to write about in this town."
He told me that the whole bunch had been sent over to my doctor by the union to get immunizations, and they didn't mind if I went ahead of them ("Nobody here's in a hurry. We're on the clock. They sent us over here on shift -- not our problem.") USMC Hat and his buddy were from the John Cole, an ammo transport ship that is apparently, as they put it "owned by the Navy" but mothballed between major operations. (It seemed to be a civilian ship, but I might have misunderstood).
Most of them, it seemed had been either active duty military or serving on similar civilian supply ships during the Gulf War. USMC Hat referred to it as the "Poison Gulf." He and the Latino guy were talking about how much they liked Dubai and Bahrain. I wanted to ask what exactly they did for fun in Dubai and Bahrain, but I didn't get the chance.
They were fully loaded and waiting to sail "whenever we go to war with Iraq." There was a lot of talk about the gas masks they were supposed to be issued. I asked what they were carrying (this was before I knew it was an ammo ship). "Christmas presents for the Iraqis," the Latino guy said. "Real expensive ones." Grim laughter followed and USMC Hat added "Air Mail." He liked that, and said it again so his pal would hear it.
They left to get some coffee and shook my hand. I wished them, awkwardly, good luck.
****
As long as we're talking about such things, this month's new Harper's has several pieces which are absolutely essential reading. One of them, Perry Anderson's essay "Force and Consent," is excerpted from the one he published a couple of months ago in the New Left Review, which can be found here. As a kind of absolutely pitiless dissection of the evolution of U.S. foreign policy and its relation to the U.N. -- along with its apparently inevitable manifestation in Baghdad, Anderson's piece has that breathtaking quality to it that you find in some very surefooted essays.
I'm not sure I fully agree with his conclusion, which seems to be summed up in his last paragraph. This follows a ringing denunciation of the Bush administrations argument for war ("The tissue of cruelties and hypocrises that has justified the blockade of Iraq for a decade, at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives, requires no further exposure in these pages."); Anderson goes on, however, to make a broader point about what he considers to be illegitimate actions. I quote here in full:
Republican and Democratic administrations in the US are not the same, any more than Centre Right and Centre Left governments in Europe. It is always necessary to register the differences between them. But these are rarely distributed along a moral continuum of decreasing good or evil. The contrasts are nearly always more mixed. So it is today. There is no cause to regret that the Bush administration has scotched the wretched charade of the International Criminal Court, or swept aside the withered fig-leaves of the Kyoto Protocol. But there is every reason to resist its erosion of civil liberties in America. The doctrine of pre-emption is a menace to every state that might in future cross the will of the hegemon or its allies. But it is no better when proclaimed in the name of human rights than of non-proliferation. What is sauce for the Balkan goose is sauce for the Mesopotamian gander. The remonstrants who pretend otherwise deserve less respect than those they implore not to act on their common presumptions. The arrogance of the ‘international community’ and its rights of intervention across the globe are not a series of arbitrary events or disconnected episodes. They compose a system, which needs to be fought with a coherence not less than its own.
Somewhere in here, it seems to me, lies a problem -- what are the rights of the international community? Does it have any? Or are the hash marks around those two words mean that we haven't really got one as yet, and that what passes for one politically just doesn't qualify, as it is essentially a policy instrument of U.S. hegemony? Or something else? Really, these aren't rhetorical questions -- what'd I miss?
Posted by BT at December 19, 2002 12:17 AMThe money factor? I think the lack of progres is because of the dollar value attached to real implementation of human rights; if true social and economic injustice were magically lifted across the planet, prices at Wal-Mart would rise 800%, coffee would be $30 a pound. USA would freak. And plus people in other countries can't vote for their economic masters, which is to say, the American consumer.
But that would be the cynical answer—the more optimistic answer would be look at the progress since 1949. India, China, and Russia are young democracies. Liberal Theology had a profound effect on Central America. There's gotta be other stuff but I'm sleepy and can't really answer any of your questions.
Posted by: bootsy on December 19, 2002 06:06 PMI'm going to read the piece tonight, I hope: it looks interesting: "international community," in his view, is not merely a euphemism for "American." Such a thing exists, it is international, but it's not a community: it's the capitalist class (or it's the "coherent system"). It's a guess, more when I read the piece.
Posted by: mjg on December 19, 2002 10:00 PMA guess. "International Community" is not a euphemism for "United States." There is such a thing. It is international, but not a community. It is the capitalist class (or whatever the coherent system is). Just a guess. I want to read the piece; it looks interesting.
Posted by: mjg on December 19, 2002 10:02 PMI guess what it seems like he's saying in the end is that we can't criticize the Bush administration's drive toward a "pre-emptive" attack on Iraq without simultaneously rejecting the grounds upon which U.S. & U.N. action in the former Yugoslavia was taken, and that though the left in general is in sympathy with our having called in air strikes on Serbian forces in Kosovo to stop ethnic cleansing, the "system" which produced and validated this intervention wasn't, in the author's view, legitimate. Or something like that. In other words, we should be against many other forms of intervention that the international community has undertaken under the guise of protecting human rights, not just Iraq.
So my questions are (a) is he saying that? (b) is he right? and (c) what are the circumstances under which the U.S. and U.N. could and should attack a government or state that has not attacked it (but is doing something really bad like killing lots of people or stockpiling biological agents or something like that)? Are there any? Or is the present system too corrupt to legitimately support any such action?
Posted by: BT on December 20, 2002 09:14 AMI read the article yesterday, so I'll take a whack at the questions, but I's no expert:
a) Yes, though I think he comes down pretty squarely in the camp of unilateral intervention. In other words, he wants it black and white, and you either support your nation's ability to intervene whenever it needs to do so, as determined by it's leaders, or you need to be an isolationist, whether from the Buchannan side or the Chomsky side. To do otherwise, I think he's saying, is intellectually dishonest. I disagree profoundly, but then I recall being pretty twisted into knots over both intervention in Kosovo, and non-intervention in Rawanda. He has a point, grim though it be.
b) Nah. Black and white world views have simplicity on their side, and the whiff of pragmatic thinking, but they're still just guesses and empire justifications.
c) If the US does it then it's one nation usurping another's sovereignty, even if the intentions are just and pure. So if we find out that Mexico is about ready to invade or toss biological agents into our rest stops, then we can invade to defend ourselves. If Mexico's government, on the other hand, starts systematically exterminating every resident of Chiapas, then the inevitable overthrow has to be done either by the Mexican people, or, if that is not an option, by the UN. If the UN tells the US it's hands are a little tied right now and it'd be really helpful if the US could get some troops over to Chiapas right away, that's still a UN action. If the US moves in by itself, or does and says England and Japan fully support the action, it's still an invasion. It should be avoided.
Or so I think. And that's why I've decided to throw my hat in the ring and run for Overlord of the UN. When they finally take over, that's where the real sweet invasion ordering action's gonna be. Texas is gonna be so surprised . . .
Posted by: hackly_fracture on December 20, 2002 01:32 PMWhoops, I double posted *and* got the content of the article wrong. Is that one mistake or three?
Here's my crack at A, B, C, having actually read the thing.
(a) is he putting attacks on Iraq together with humanitarian intervention on behalf of human rights? I think so.
(b) is he right? In a sense, yes: both are justified only if you don't think much of national sovereignty. In a sense, no: the one concerns human rights, the other something else. (Sorry, that's flat footed, but arguments with this much sweep make me want to draw distinctions like crazy).
(c) When is intervention without immediate threats to one's own nation/state justified? It's not a question that the piece really addresses head on, is it. Maybe he's not that interested in justificatory as opposed to explanatory questions. Or maybe he sees a link between the two that I don't appreciate.
My own way too quick take: order was established in some pretty dodgy ways in every society, but no one looks back on anarchy with any fondness. What's so great about the anarchical state of the world?
Posted by: mjg on December 21, 2002 04:49 PM