Democracy from above

Two articles,  a long one in the NY Times and a shorter, somewhat less confident one in The Guardian,  take the German government to task for not joining the coalition bombing and enforcing a no-fly zone over Libya.  The papers quote leading German newspapers and former politicians stating that the decision not to participate in the action over Libya was a grand mistake.  The primary reason why Germany should join the action--because everyone else is doing it. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/24/world/europe/24germany.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/24/germans-disquiet-absence-libya-action?INTCMP=SRCH

No compelling case is made concerning the Libyan people, the future of democracy, or the humanitarian suffering to be averted.  Instead the argument runs like this:  all your friends are in the coalition, you should join as well, otherwise you won't be invited next time there is a party (or seat on the UN Security Council, permanent or otherwise).  I have gone to parties with the thought "If I don't go this time, I won't get invited back."  Lame excuse to get me out of the house, but sometimes I wind up having fun.   The same reason can not and should not be the basis for armed military intervention. 

Merkel and Westerwelle are spoiling their relations with France, England, Turkey and the US.  Never mind that the French have abstained from participating in any number of NATO endeavors over the life of the alliance.  True, Westerwelle is probably more interesting in giving himself the profile of an independent-minded foreign secretary, one who does not cave in to allied pressure but who weighs the situation for himself.  Yes, Westerwelle is copying Gerhard Schroeder's trick of abstaining from US military actions in the Middle East.  It worked brilliantly for Schroeder when he ran against George Bush in Germany; it probably won't get Westerwelle as many points running against Obama in the upcoming election.

Aside from these tactical calculations, there is the real democratic point that a very large majority of the German population is opposed to German military intervention in Libya.  The Guardian acknowledges that Germans really don't want to go to war again and that the Afghanistan expedition is profoundly unloved in Germany.  The NY Times wants to argue past this fact.  Neither article considers whether British or American popular opinion supports military engagement in Libya.

It is almost as if the two newspapers are advocating that Germany, as well as other governments, should ignore the popular, anti-militarist opinion of their own populace even as NATO is supposedly fighting to defend the democratic will of the Libyan people.   Ignore democratic will in order to defend it.

Air War

Aerial attack always seems justified to those in the sky. The subtle distinctions that decide actions on the street are unintelligible from above.

It will take a long time for the perspective from the ground to give the other side of the story. Slaughterhouse Five was published 24 years after the firebombing of Dresden.

The newly leaked footage of two Apache helicopters shooting a cluster of Iraqis on the ground is not likely to elicit the domestic moral and emotional groundswell that critics of the American occupation might expect.

http://wikileaks.org/

Europeans might be horrified, but Americans have for too long now seen cop shows in which the audience automatically identifies with the camera in the police car or up in the helicopter. Whomever is being depicted in the grainy film must be guilty, otherwise they would not be in the crosshairs to begin with. If you are “caught” on an official video, you are doing something wrong—this presumption will lead audiences to side with the US military.

The contrast between the familiar American voices of the pilots versus the vague humanoids running on the ground will further pull viewers’ allegiances toward the US military. Yes, the gunners are callous and cocky in their gleeful annihilation of the Iraqis on the street, but again only audience members who have not played a violent video game before, nor watched a teenager play one, will really be surprised at the pilots’ jocular tone.

The audience is immune from the violence, with the camera circling in the air, our screens on our laps, at our desks. The war has been dragging on, no one is surprised that terrible things happen.

The difference that the vantage point makes is brought out vividly at the end of the video, when US troops arrive in vehicles, soon they run around much like the Iraqis killed minutes before, except this time they are uniformed men racing with wounded children in their arms.

Surely there is no real sociological difference between the Americans in the helicopter and those in the humvees, yet one bunch is cracking jokes about not bringing kids to a battle (how about not bringing a battle to kids?) and another bunch seems to be moving very quickly to save them. The Americans on the ground are racing to pick up the bodies of the people who had just a few minutes earlier been trying to pick up the bodies of the first victims. The only difference is that the Americans are in uniform and they are running in a deliberate direction because they do not think the helicopter will shoot at them. The Iraqis at the beginning of the video were milling around on the street, also not believing that they will be shot at from the helicopters.

These videos are immediate, even the leak did not take long—two years, but the slow moral process, the back and forth debate over what was justified or not, will drag on.

I remember in 1993 leading a group of retired UCLA graduates on a trip up the Mosel and down the Rhine. For the most part, these were very conservative people, from Orange County. The kind who tell you that Mexicans are ruining the California school system and that Germany is a nice place because it is so white.

There were two quiet guys who kept away from the others, modest and not particularly wealthy, if you asked them had they ever been in Germany before, they would say no, but they had been over it. They had both served in bombers during World War Two, felt they had done the right thing in the war, but now they wanted to come back fifty years later to see the place they had bombed.

They were shy, kept to themselves, didn’t eat and drink like the other travelers. One of them had gone to Stanford on the GI bill and studied German after the war. They were uncomplicated, not particularly arrogant or defensive, they just wanted to see the country, maybe talk to some of the people there.