Taking Care of My Garden

In Candide, Voltaire, French eighteenth-century author, tells of a naive young man who is required to travel the world due to unfortunate circumstances.  He was raised with the optimistic premise that human beings are governed by their common sense. But as he travels the world he constantly sees things that just make no sense.  Principles, which proclaim to serve the good of all, obviously serve only the few, or in some cases lead to the doom of all. When he asks why people would behave in a manner which is causing pain and sorrow for all to see, they explain to him the necessity of adhering to principles. 

I relate to Voltaire in a couple of ways.  First, I share the commitment to rejecting principles when they are contradicted by reality.  Secondly, I share the frustration with people, and it often seems to be most people, who seem so oblivious to the reality which seems so obvious to me.

In the end, when the character named Candide, arrives back home, he resolves not to concern himself with fixing the world, and to just focus on his garden. The peace one gets from working in the garden is the ultimate contrast with the nerve-wrecking frustration of a political conversation. Of course, the garden is a metaphor for family, friends and the things intimate to you. 

Obama, Drones and the Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy

It was reported this week that Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, is going to purchase, for defensive purposes, drones from Iran.  I’m not going to discuss the coherence of Chavez’ statement or policy.  What interests me is a continued pattern by which American foreign policy has turned into an international tragedy.

We fought two world wars against the Prussians, the Nazis and the imperial Japanese, in which it was generally recognized throughout the world that the U.S. entered the war in defense of the sovereignty of all nations. The U.S. said “no” to the Nazi idea that it was the prerogative of the most powerful to shape the lesser world to its own vision. The beauty of it was that the U.S. was the most powerful, but used that power in defense of the less powerful.  (I intentionally avoid the use of “international law” language, which would be entirely appropriate, except that all kinds of ideologues have infested that language with notions that are entirely alien to me.)

With the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States became the world’s only super power.  There was reason to hope that the ideal of respect for the sovereignty of other nations would enter in to a golden era. That hope was clearly on display in the days following 9/11. The bombing of the world trade center was  seen throughout the world as a criminal assault on the very notion of international respect.

No need to belabor the topic of W Bush’s Iraq war.  The world was very nearly unanimous in judging the U.S. invasion to be counter to the notion of international sovereignty. Bush’s own apologists did not argue the point, articulating the concept of a “just” “pre-emptive war.”  Basically, they argue that it is ok to unilaterally attack a foreign country, even if nobody agrees with you, as long as you know in your own heart that it is right.  The trouble here is that nothing any longer distinguishes us from the Prussians and Nazis when they attacked France in 1914 and again in 1940.

The Bush administration went on to articulate a number of policies based on the idea that the relation between nations is not or should not be based on moral considerations. Our Founding Fathers in the Declaration of Independence spoke in terms of “all men,” yet the Bush administration repeatedly acted on the belief that American power protects Americans, and that nothing should prevent Americans from torturing foreigners or holding them in prison for a decade without granting them any of the rights embodied in our Constitution.

This gets me back to the fact of Cesar Chavez investing in drones. Under Obama, the U.S. has engaged in a policy of using armed drones to assassinate political opponents residing in foreign countries.  There is no legal process by which these people have been convicted of any crimes. And it is clear that no American would accept Iranian or Syrian drones flying over New York City to assassinate Syrians living in the U.S. or American opponents of Syria.  The U.S. is engaged in a policy that it would accept from no one else. This has also been the case with regard to the development of nuclear weaponry and weaponry to be used in outer space.

And this is the tragedy of American foreign policy since 9/11. Instead of using our power to support norms of conduct between nations, we are using it in  away which undermines those norms. The end result is a more violent and unpredictable world.