Flawed diplomacy

Earlier this week, I was taken aback as I passed a group of students celebrating the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. I was excited, of course, for what new opportunities await the Libyan people, but was saddened, because I did not like the idea of glamorizing the death of another human being—even if that person was a cruel dictator. This, to me, is far from American. It was also grievous that when President Obama commended the people of Libya for winning their revolution, he failed to mention the people of Bahrain and Syria who are being killed by the thousands while fighting for democracy. Reflecting on these skewed reactions, I was sickto my stomach at American international diplomacy.

Now that the people of Libya have accomplished part one of their revolution, the question remains—why did we go there in the first place? This is a question for Americans, but for Columbia students especially. Earlier this year, President Obama announced that the United States was supplying troops to Libya to help out “our fellow human beings.” Not to do so, he said, would have been “a betrayal of who we are.” Although I am completely in favor of ending inequity wherever it may exist, I am shocked that our moral sense in helping others is the only reason which led us to Libya. Clearly the president’s moral sense did not lead him into Egypt to topple the highly unpopular former President Hosni Mubarak. After the fall of Mubarak, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “To the people of Egypt, let me say: This moment of history belongs to you.” Her quote gives the impression that she supported the Egyptian people from the inception of their revolution. But the question remains about where she was before the revolution. We did not go into Egypt because it was a relatively stable country in a very strategic location in the world, and because Mubarak’s regime was friendly with our close ally, Israel. So although Mubarak might have been committing crimes against humanity, we were not too bothered because he was our friend. Why, then, are our sympathies for the Libyan people not taking us to Syria and Bahrain? When Secretary Clinton was asked the question about Syria, she responded that although “we deplore the violence in Syria, the situation there could not be equated to that of Libya.” The answer to why we are not going to Syria and Bahrain is not that the threshold of lives lost has not yet been reached to warrant action—rather, it is that we have no stake in those regimes being toppled. There can be no other explanation, and as future leaders of the world, we cannot listen to everything our politicians say.

It should not surprise Columbia students, ever eager to protest for humanitarian concerns, that our government does not pick which country to support based on humanitarianism, but rather out of our complicated national interests. By looking through the lens of imperialism, interests of the West can be traced from securing “spheres of influence” in Africa and the Middle East, to extracting precious resources such as diamonds or oil. When one considers that former President George W. Bush gave similar reasons for wanting to “liberate” the Iraqi people from the hostile rule of Saddam Hussein, there has to be more to the story of why we went into Libya. I won’t pretend that I know all of these complex reasons, but celebrating the public death of Gaddafi and turning a blind eye to problems in Syria and Bahrain are not going to solve these problems. Either we help everyone truly in need of support or help no one. Picking and choosing which countries we help is hypocritical and based on favoritism.

There are critics of this thinking who understandably say we cannot solve all the problems in the world because we live in a world of scarcity. We have limited time and resources, so we must pick and choose where we allocate them. But this is not what I take issue with—the problem I have with our foreign policy is that we give off the sense that we are the most moral country in the world, a nation that believes wholeheartedly in the sanctity of human life. Yet, oftentimes, we haphazardly defend democracy when it is convenient, and stay mum when it is not in our best interest. We shame Gaddafi for killing citizens and send troops to assist rebels in Libya, while we passively say to Syria “Please don’t kill.” I would rather the United States stop pretending to care about international human life, come clean, and say “We intervene only in places where we have interests,” than behave the way we are now. I could then sleep better at night knowing exactly where the priorities of our country are. We could then say to the other countries, “fend for yourselves—the humanitarian jig is up.”

Jelani Harvey is a Columbia College senior majoring in history. He is currently the resident adviser on John Jay 13, a facility supervisor at the Dodge Fitness Center, an admissions office tour guide, a member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and a member of the Multicultural Recruitment Committee. The Niceties of Speculation runs alternate Fridays.