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.
History is riddled with such "no brainers". Remember when the poor helpless Afghans were getting bullied by the evil Soviets? Of course we should train thousands of Afghans how to fight against a sophisticated military run by a powerful state. What's the worst that could happen? Oops.
History is riddled with no brainers, both for and against intervention. The one thing that is certain about history, is that looking back we can
always see a better possible solution. That's not a very good argument for not acting in the present.
I've never advocated fighting by proxy. I believe our goals are best served by retaining military training and technology to westernized people who share, at least loosely, our morality and goals. Training radicals just because they're willing to fight and it's politically easy compared to acting ourselves, is in fact a policy that has been demonstrated to have consistently bad results. It's the exact scenario that Fenring is talking about where instead of calling the police you call in a killer. It may occasionally be better than the status quo, but that's almost always a coincidence.
Of course we should assist the helpless Cubans against the evil Castro. We'll just give some half-assed support to some guys in Florida and... Oops.
Agreed, that's another good example of proxy intervention. If you believe enough to intervene you should do it yourself. Would the Cuban people have been better off if we'd actually invaded? There's not the influx of outside forces there as there are in the middle east. It's hard to imagine they would have been objectively worse off as a client state of the US without having to deal with the impact of the embargo.
Of course we should help the Somalis. Warlords are stealing international assistance and killing people left and right. Someone should put a stop to it. Oops.
Or maybe, we shouldn't dump international assistance into uncontrollable situations in the first place? That's an example of a different kind of least efforts approach. Either stabilize the situation or don't go in.
This "insular" people actually spends more of its treasure on foreign development assistance than any other nation on earth. 1.4% of their GNP.
And? The fabulously wealthy have provided alms for the poor as a civic duty for eons, does that mean they view those people in the same way they view other wealthy people?
The simplest test, to me, is if you treat violence at your neighbors house as fundamentally different than violence in another country. If you believe you have a right to intervene in people's lives, regardless of any difference of beliefs, inside your own country, and believe it's immoral to do so across a magic line on a piece of paper. If you "believe" in gay rights, but think another country killing gay people is a cultural difference that we can't do anything about. Or that women are your equals, but across a magic line they become the property of their husbands.
It's all part of the same puzzle, I don't accept that fundamental morality changes depending on where you are on the globe, others are paralyzed by their inability to judge between conflicting moral positions held based on culture.
A little under 10x more than the United States. Meanwhile, the US spends 3.5% of GNP on our military, compared to 1.1% for Sweden. I think 20x differential between development aid and military is sufficient to support my claim that we are not willing to spend anywhere near the same amount of money on non-military aid as military expenses. The ridiculous amount of money that you refer to is about $23 billion. Compared to nearly $700 billion in military expense.
Frankly, it's a silly measure to start with (as you're doubling down on again treating people differently across imaginary lines by excluding local spending), but even as used it's a fake measure. You're only looking at US government spending in that comparison and not the totality of the chartable spending that originates in the US. Even discounting the amount of people who donate time that's a still a far bigger number.
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.
Yes, those are all Bad Things. I wonder if it is preferable to have bombs dropped on you daily. I wonder how we would enjoy having somebody start bombing us because of our state-sponsored executions. Or our aggression in other parts of the world.
Never advocated just dropping bombs though did I? I said boots on the ground. And honestly, if my daily life consists of seeing my wife and kids raped and murdered at the whims of an unpredictable dictator, I'm hoping for someone to intervene.
You're really focused on bombings. At best that's punitive measure not designed to effect real change. I think the better method would be enforce our laws and arrest and try anyone that has authorized a "state-sponsored execution," well at least to the extent we're talking about a real crime and not for instance application of the death penalty after a fair trial.
Note that Afghanistan under the Taliban was very much like this, and you'll recall we set them up to run that country.
I think that's a massive revision of actual history. I remember when the Taliban actually took over in Afghanistan. I was one of the very few people I know who advocated intervening immediately. It was enough for me that they imposed a regime that was oppressive on the rights of women.
Huh. What's Pakistan doing in there? Didn't we give them billions of dollars, even though they were allied with the Taliban and good indications that they harbored bin Laden? Oops.
Real Politik sucks, I agree.
I agree with your arguments in theory. It would be nice if there were a global adult to set things to right. As it stands, we're just the biggest kid with a mean streak.
We are, whomever we choose to be. I'm not a big kid with a mean streak, so unless you are, that's not a reasonable claim. I start from the simple principal that all people have inalienable rights, and that any government that systematically denies the fundamental rights of its citizens is not legitimate (fundamental rights, there's plenty of latitude for disagreement on other rights). I don't see any reasonable argument for staying out of a situation where the government (or nominal government) has stated its intention to support slavery, or sex slavery, or the execution or prosecution of people because of religion or sexual preference. ISIS fails all of those tests, and plenty of other countries fail in part. That doesn't mean we have to bomb everyone, or invade everyone, but those should be options that are on the table for the worst offenders.