Genocide: "Never again" or "Again? Whatever"
At the beginning of the month, Matthew Yglesias noticed a plea for the Darfur region in the Sudan, and (no doubt correctly) concluded the prospects for extending substantial military help to the people of that region against the Sudanese government were dim. Then he got to the real point of his post (Never Again):

But then there's this rhetorical point about the 'never again' business. I think people should drop it. The first -- or maybe the second or third or fourth -- time there was a post-WWII genocide, making this point may have been a good idea. The reality is, however, that it's happened again and again and again and again and again and again since the Holocaust and it's sort of time to get over it. Not that genocide happens, but that genocide happens and other people do nothing to stop it. Indeed, this is exactly what happened during the Holocaust -- the US and USSR liberated the camps as a biproduct [sic] of winning a war that they undertook for different reasons and, indeed, that they struggled mightily to avoid.
It's hard to think of a single instance of a foreign effort to stop/prevent a genocide that can properly be described as having been primarily motivated by this factor.

So if something is never a primary factor, it's "sort of time to" do away with it. Brilliant. I can at least take comfort that "unlike many moderates, he consistently remembers that the opinions we choose to hold about questions of public policy actually have real-world correlatives." If his fan is correct, I can assume Yglesias has weighed consigning Sudan's Janjaweed victims to the bone pile, and found it an acceptable "real-world correlative."

I understand wanting to throw out stale rhetoric, and normally, I'd be right on board with "A Slogan! Exhausted! Should Never Be Repeated!" But "never again" is not that slogan.

I get the foreign policy drift: nations mainly act out of self-interest. But how they and the people they are composed of define that self-interest remains up for grabs. It may be that practical self-interest demands a 'broken window' approach to genocide and ethnic cleansing, that stopping bloodthirsty lawlessness and inhumanity in its tracks benefits us all. Call it a hunch.

I can see why Yglesias makes the lazy equation that "never again" must always and immediately equal "military intervention," since that's what Patrick Belton was calling for in the post that prompted Yglesias. Yet that is not the case. And even when military intervention is necessary to prevent mass murder, it may turn out that the kind of scum who delight in slaughtering the helpless will be struck dumb by the first brave person, let alone the first real soldier they encounter.*

But practical considerations of benefit and risk by themselves are not generally clear enough or motivating enough to make enough of us want to intervene against genocide. The people who first try to end mass murder in some far-off corner of the world have only a few weapons at their disposal. One is the shame most of us feel watching those murders happen and letting them happen. The other is that many, watching or learning of some atrocity, have at least in their hearts rent their garments, gnashed their teeth and vowed to themselves to not stand by idly someday if they could help it -- let alone craft jaded arguments that would effectively cause others to do so.

The decent, half-hopeful, half-hopeless response to those emotions -- "never again" -- is a vow best whispered to oneself, not paraded in a demonstration or screamed as a reproach to the less pure of heart. But it does no harm and it does some good to be challenged by that vow, no matter what Mr. Yglesias thinks (and whether or not it's convenient for his current views).

Yglesias is dead wrong. If "never again" is being said too often, it isn't the speaker's fault. Not yet. Not these days. It's the killers' fault, and it’s the world's fault for too often doing nothing about it. So it's also yours, and mine, ... and Matthew's, whose uncharacteristically ill-judged message has earned him a small extra share of the "credit" the next time nothing happens.


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*One might call this the Mbaye Diagne effect. Wallenberg, Rabe, Schindler, and Sugihara provide similar (if nonmilitary) examples as well. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:24:00 AM -- |    

 
Tools for bloggers

Wizbang Trackback: It's a way for the MoveableType-challenged among us to leave trackback data -- sort of "hi! I just wrote something about this post of yours" -- at MT and Typepad web sites.

Showreferer: A simple Java item that displays who the heck referred you to that seventh open window on your screen. (via siman.incutio). You can just drag the Showreferer link here to your Links toolbar, and see what it does.

New York Times Link Generator: Many people already know about this tool, which gives you links that are "preserved" even after the article itself vanishes into the pay-per-use archives. But what do you do if you find a New York Times article via Google or an extinct link on someone's blog, and you'd like to read it? If it's not too old, there's a way:

1. Copy the URL of the link you want to read, say, http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/20/business/20BELL.html
   
2. Visit (and optionally, save to your computer): http://nytimes.blogspace.com/urlarchive.txt
   
3. Search for the item from (1) in the file or on the screen you get with (2)
   
4. If you find a match, copy the full line, through "USERLAND": http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/20/business/20BELL.html?
   ex=1376712000&en=3fdf2ff1bdd71759&ei=5007&partner=USERLAND
   
5. Paste that into your browser URL address window -- and voila!

Right now, the oldest articles filed in "urlarchive.txt" are March 20, 2003, i.e., about 13 months old. I don't know yet whether the file just grows as new articles are catalogued, or whether it drops references to articles more than 13 months old. The "urlarchive.txt" file is referenced in this link generator source code that Aaron Swartz published.


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UPDATE, 4/26: I've realized the complicated "solution" I had for expired New York Times links was stupid. Just take the link from step (1) and submit it the the NYT Link Generator. I'm so used to using the nyt link bookmarklet (see same link) that I forgot all about the basic input form.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:34:00 AM -- |    

 
Now it's fit to print: Armenian genocide
The New York chapter of the Armenian National Committee of America has issued a press release reporting that the New York Times has revised its policy on the use of the term "Armenian genocide":

According to a news release by the International Association of Genocide Scholars, The New York Times revised guideline for journalists states that "after careful study of scholarly definitions of 'genocide,' we have decided to accept the term in references to the Turks' mass destruction of Armenians in and around 1915." The policy goes on to note that "the expression 'Armenian genocide' may be used freely and should not be qualified with phrasing like 'what Armenians call,' etc."

The New York Times guidelines continue, noting that, "by most historical accounts, the Ottoman empire killed more than one million Armenians in a campaign of death and mass deportation aimed at eliminating the Armenian population throughout what is now Turkey." Finally it advises journalists that "while we may of course report Turkish denials on those occasions when they are relevant, we should not couple them with the historians' findings, as if they had equal weight."

Way to go, New York Times. And high time. While some Turks are now speaking out for an honest reappraisal of their country's history, the Turkish government and establishment has engaged in constant, tenacious, and all too often successful efforts to deny the reality of the Armenian genocide of 1915-1918. That campaign has been an ongoing insult to the memory of the victims of that genocide and a source of real pain to their descendants, and has probably been part and parcel of Turkey's pattern of human rights abuses against Kurds and political dissidents.

If my father-in-law were still alive today, I know he'd be extremely pleased to see this victory. Here's to you, Arnie.



Additional links:

Armenian National Institute

Changing Minds at Microsoft: Armenian Genocide Denial Checked

Turks Breach Wall of Silence on Armenians (via Amygdala)

"European Union relations with South Caucasus" (Acrobat file): EU resolution, 02/28/2002. Paragraph 19:

...calls upon Turkey to take appropriate steps in accordance with its European ambitions, especially concerning the termination of the blockade against Armenia; reiterates in this respect the position in its resolution of 18 June 1987 on the political solution to the Armenian question recognising the Armenian genocide of 1915-1917 and calls upon Turkey to create a basis for reconciliation; [...]

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UPDATE, 4/26: A New Yorker "Talk of the Town" item by Gary Bass confirms the story, and specifically credits the Boston Globe and Times executive editor Bill Keller for the policy change. Via Amygdala.
EDIT, 4/26: The EU resolution was passed in 2002, not 2004.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:25:00 AM -- |    

 
Preemptive absolution, Al Qaeda style
A month ago, I mentioned Philip Pullman's great fantasy trilogy "His Dark Materials." In the final book, the "Church," fearing that the heroine will commit heresy, sends out a priest to assassinate her. The priest has undergone "preemptive penance" as part of his training:

Preemptive penance and absolutions were doctrines researched and developed by the Consistorial Court*, but not known to the wider Church. They involved doing penance for a sin not yet committed ... so as to build up, as it were, a store of credit.

From Thursday's New York Times: Spain Says Bombers Drank Water From Mecca and Sold Drugs:

"The leaders of [the] operation, evidently concerned about the effects of their plot on their souls, 'swallowed holy water from Mecca,' [Spanish Interior Minister Acebes] said, adding, 'They met periodically to carry out purification acts that would legitimize the committing of acts that could offend Islam.'"**

Of course, this kind of thing guts any pretense to moral authority of the "beliefs" such criminals hold: to say that yes, something is bad, but some variety of ritualistic hocus-pocus absolves you of blame in advance is to simply say "I can do whatever I want whenever I want to." That they don't see that themselves is part of the end stages of the psychological, or if you will the spiritual disease, that afflicts them, whether they are nominally Muslim, Christian, or something else.

This doesn't necessarily mean, as Pullman can seem to suggest, that religion itself is simply a lie dressed up as a priest, or that churches or religious orders inevitably prefer self-preservation to moral idealism. But as the Archbishop of Canterbury implied in a (surprisingly favorable) review of Pullman's work, the story is on to something else: people who seriously fear the death of their own religion or God are capable of the greatest crimes to avert that fate -- however illogical the prospect may seem. Both the stakes and the rewards seem infinite, while the boring demands of everyday morality seem petty by comparison.

I think much more should be made of of the profoundly unIslamic and faithless elements of Al Qaedists' own beliefs and actions. Al Qaeda can, should, and ultimately must be discredited in the Islamic world, on Islamic grounds. People who drink Mecca water to make their crimes go away in advance shouldn't just face prison or death on the battlefield (although that's a good start). They should also become objects of derision and contempt among the true and moral followers of the creed they've forsaken.


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* In Roman Catholic usage, the word "consistory" itself turns out to mean "an assembly of cardinals presided over by the pope for the solemn promulgation of papal acts, such as the canonization of a saint." The Catholic Encyclopedia provides a detailed account of the term, showing that these assemblies were once an integral part of the Catholic Church in helping manage ecclesiastical affairs, but now seem to be more or less ad hoc congresses of the principal cardinals of the church. In his use of the term, Pullman imagines an organization that resembles the Dominican order and its Inquisition. The term has also been used elsewhere; for example, "Consistorial Courts" in the Church of Ireland were charged with administering wills and the like, and may thus have also achieved a degree of worldly power.
** The wikipedia entry for Mecca says that "The water of [the Meccan well] Zamzam is believed to have special properties. Few pilgrims return from the Hajj without a large plastic bottle of Zamzam water." An Islamic web site, "Soundvision," says that Zamzam water is believed to have medicinal and even nutritional value, but makes no mention of conferring absolution from future sins. posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:51:00 PM -- |