I think it is interesting to see the notion floated equating other nations with helpless children. It is pretty easy to see that some beating a child is in the wrong. What if you saw two grown men fighting in the street? Would you be as quick to jump in?
Would you be quick to claim no one should? I used the child reference because its easy to see the right and the wrong (and thus a fair test for those that oppose
all intervention) and because it's a context that motivates people even where they may risk their own safety.
Could just as easily used a man beating his girlfriend in public, a situation where more often that you'd want to believe, no one will step in and help. Or even your example. Would you call the police if you saw that fight? I have before, just because I personally can not safely intervene does not mean that I have to throw my hands up and ignore a situation because it "can't be made better."
If when the police show up, one of the assailants is shot and killed, is that on me for calling the police in? What if ignored it, and one of them kills the other and proceeds to kill four or five more people in making an escape, is that on me? Fact is, there is a better result than letting two grown men try to kill each other, whether it can be achieved remains to be seen, but doing nothing pretty much guaranties it will not occur.
Somehow, Sweden doesn't seem compelled to intervene. Does that make them bad people? They certainly owe a lot less money per capita.
It proves them to be a particularly insular people who don't see people in other places as the same as themselves. Plenty of people put their heads down and do nothing when they hear their neighbor beating his wife, are they bad people?
And yet, it is only force where we're willing to spend that amount of treasure to intervene. Not when water is poisonous, for instance. That's why I see our interventions not as an altruistic act in any way shape or form.
Except this is utterly false. We spend such a ridiculous amount of money, both officially and privately, on exactly that kind of non-military intervention that I can't even comprehend how you'd make that claim in good faith. Care to explain what you mean by that?
We are not intervening because someone else is getting punched in the face. We are intervening for fear that we might get punched in the face by the same guy - or we might have to take the long way home instead of walking on his block.
Well honestly, we may be intervening for
both reasons, but even if we're intervening to prevent a future harm to ourselves, so what, its still legitimate to do so. And if we intervene early enough, our self interest may be soon enough to help that first person from getting punched in the face.
We are giving $3 billion dollars to Israel in military assistance each year. Despite the fact that Israel is a nuclear nation, and hardly helpless like a child. Of course most of this aid comes back to US defense companies - because it has to in every case but Israel. Hardly a purely altruistic motive.
Our of curiosity, what exactly does Israel have to do with this? Why choose that example out of all of them?
I prefer this analogy. After some kid gets punched in the face, do you go to the school and arm all the second graders and set them loose on the neighborhood?
I think others have already addressed this, but we've absolutely changed how we respond to this event. Historically we told the bullied child to toughen up and that everyone goes through it, and as a result we've had to deal with the consequences of abused children growing up into maladjusted adults and abusers growing up never learning that this conduct was reprehensible. We've certainly flipped our thinking on that, and now such an event leads, if anything, to an overreaction in protection of the child. Will this generation be "less tough" because of this change, very possibly, but they should also be better adjusted and less prone to aberrant behavior.
Was it wrong to start taking bullying seriously? To intervene in a situation where one party could not protect themselves?
WRT Isis, I would abhor having them take over Syria or Iraq. But that doesn't necessarily mean that I think it is a good idea to start arming Assad's forces to fight them, because we armed the rebels to fight him, and because we invaded Iraq. We're like the old lady who swallowed the cat to catch the bird to catch the spider to catch the fly.
I do agree, arming different factions is a crappy policy, with an enormous history of failure. We should be using boots on the ground if we deem the situation one where intervention is required.
The policy of factional intervention, is like tapping the two fighting guys on the shoulder and handing them knives because then it will be in their self interest not to continue to fight because they may get stabbed.
I don't know why we swallow the fly. Over and over again, trying to fix our mistake by making it bigger.
Well, like I said above, "we" do it because we have millions of reasons why "we" take an action, and depending on who is in control at any moment the primary goals shift, and the secondary goals rearrange. Honestly, no other country should rely on us for anything.
What might happen if we just unilaterally decided to ignore ISIS? Might it be a lot like Vietnam today? Yes, there are human rights issues and political freedom issues, but by and large the average Vietnamese are probably a lot better off than when we were intervening...
Well except for the sex slaves, and the people who get beheaded, everyone else will be better off, oh wait, not the children who are executed for playing during prayer time either, or you know the ummm... people who think they should be able to make their own choices about their religion, or lack thereof, or about which gender of people they want to love... and pretty much it sucks for everyone.
