Why Did We Invade Again?


Woodrow Wilson firmly believed in the power of democracy, and in the appropriateness of American involvement with the spread of democracy. Generally, at least based on actions, he wasn't in favor of randomly invading countries in order to establish democracy, but if there was gross instability (such as in the Dominican Republic of his day, as is referenced in the above article) that might threaten American interests, military involvement with the purpose of democratizing a country, is warranted. We'll ignore Wilson's racist tendencies, and pro-eugenics stance for the purposes of this entry, as this would require an entire blog just to discuss. However, I will note that any reasonable person could propose that part of Wilson's desire to interfere with the Dominican Republic may have been partially caused by a belief that the race of the island's inhabitants caused them to be unfit to manage themselves. This attitude of racial superiority cannot be separated from a discussion of Wilson's foreign policy, in my opinion, but I will try.

At the very least, Wilson's approach to foreign policy was based on a sense of the superiority of the American way of doing things, or at least on the a sense of the superiority of democracy in general. I would tend to agree with him, as would many of our leaders over the past century. I'm not completely sure that I would accept the premise that democracies are inherently more peaceful than other forms of government, but I do think that democracies tend to have fewer military type conflicts with other democracies, and so if every country had a democratic form of government, we might actually be in a more peaceful place. In addition, the lives of citizens in democracies tend to be better, as most democracies enshrine a reasonable set of rights into their constitution.

It was a combination of a Wilsonian world view (absent the racism!) and a desire for the security that the end of Al-Qaeda would bring, that led me to support the invasion of Afghanistan, and frankly, the invasion of Iraq. I'll confess to a belief that WMD were in Iraq as well, as I couldn't otherwise explain Saddam's constant attempts at hiding things. At any rate, recent events in Afghanistan have caused me to rethink this support.

I recall all of the stories about how human rights were being restored in Afghanistan. Girls were allowed to return to school. Women didn't have to wear those ridiculous burqas any more, etc. But now, we have a situation where a man is going to either be put to death or committed to the insane asylum for having converted to Christianity. This is an improvement in the human rights situation? Frankly, I think the only appropriate response is either take over again, and eliminate Sharia law (a school of law so absurd that its apologists have to work overtime to try to convince every one that it isn't what it is), or pull out entirely. The latter seems to invite future problems, so I think the former is the best route. Otherwise, we are reduced to a variation on the old Cold War theme of supporting barbarous governments as long as they promise to be our friends. That really didn't work all that well for us back then, and is such an ethical problem, I don't think we should pursue it now.

Posted: Friday - March 24, 2006 at 01:48 PM          

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