Ferguson, Gaza, and Luhansk -- What Responsibility to Protect?
By William Boardman -- Reader Supported News
U.S. takes little responsibility, offers little protection
Ferguson, Gaza, and Luhansk bleed all the time these days and the United States does nothing very useful for any of them. Not in out "national interest." Simpler and easier to blame the victims. Can't waste our precious resources.
Ferguson, Gaza, and Luhansk have been bleeding for days, for weeks, for years, forever in current and chronic crisis, and what does the United States do to help any of them?
Faced with these and other
huge humanitarian challenges, the United States puts its big-hearted
humanitarian effort into a renewed war in Iraq, acting as if it was only a
mission to rescue Yazidis. To be sure,
it's a good thing to rescue Yazidis, even if the true U.S. motivation is only
to prop up a quasi-legitimate Iraqi government that will still only pretend to
love us a little for just a few more years, while continuing to oppress its own
other minorities.
But keeping the world safe for Zoroastrianism is an inherently good thing. Such tolerance should be universally honored, though few actually see it that way. All heretics have a legitimate right to the free practice of their beliefs without harming others. That clearly leaves out the Islamic State jihadis as much as their zealous Christian American counterparts. Also omitted would be all those other places where people whose crazy obsessions even control states, sometimes states with nuclear weapons. So the U.S. defense of tolerance is honorable enough, but way too paltry.
What in the world is more important than rushing to rescue Yazidis?
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