Professor De Genova — Hero of the Right!
Posted on March 31, 2003 Posted by John Scalzi 4 Comments
Right wingers (and people who don’t approve of blindingly stupid things said by educated people — not necessarily the same group) are piling on Columbia Professor Nicholas De Genova, for his comment at a “teach-in” in which he said, ” “The only true heroes are those who find ways that help defeat the U.S. military… I personally would like to see a million Mogadishus.”
The right wingers have got it all wrong, however. This is proof that De Genova is a radical — but for the right, not the left. Follow:
It is true that the US lost 18 soldiers in the fight in Mogadishu. However, they also managed to kill an estimated 500 to 1000 Somalis. So a million Mogadishus would have the US eradicating roughly the entire population of the continent of Africa, with, say, the populations of Iraq, Iran and North Korea thrown in as dessert.
It’s also worth noting that in the aftermath of the Mogadishu event, Somalia collapsed into anarchy while the United States began the greatest bull run in its economic history; and while the latter isn’t necessarily related to the events in Mogadishu, the former almost certainly is. Additionally, the commander-in-chief during the Mogadishu event was handily re-elected. Bear in mind also that despite the casualties, the “Black Hawk Down” mission did in fact accomplish its military objectives — a little fact often overlooked.
So, in fact, were we to have a million Mogadishus, the likely result would be the complete United States military and economic domination of the entire world (which is to say, more than we have now), not to mention that we’d have all that lovely African real estate to ourselves, and Dubya would be crowned Emperor for life. What self-respecting right-wing war hawk wouldn’t want that?
Professor De Genova — A mole for the right! You heard it here first.
Update: Actually, you hear it here second, since this fellow thought about it first, about three days ago, as pointed out to me by Glenn Reynolds. See, that’s the problem with coming to a topic a couple days late. Ah well.
Now I’m just crazy, no, really I am, but maybe in the end it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if the whole world ended up answerable to the US officially. It feels like it does unofficially already. You can say all you want about the UN, but let’s face it, without the financial and military backing of the US, the UN is fairly impotent. That’s not to say that if every other member of the UN got together and ganged up on the US they wouldn’t win, but that they won’t, or maybe even can’t. And ultimately, just because everyone would eventually answer to us doesn’t mean things would be run the same way. Just throw in some extra rights for a lot of places. Each nation would be, effectively, autonomous. The onyl real change for many of the countries would be a sudden increase in personal rights and liberties they didn’t have before. How would bringing the Constitution and Bill of Rights to oppressed nations be a bad thing? They’d just have that one extra eye looking over their shoulder. We’re all human. We know we are, for the most part, far less likely to commit an immoral act if someone’s watching. That’s not universally true, but very close. We’re already doing a lot of looking over shoulders, but we lack the official stance to do much else in a lot of cases. At least not without a bunch of cheese-sniffing, no-shaving, wine-swilling, rifle-droppers raising a bigger stink than their usual body odors. Yes, I have a certain distaste for the French. They used to be better. Charlemagne, Louis XIV. History, art, food. All good. I’m not sure what happened. Social inbreeding maybe.
Stupid French.
Would they also be forced to lose rights they currently have? The problem with a Pax Americana is simply that as small as the world is, its still pretty big, and we are an incredibly narrow minded culture in many respects (sex, drugs, alcohol, etc.)
We also suffer from elected officials who are forced to make policies that get them re elected in the short term, instead of actually being good long term policy. And then, when the next guy/girl/person comes into office, all of these policies are ejected like so much garbage. This is largely what got us into many of the problems we are experiencing today.
I am not in any way implying that we are overtly evil. I dont think its a systematic thing. But I do think that many of our freedoms are not worth the cost to the local culture and society. Diversity is good for the system as a whole, if hard to do.
I’ll leave the French thing alone, except to say that if you find them so repugnant, send back the Statue of Liberty.
Sigh. Don’t feed the trolls, I know.
Justin, here are a few examples that I know of that demonstrate what happens when other nations become answerable to the US.
Japan, 1945 – No more unbridled imperialism. Capitalism and great economic prosperity (well, not that great anymore). Basically, that went very well.
South Vietnam, 1956 – The CIA arranged for the cancellation of democratic elections for a reunified Vietnam because they knew that Ho Chi Minh would win a free election. Somehow they thought that in doing this they were defending democracy. What followed was the oh, so successful Vietam War. Not so good.
Chile, 1973 – US helps Pinochet overthrow the democratically elected (and socialist) Allende. It is well publicized what a champion of human rights Pinochet turned out to be. Bad.
Iran, 1953 – US and UK stage a coup of the nationalist Mohammad Mossadegh government(his radical notion was for Iranian oil profits to remain in Iran). He was replaced with the US supported shah. There is no doubt that the US/UK support of the shah throughout his rule was for the purpose of securing oil profits and preventing communism, not human rights. Then there was the Iranian revolution and that whole hostage problem in 1979. Clearly a complete disaster.
I think the idea of an international entity that furthers human rights throughout the world is a fabulous idea. Hooray for human rights. Hooray for democracy. That’s why I love living in this country. Unfortunately, I don’t think the US even remotely resembles such an entity. The US controls countries for strategic interests, not for the advancement of human rights or democracy. Even though that’s what our leaders keep telling us they’re doing. Sigh.
“I’ll leave the French thing alone, except to say that if you find them so repugnant, send back the Statue of Liberty.”
You’ll note that I said they USED to be better than they are now. Most of things French and irritating to me are circa 20th century and up.