Some Help from Another World

According to an Onion article, the alien nation of Zarklom 12 has decided to step in to help out the Syrian people after watching the violence unfold without intervention and seeing a "U.N. report indicating al-Assad's forces have killed more than 7,500 civilians." One alien remarked that "we find ourselves as disgusted by your reluctance to stop it as we are horrified by the deaths themselves," and the emperor furthered that "It defies all universal logic that the leading nations of your planet failed to agree on a simple resolution calling for an end to the violence in Syria."

The aliens will be performing a short military intervention to dislodge al-Assad from power, free political prisoners, and liberate cities such as Homs before withdrawing to monitor the process from afar.

Now, obviously, the article is from The Onion, and there are no alien invaders coming to save Syria. But perhaps there should be. The United Nations report stating that more than 7,500 civilians have been killed is real, and while the U.N. General Assembly has passed a resolution condemning al-Assad and supporting his removal from office, the U.N. Security Council has failed to pass two resolutions condemning the violence due to vetoes from Russia.

As I have learned while researching my Junior theme, the world has sat back and watched while conflicts with much higher death tolls raged - Rwanda and the Anfal campaign are a few examples, where the deaths were estimated at 800,000 and 100,000, respectively. But this does not mean that the world should.

But the chances that the U.S. will lead an intervention as it did in Libya are slim. Not because the Syrian conflict is fundamentally different or more dangerous, but because "In the midst of an election campaign, the Obama administration will try to avoid getting entangled in a new Middle East war." Unfortunately for the Syrian people, a military intervention just isn't politically convenient at the moment.

Now, I'm not sure if intervention in Syria is a good idea. There could be mission creep, there could be unknown dangers, and removing the al-Assad government could open up the area for terrorists or extremists - but in the end, that's not why the United States is not getting involved. It's because it's election time, and it's just not convenient right now. Sorry guys, may be you can call us back in a few months? We might have time for you then.

When humanitarian intervention is dictated by the political whims of one state, it does not seem like a fair process. But is there any other way to do it?

Kony 2012 Sequel: Media and Foreign Policy

One of many anti-Kony posters. Source.

About a month ago, the Kony 2012 video went incredibly viral, and sparked American's interest in the LRA and efforts to stop them. But despite (or perhaps because of) the video's success, it prompted a lot of criticism. Recently, Invisible Children, the group behind Kony 2012, released a sequel called "KONY 2012: Part II - Beyond Famous."  The point was to address criticism and provide more information than the previous video. The video is still quite stylized, but feels much more like a documentary than the first. It has also failed to achieve the popularity of the first video. At the time of writing, the view count is under 1,150,000.

The video provides more details on the conflict - such as the fact that Kony's LRA currently only numbers about 250 fighters. While they present the video as more of an add-on to the first, it would seem that this information on the size of the LRA is more of a key fact than a bonus. In this video, unlike the first, they get into more of the details of the conflict, and make it clear than Kony is not actually in Uganda anymore - unlike in the first video, where it was somewhat unclear. They also mention a previous attempt at seizing Kony in 2007 that resulted in backlash against civilian populations - but rather than presented this as a possible con to trying to seize Kony, they mention it as if it supports their cause. Nevertheless, while the video tries to continue playing up Kony's evils and the importance of arresting him, it is far less convincing than the first video.

And the first video was very convincing to a lot of people. As a result of that video, the sequel boasts, the African Union has authorized a 5,000 person regional force track down Kony. And thanks to public pressure, two resolutions supporting the disarmament of Kony have been proposed in the House and Senate. It has been successful, no matter how many inaccuracies it may have contained. But if the people setting the agenda of Congress are informed by an over-simplified video, what does that mean for our foreign policy?

People have always been able to influence the priorities of the government through letter writing campaigns and other such measures. But as the influence of media expands, how will the people's influence on government grow? It is easier and easier to get informed about the records of one's representitives, and with many campaigns setting up pre-written emails, sending a message to them can take just a few clicks. But the amount of attention the media and public pay to a given issue is often not proportionate to its impact.

For example. the Kony 2012 Sequel says that since 2008, the LRA has killed over 2400 people. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the affected countries that the video focuses on. Well, in 2008, an estimated 45,000 people per month were dying in the DRC because of famine and disease. And other issues with conflict minerals plague the region. But people starving is much more expected, and much less glamorous than child soldiers. And so the efforts of Congress and the African Union are turned to the wild goose chase for Kony instead of trying to provide clean water or food to starving populations.

But it's not always true that famines avoid attention while killing gets it. During my Junior Theme research, I learned that in the 1990s for some months the famine in Somalia got more attention than killing in Bosnia and Serbia. So the type of tragedy does not always determine how much attention it will get. So who decides what will get attention? The media cover issues that the public cares about, because they're out to make money. The public cares about what they know about. So where does it all start?

Absurdity in Genocide

In class for the past month or two, we have been reading White Noise, a satire of American culture in the late twentieth century by Don DeLillo. As a satire, it makes great use of absurdity. For my Junior Theme research, I read a book called "A Problem From Hell:" America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power which examines U.S. actions and (more often) inaction during genocides. While certainly not a cheery book, "A Problem from Hell" has its fair share of absurdity. 

One of the more notable parallels between the two was those in power's lack of basic knowledge about their subject. Jack, the main character in White Noise, is the founder and head of the Hitler Studies Department at his college. Logically, the department requires "a minimum of one year of German" for those majoring in the department (30). Yet Jack himself "could not speak or read it [German], could not understand the spoken word or begin to put the simplest sentence of paper" (30). This knowledge is would seem to be a basic requirement for his study. Without being able to speak German, Jack cannot understand the many videos of Hitler speeches he plays in his class or read the original version of Mein Kampf. Although they are less dramatic than DeLillo's, Power has some examples of the same phenomenon. During her discussion of the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge, Samantha Power introduces Charles Twining, who was posted to the U.S. embassy in Bangkok. He spent a year learning Khmer "to the bemusement of his State Department colleagues" (115). Khmer is the language of the neighboring Cambodia, which was under the strict rule of the Khmer Rouge at the time. Cambodia was completely closed off from the outside world, but it was clear to those who knew about it that the government was not being kind to its citizens (to say the least). While at the embassy, Twining's first assignment was to go interview refugees from Cambodia on the Thai-Cambodian border. Obviously, knowing Khmer was of great use to Twining. One would think that it would actually be required for at least some of the officials at the U.S. embassy in Thailand to know Khmer, given its proximity to Cambodia and the fact that they could not have direct contact with Cambodia. And yet to Twining's colleagues, his work to learn the language was amusing and unnecessary. Their idea of how to conduct diplomacy mirrors Jack's idea of how to study Hitler.

A similar failure of authorities to know the basic underpinnings of their work occurs later in the book, during the discussion of the Rwandan genocide.  Lieutenant General Wesley Clark, the "director of strategic plans and policy for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon" recalls that after the plane crash that killed the presidents of Burundi and Rwanda, which started the genocide, many Pentagon officials were asking "Is it Hutu and Tutsi or Tutu and Hutsi?" (330). He also recalls that he was unable to find someone who could explain the ethnic dimensions of the events in Rwanda.  Although it would not be expected for all of the staff of the Joint Chiefs to know the two ethnic groups in Rwanda, one would expect at least most of them to, given that the United States was involved in a peace process in Rwanda between the two groups.

While Jack's lack of seemingly basic information about his field in White Noise is funny, the ineptitude of many of the people in "A Problem From Hell" is more tragic. Government officials never bothered to learn the language of or understand the culture of people who their decisions will directly impact. They spend all their time focused on translations of the people, which fail to produce real understanding. The "experts" on Cambodia couldn't speak Khmer. The facade of knowledge present in Jack from White Noise is also found in many officials in "A Problem From Hell."