Why not Zimbabwe? - 2 comments

I like Neil Harding a lot, and admire the fervency of his blogging, but his latest piece: "Euston Manifesto is a busted flush - pathetic right-wingers dressed in left-wing clothes" seems to show no reluctance to join the canon of Euston-bashing articles, that contains a scant few thoughtful ethically-serious pieces amid a sea of bile from some truly dreadful bloggers and cranks. Leaving aside my rhetoric, the most popular strategy of opponents is to judge the Euston Manifesto not on the basis of what it states, but on the basis of the very worst behaviour (past and present) that can be attributed to those politicians, writers, and other public figures who it is believed (rightly or wrongly) as signers/supporters, as if their contrary words and actions can be taken as a refutation of that Manifesto.

Neil is quite entitled to ask whether the behaviour of individuals/administrations that declare they have changed their mind - you won't be surprised to hear that the topic is "US commitment to worldwide democracy" - is significantly different after the event from what it was before. However, a healthy scepticism does not allow an observer the right to assume - when evidence is available one way or another - that the declaration is a lie, and use language like "It didn't take a genius to deduce...", and "it is pretty clear which was the priority..." in order to prop up a pet theory about economic determinism - a theory that sucks moral and ethical concerns out of the political space, replacing them with claims and counter-claims about "who profits?", amid mounting ignorance and cynicism about policy-making.

But why Iraq and not also Zimbabwe, Sudan, North Korea, Saudi Arabia - all these countries are severely lacking in democracy with brutal regimes oppressing their citizens.

For hopefully the final time, here's why I can't attribute a genuine moral seriousness to those who include passages such as the above. It's not that questioning why there was military intervention in Iraq and not the other countries is taboo, or an uninteresting question, it's that those who move swiftly past questions like "Should the regimes in any/all of these countries be toppled, for the sake of their suffering population?" and "If so, what strategy is most likely to achieve a positive result with the widest international support, and the minimum fallout?" have overstepped the line that those who claim to be primarily motivated by the rescue of the suffering populations must walk. I'll give the benefit of the doubt to those who ask the quoted question 70% of the time, and the latter two questions 30% of the time, but not to those who are happy with a 95%-5% balance, whichever way around.

Then again with only economics (well, if you reduce it to "profit" and "Oil") as a possible foreign policy motivation, what else can you lobby your elected representative about on the subject of Zimbabwe? How else can a document that talks about egalitarianism, democracy, and the rights of individuals over states be routinely labelled "right-wing"? There's always the possibility of an internal uprising, of course, it's just a shame about those repressive state apparatuses with no concern for human life...