Libertarians, stop trying to play the pacifist card. You are not pacifists.

logicallypositive:

squashed:

libertarians-and-stoya responded to my support for Obama on the grounds that he’s competently kept the ship afloat and pointed it in the right direction by writing:

Forgot “mass murder of Muslim men, women and children”. Seems pretty boring to me.

The Cheeky Libertarian has been doing the same thing. There’s a war. The U.S. is part of it. Therefore, they argue, everything that happens in the war is directly attributable to Obama.

I have a profound respect for a principled pacifism and for anybody whose desire to avoid war at all costs is coupled with a robust peace-making agenda. There are valid and important criticisms of U.S. actions and motivations abroad from people who loathe war and are willing to work to stop it.

But that’s not what the libertarians are doing. They’re not pacifists. They’re non-interventionists. They offer a stomach-turning false pacifism that only pretends to care about “Muslim men, women and children” for long enough to advance isolationist policy goals. Their willingness so stand against any particular war ends the moment the U.S. disentangles itself. Their mantra isn’t “Peace now.” It’s “We can’t be fucked to care about other countries.”

When you believe in peace for the sake of peace, we’ll talk. Until then, let’s not bullshit each other.

no just no

My position is far more consistent with pacifism than any government interventionist attempt to ‘create’ peace (I will never understand how one brings peace with predator drones or armoured tanks, but that’s the claim a lot of people seem to be making by supporting interventionism). I believe in peace for the sake of peace, but insofar as one can only control his or herself, the principle of non-aggression, and therefore anti-interventionism, is the most effective advocacy through which peace can be achieved. It makes absolutely no sense to attempt to control others in an effort to bring about peace, as control requires force, which not only perpetuates conflict, but also expands it to comprise more actors and, in turn, more victims.

We are not going to solve the coltan conflict in the DRC or the Israel-Palestine conflict with violence and the United Nation’s involvement in the Rwandan genocide has shown us that international involvement, in particular, often exacerbates these conflicts to result in more harm to the victims (not to mention that the Hutu-Tutsi conflict resulted exclusively as a result of ethnic tensions created by the preferential treatment (and after independence, power) given to the Tutsis by the Belgians for their slender physical features). Similarly, La Violencia in Colombia (as well as the ongoing drug wars, particularly involving the FARC, but those include the US, so I guess I can’t mention them), the violence (and sheer fear) of the Shining Path in Peru, the violent rise of Pinochet’s military regime in Chile, the Armenian Genocide, the Cambodian genocide, Apartheid in South Africa, and the almost daily hate crimes against Turkish immigrants in Germany, as well as so many other atrocities that have happened and are happening, are indescribably terrible.

My heart truly goes out to those who suffer and have suffered. But it is one thing to be a bystander who attempts diplomacy (which I am a huge advocate for) and quite another to be the aggressor (even if mistakenly). Obama, as Commander in Chief, is entirely responsible for the initiation and/or perpetuation of violence by our military, abroad and at home, because that is the one thing he has essentially complete control over. He also personally ordered the assassination of Anwar Al-awlaki and his 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki—the latter was killed in a drone strike while trying to find his father (as in, not incidentally, but as a result of an independently orchestrated attack), who had already been killed (when he was killed, he was eating with his friends, none of whom survived the attack).

Just because the US seems to be involved in most conflicts these days, in one way or another, that doesn’t mean you are in any position to claim that my (yes, me personally, as you seem to single me out) vocal opposition to US imperialism and violence somehow implies apathy regarding other atrocities. It is precisely because I care about minimizing suffering that I don’t encourage American politicization of atrocities abroad. It is precisely because of efforts, such as ‘Kony 2012’—which has reawakened serious trauma in many victims, who otherwise had left the terror behind them, for a completely misguided guerilla marketing campaign which can only result in more funding for the Ugandan government, who is partially responsible for the very atrocities IC claims to decry—which cause more harm than good, that I focus on the atrocities which the US government initiates and can easily cease, rather than those for which my efforts can do little, if any, good.

And even if there are libertarians who fall under your criticisms, I will remind you that any peace is good peace. ‘Liberaler than thou’ criticisms don’t work, socially, politically, or morally, especially when you’re supporting Bush 2.0.

We got trouble.

visiblechildren:

For those asking what you can do to help, please link to visiblechildren.tumblr.com wherever you see KONY 2012 posts. And tweet a link to this page to famous people on Twitter who are talking about KONY 2012!

I do not doubt for a second that those involved in KONY 2012 have great intentions, nor do I doubt for a second that Joseph Kony is a very evil man. But despite this, I’m strongly opposed to the KONY 2012 campaign.

KONY 2012 is the product of a group called Invisible Children, a controversial activist group and not-for-profit. They’ve released 11 films, most with an accompanying bracelet colour (KONY 2012 is fittingly red), all of which focus on Joseph Kony. When we buy merch from them, when we link to their video, when we put up posters linking to their website, we support the organization. I don’t think that’s a good thing, and I’m not alone.

Invisible Children has been condemned time and time again. As a registered not-for-profit, its finances are public. Last year, the organization spent $8,676,614. Only 32% went to direct services (page 6), with much of the rest going to staff salaries, travel and transport, and film production. This is far from ideal for an issue which arguably needs action and aid, not awareness, and Charity Navigator rates their accountability 2/4 stars because they lack an external audit committee. But it goes way deeper than that.

The group is in favour of direct military intervention, and their money supports the Ugandan government’s army and various other military forces. Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them, arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda and hasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. These books each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Still, the bulk of Invisible Children’s spending isn’t on supporting African militias, but on awareness and filmmaking. Which can be great, except that Foreign Affairs has claimed that Invisible Children (among others) “manipulates facts for strategic purposes, exaggerating the scale of LRA abductions and murders and emphasizing the LRA’s use of innocent children as soldiers, and portraying Kony — a brutal man, to be sure — as uniquely awful, a Kurtz-like embodiment of evil.” He’s certainly evil, but exaggeration and manipulation to capture the public eye is unproductive, unprofessional and dishonest.

As Chris Blattman, a political scientist at Yale, writes on the topic of IC’s programming, “There’s also something inherently misleading, naive, maybe even dangerous, about the idea of rescuing children or saving of Africa. […] It hints uncomfortably of the White Man’s Burden. Worse, sometimes it does more than hint. The savior attitude is pervasive in advocacy, and it inevitably shapes programming. Usually misconceived programming.”

Still, Kony’s a bad guy, and he’s been around a while. Which is why the US has been involved in stopping him for years. U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) has sent multiple missions to capture or kill Kony over the years. And they’ve failed time and time again, each provoking a ferocious response and increased retaliative slaughter. The issue with taking out a man who uses a child army is that his bodyguards are children. Any effort to capture or kill him will almost certainly result in many children’s deaths, an impact that needs to be minimized as much as possible. Each attempt brings more retaliation. And yet Invisible Children supports military intervention. Kony has been involved in peace talks in the past, which have fallen through. But Invisible Children is now focusing on military intervention.

Military intervention may or may not be the right idea, but people supporting KONY 2012 probably don’t realize they’re supporting the Ugandan military who are themselves raping and looting away. If people know this and still support Invisible Children because they feel it’s the best solution based on their knowledge and research, I have no issue with that. But I don’t think most people are in that position, and that’s a problem.

Is awareness good? Yes. But these problems are highly complex, not one-dimensional and, frankly, aren’t of the nature that can be solved by postering, film-making and changing your Facebook profile picture, as hard as that is to swallow. Giving your money and public support to Invisible Children so they can spend it on supporting ill-advised violent intervention and movie #12 isn’t helping. Do I have a better answer? No, I don’t, but that doesn’t mean that you should support KONY 2012 just because it’s something. Something isn’t always better than nothing. Sometimes it’s worse.

If you want to write to your Member of Parliament or your Senator or the President or the Prime Minister, by all means, go ahead. If you want to post about Joseph Kony’s crimes on Facebook, go ahead. But let’s keep it about Joseph Kony, not KONY 2012.

~ Grant Oyston, visiblechildren@grantoyston.com

Grant Oyston is a sociology and political science student at Acadia University in Nova Scotia, Canada. You can help spread the word about this by linking to his blog at visiblechildren.tumblr.com anywhere you see posts about KONY 2012.

To expand on my post about this yesterday: I agree wholeheartedly with everything except the reference to Charity Navigator’s assessment of Invisible Children.

No organization should ever be evaluated based on what percentage of their funds are spent on ‘overhead’ (an ENTIRELY arbitrary and completely distorted metric used to discredit fantastic charities and prop up terribly ineffective ones). Charity Navigator, along with all other extant charity watchdog organizations are 100% overhead, 100% deceptive, and 100% useless. Invisible Children is a terrible charity because it is essentially a voluntourism organization which offers (and I don’t use this term often, so for my leftist followers, enjoy) privileged White Westerners feel-good vacations which they can write about in their college admissions essays, completely bereft of any substantive meaning or positive change for those who face real plights in the nations IC claims to help. Their accountability probably is terrible, but we really don’t need Charity Navigator to help us navigate our way around that one.

And, as I wrote in my article for YAL’s most recent edition of YAR, throwing money and dropping bombs will never do anything but perpetuate the poverty and violence the US government and multiple misguided Western ‘charitable’ organizations claim to seek to eliminate.