Here’s White House press spokesperson Dana Perino trying to justify the latest evidence that the United States currently tortures prisoners to obtain information, supposedly to protect America’s safety. This doesn’t make me feel safe.
Now that several leading Republican politicians (and many more smart Republican voters) have abandoned the inane Bush/Cheney position that USA troops must stay the course in Iraq, it seems likely that American forces will begin pulling out soon (how soon? I wish I knew). This is far the end of our troubles in Iraq, or Iraq’s troubles. The hard work will get harder before it gets easier, and some frightening issues loom. We must pull out without leaving causing a massive refugee crisis that could lead to further horrors, privations and invitations to genocide.
As we’ve observed elsewhere on this site, major historical acts of genocide from Turkey to the Ukraine to Nazi Germany to the Chinese heartland to Rwanda have almost always been politically motivated. The “madman” theories that blame past disasters on obsessive politicians (Hitler) or mindless marauding gangs (Rwanda) invariably miss their mark. Genocides happen, sadly enough, because they benefit the governments that support them (I don’t want to repeat my past writings on this topic here, but if you find this formulation unconvincing please visit the articles in the “genocide” category here, where I explore this in more detail).
Here’s why this is relevant now: the territorial and economic battles between Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish factions over control of Iraq (and Iraq’s oil wealth) will probably result in some type of either formal or (more likely) de facto partition. A national partition will quickly lead to a refugee crisis (as it did in, say, the creation of Pakistan from the partition of India). A refugee crisis invariably involves the type of chaos that can lead to genocide. It’s all too easy to see the worst-case scenarios that could emerge in Iraq in the next couple of years, and it is the entire world’s responsibility — not just the USA’s, and not just Iraq’s — to make sure this doesn’t happen.
What can we do to help? As I’ve said so often in these pages before, we can begin by improving the quality of our national debate on the future of Iraq. This Huffington Post article by Thomas de Zengotita helps by pointing out the flaw in the oft-spoken Bush-Cheney line that the current Iraqi government needs to “step up” to solve the country’s problems. The condescending idea that Iraq’s inability to govern itself is due to a lack of national character or organization is pure fiction. Iraq can’t govern itself because its people are allied along Shiite/Sunni/Kurdish lines rather than national lines (and have always been) and will choose to fight for the sectarian causes they have been raised to believe in rather than for a “unity government” that they do not trust.
Unfortunately, not many people will read or understand articles like Thomas de Zengotita’s, and the idea that we can allow “nature to take its course” in Iraq while they “figure out how to govern themselves” is all too widely believed.
I don’t know how we can avoid a vicious refugee crisis in a post-USA Iraq, but this is the question we all need to ask, and we need to ask it now. And let’s just skip the simplistic answers, because they are not going to help.
This is a hard post to write, because everybody who’s watching the terrible tale of mass murder on the Virginia Tech campus can sympathize with the devastated students and faculty members who lived through the horror. I have nothing to say that will compare with their statements and their memorials, and with the journalistic coverage of the professionals who are close to the scene.
But I was baffled by the report I watched on yesterday’s NBC Nightly News, in which two college students described hiding under desks with the rest of their class as Cho Seung-hui shot, reloaded and shot some more. One of these students had been hit by a bullet, the other hadn’t, and both described themselves as terrified. That’s quite understandable, but I can’t be the only one wondering why a roomful of students did not try to overpower a lone gunman.
I thought this was the lesson of September 11, the lesson of United Flight 93: in the face of any type of murderous rampage, whether a carefully planned act of terrorism or a random act of insane violence, a crowd’s ability to overtake an attacker might offer their best chance. Sure, it takes incredible bravery to rush a guy with automatic weapons, even when the gunman is reloading, and there would have been casualties. But with ten or more students in a room, there is no question that the crowd could have prevailed within a matter of seconds.
I truly do not wish to cast dispersions on the suffering students who did not attempt to overpower Cho Seung-hui in Blacksburg. I am sure it was a lack of decisiveness, rather than a lack of courage, that led them to attempt a passive path towards survival. And, of course, I wasn’t there and I do not have the information to understand why this disaster played out the way it did.
But I do think it’s important for people all over the world to ask themselves the question: in a situation like the one in the Virginia Tech classrooms, can a crowd work together to overpower an armed attacker, and how can we all improve our chances of controlling situations like this?
I don’t want to get all survivalist at this moment, but I will say this: if I ever find myself a potential victim in this type of situation, and I truly hope I don’t, I will vote for “Let’s Roll”. I like the odds better.
I hope this posting is not offensive or wrong-headed. My sympathies go out to everybody who suffered directly from the horrid act at Virginia Tech.
