When a cyclone hit Burma (alias Myanmar) recently, the repressive regime
that
rules that country dawdled for weeks before allowing international relief
teams to enter the country. "Aid agencies estimate more than one million
storm
survivors, mostly in the delta, still need acute help," re****ts the
Canadian
Broadcasting Corp. "Cyclone Nargis killed more than 78,000 people. . . .
More
than 58,000 are still missing and unaccounted for."
Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state during President Clinton's
second
term, blames George W. Bush. Before he came along, she claims in a New
York
Times op-ed piece, "diplomats and foreign policy experts" were moving
toward
"an integrated world system" in which "the international community would
recognize a responsibility to override sovereignty in emergency
situations--to
prevent ethnic cleansing or genocide, arrest war criminals, restore
democracy
or provide disaster relief when national governments were either unable or
unwilling to do so":
During the 1990s, certain precedents were created. The
administration of George H.W. Bush intervened to prevent
famine in Somalia and to aid Kurds in northern Iraq; the
Clinton administration returned an elected leader to power
in Haiti; NATO ended the war in Bosnia and stopped Slobodan
Milosevic's campaign of terror in Kosovo; the British halted
a civil war in Sierra Leone; and the United Nations authorized
life-saving missions in East Timor and elsewhere.
Three guesses as to what caused this brilliant plan to collapse:
The invasion of Iraq, with the administration's grandiose
rhetoric about pre-emption, was another matter, however. It
generated a negative reaction that has weakened sup****t for
cross-border interventions even for worthy purposes. Governments,
especially in the developing world, are now determined to
preserve the principle of sovereignty, even when the human
costs of doing so are high.
Thus, Myanmar's leaders have been ****elded from the repercussions
of their outrageous actions.
What principle, exactly, is Albright putting forward here? The 1990s
interventions she cites favorably are all cases in which, in her account,
the
intervening power was motivated by humanitarian concerns rather than
national
interest. But she also approves of the liberation of Afghanistan because
it
was "clearly motivated by self-defense."
On what basis, then, does she object to the liberation of Iraq? It was
both a
humanitarian intervention (toppling one of the world's most brutal
dictators)
and an act of self-defense ("the administration's grandiose rhetoric about
pre-emption" is merely a dysphemistic way of saying this).
Is Albright's idea that intervention is acceptable for reasons of
humanitarianism or national interest but not both? Maybe. That would
explain
the Clinton administration's intervention in Iraq, which Albright does not
mention in this article. Although the administration did not take action
to
remove Saddam Hussein from power, it did bomb the country and sup****t
strict
U.N. sanctions.
In 1996, as the hard-left radio show "Democracy Now!" recounted some years
later, Albright, then ambassador to the U.N., gave an interview to CBS's
"60
Minutes":
Correspondent Leslie Stahl said to Albright, "We have heard that
a half million children have died. I mean, that"s more children
than died in Hiro****ma. And--and you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeline Albright replied "I think this is a very hard choice,
but the price--we think the price is worth it."
That the sanctions killed half a million Iraqi children was almost
certainly a
pro-Saddam canard. But Albright did not dispute the premise. Instead, she
defended as "worth it" the policy that pur****tedly killed several times as
many people as are believed to have perished in this year's Burma cyclone.
You
can see why her New York Times op-ed does not reprise this case for
inhumane
intervention.
Even if Albright is unable to articulate the principles that guided the
Clinton administration's foreign policy, maybe she is right that it was
better
than its successor's. Let us test her specific claim that the Bush
administration's policy to Iraq is to blame for the intransigence of the
Burmese junta. Did that regime behave differently when Clinton was in the
White House and Albright at Foggy Bottom?
Nope. This is an excerpt from the State Department's 1999 Country Re****ts
on
Human Rights Practices:
Burma continued to be ruled by a highly authoritarian military
regime. Repressive military governments dominated by members of
the majority Burman ethnic group have ruled the ethnically Burman
central regions and some ethnic-minority areas continuously since
1962, when a coup led by General Ne Win overthrew an elected
civilian government. . . .
The Government's extremely poor human rights record and
longstanding severe repression of its citizens continued
during the year. Citizens continued to live subject at any
time and without appeal to the arbitrary and sometimes brutal
dictates of the military regime. Citizens did not have the
right to change their government. There continued to be credible
re****ts, particularly in ethnic minority-dominated areas, that
soldiers committed serious human rights abuses, including
extrajudicial killings and rape. Disappearances continued,
and members of the security forces tortured, beat, and otherwise
abused detainees.
The Clinton-Albright foreign policy was a failure even on its own terms
(or at
least on the terms she sets forth in today's op-ed). And indeed, why would
you
expect U.S. humanitarian interventions against repressive regimes in Haiti
and
the Balkans to make the Burmese junta any more willing to risk its own
power
to help the people over whom it rules? Albright's position is simply
incoherent.
--
It is simply breathtaking to watch the glee and abandon with which
the liberal media and the Angry Left have been attempting to turn
our military victory in Iraq into a second Vietnam quagmire. Too bad
for them, it's failing.
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