There’s been a fun little debate going on over at Andrew Sullivan’s site among a couple of his guest posters: TNR’s Jamie Kirchick and Obsidian Wings’ hilzoy. The exchange has been quite informative, and since my friend hilzoy is clearly winning the “debate,” it’s been quite entertaining.
Kirchick got the ball rolling with a post about his Providence Journal op-ed on what he calls the “Obama Doctrine,” which he defines this way: “The United States will remain impassive in the face of genocide.” Kirchick explained:
In a July 21 interview entitled, “Obama: Don’t Stay in Iraq over Genocide,” the Associated Press reported Obama’s belief that “the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.”
Pressed about the contention — widely shared by people knowledgeable about the situation in Iraq — that a rapid withdrawal of U.S. troops early next year could lead to genocide, Obama responded, “Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done.”
For reasons that we’ve already talked about, Kirchick is mistaken, and confused about what Obama actually said. It’s not that complicated — Obama wasn’t suggesting genocide is tolerable, and he wasn’t advocating indifference for murder on a grand scale. He was simply making the point that if genocidal attacks alone were the basis for a massive military deployment, we’d have deployed thousands of U.S. troops to central Africa right now. That we haven’t suggests that genocide — or in the case of Iraq, speculative potential for genocide — does not drive U.S. military deployments.
In response to Kirchick’s confusion, hilzoy offered a very detailed post, explaining the variety of reasons that Kirchick’s analysis was off-base. Indeed, using a variety of well-sourced arguments, hilzoy (politely) explained why Kirchick badly misrepresented Obama’s actual policy.
It led to an interesting response from Kirchick.
Instead of acknowledging his mistakes, the TNR staffer suggested his argument was just a thought experiment.
I thank [hilzoy] for her thoughtful reply to my piece on the nascent “Obama Doctrine.” I’m not really sure if there is an Obama Doctrine, but was hoping to be provocative and stir some debate.
Really? Kirchick wrote a piece for publication in a newspaper that accused a top presidential candidate of being indifferent towards genocide. He got basic facts wrong, and confronted with his mistakes, Kirchick argues that he simply wanted to “stir some debate”?
That’s a rather silly response. Professional writers aren’t supposed to submit pieces for publication with errors of fact and judgment just to get people talking, at least not if they expect to be taken seriously.
As for the substance of all of this, Kirchick’s inflammatory argument — Obama is indifferent to genocide — is wrong, but Matt Yglesias noted that it does bring up an important policy distinction.
When you look at different takes on the Darfur situation, you see them divided into two main camps. On the one hand, you have people who are interested in Darfur who don’t normally write about humanitarian issues or Africa, but who do frequently write in support of militarism and in derogation of the UN. In this camp you have Kirchick, The Weekly Standard, Leon Wieseltier, Marty Peretz, etc. These people believe, naturally enough, that unilateral American military intervention in Darfur is the only responsible option. On the other hand, you have people whose interest in Darfur stems from a larger interest in humanitarian issues and in Africa. I’d take the International Crisis Group, the Enough Project, and Africa Action as typical of the latter. If you follow the links, you’ll see that none of these organizations think that what Kirchick is saying about this is correct.
Meanwhile, as Kirchick himself notes, Obama is pretty close to Samantha Power who wrote the book on genocide. Like the people in the second camp, she’s a skeptic about unilateral military intervention as the prime tool of fighting genocide. Indeed, she explains in the book that she thinks this kind of Kirchick-style thinking is counterproductive; sending people the message that if you care about this issue you need to sign on for a costly and geopolitically problematic military intervention leads far more people to say “I should stop caring about this issue” than it leads to say “I should support a costly and geopolitically problematic military intervention.” Thus, they favor thinking pragmatically about actions that might realistically be implemented.
The difference, though, is that if you’re more interested in wielding Darfur as a bludgeon against liberals, the UN, Arabs, etc. than you are in saving people’s lives, this kind of pragmatism becomes less appealing.
One hopes that Kirchick is paying attention.