Non-interventionist foreign policy & genocide

[CuriousOnlooker]

Hi chaps =)

I'm having a bit of trouble on a non-interventionist foreign policy when up against dictators that severely punish and hurt their own people. If racial cleansing, genocide, holocausts etc are happening, are there moral grounds for America (or indeed my home country, Britain) to intervene and tell the leaders of those countries "No, you can't kill your own people like that."

And if not, how can I defend a non-interventionist foreign policy without seeming like an ogre who wants ethnic cleansing?

It's tricky.

Thanks

 

[Truth Warrior]

Hi chaps =)

I'm having a bit of trouble on a non-interventionist foreign policy when up against dictators that severely punish and hurt their own people. If racial cleansing, genocide, holocausts etc are happening, are there moral grounds for America (or indeed my home country, Britain) to intervene and tell the leaders of those countries "No, you can't kill your own people like that."

And if not, how can I defend a non-interventionist foreign policy without seeming like an ogre who wants ethnic cleansing?

It's tricky.

Thanks

The US Federal government has often recently just turned a "blind eye" against those types of atrocities, especially when the perpetrators and/or their allies have nukes.

Our own government history here, does not stand up for any close kind of scrutiny, on those same types of issues.<IMHO>

 

[synapz]

I believe the key might lie in the non-aggression axiom. If genocide is occurring somewhere, and you want it to stop, then more power to you. Grab a gun and go do it yourself, or simply invest in a venture to go put an end to it.

What is not okay is to use force against people to *make* them pay for a genocide-halting venture that they may or may not approve of. Which is precisely what taxation for the purpose of warmaking is.

 

[NationaliseIt]

The US Federal government has often recently just turned a "blind eye" against those types of atrocities, especially when the perpetrators and/or their allies have nukes.

Our own government history here, does not stand up for any close kind of scrutiny, on those same types of issues.<IMHO>

So because of past actions our hands should be bound?

 

[Truth Warrior]

So because of past actions our hands should be bound?

Nope, I tend to agree with Ron and several others of the FFs on foreign matters. We have much more than enough of our own shit to clean up right here.<IMHO>

I'm an NAP guy ( AKA libertarian ).

 

[Zolah]

Hi chaps =)

I'm having a bit of trouble on a non-interventionist foreign policy when up against dictators that severely punish and hurt their own people. If racial cleansing, genocide, holocausts etc are happening, are there moral grounds for America (or indeed my home country, Britain) to intervene and tell the leaders of those countries "No, you can't kill your own people like that."

And if not, how can I defend a non-interventionist foreign policy without seeming like an ogre who wants ethnic cleansing?

It's tricky.

Thanks

Well we have an interventionist foreign policy right now and haven't been able to prevent any genocides, infact we've been encouraging the dictators who perpetrate them, and funding them...and giving them the damn weapons they use to commit the genocides. Perhaps if we stop intervening in other countries business such as supporting and funding Pol Pot in Cambodia to the tune of billions of dollars or Saddam Hussein who used American supplied weapons to kill over a million Kurds then we may not have to later intervene to stop them as well. But as you see, intervention breeds these conditions of "anti-communist" people as it was in the past who we wanted to help, this is interventionism - Saddam, Pol Pot, Ho Chi Minh, these are the results of our interventionism.

 

[constituent]

ROFL, you mean like the ones "we" have kicked off in Africa?

 

[hugolp]

So because of past actions our hands should be bound?

Honestly, if the USA goverment would not intervine militarely in the world, it would be a safer place.

Hugo

 

[NathanTurner]

It's a good question, but the idea of intervention is usually more desirable than its practical application. Are the people we have in power the kinds of people you can trust to use overwhelming force for our greater good? Have they been trustworthy with such power in the past? Obviously not; so why would they be in the future?

Intervention sets a dangerous precedent: if you can intervene to stop genocide, while turning a blind eye to the many other genocides around the world, why can't you intervene for other purposes? Through political sophistry, they can make even the grossest violation of human rights out to be "an imperative for the security and well being of the world." Then we have the old Neocon pretext for naked aggression: the preemptive strike.

All this leads me to believe that intervention is never the answer, solely because of the motives and pretexts of those wanting so desperately to intervene.

 

[raiha]

Yup, the US has its grubby paws over getting most of the genocidal sociopathic maniacs in history into power and then lying low whilst they commit their atrocities: Chile, Iran, Iraq, Indonesia, East Timor, etc and then calling the people who have the temerity to fell pissed off by it "terrorists".
Then you don't hear a pin drop in Congress on the issue of Tibet. Why? Your Military Industrial Congress (whoops Complex) has BOUGHT most members of Congress apart from such wonderful people as the Most Venerable Ron Paul.
MIC pervades your land, your culture (normalizing the unthinkable) and your psyche. God help you all because your national karma does not bear thinking about!

Humph, Humph and thrice humph!!!

 

[raiha]

OOPs sorry i said you brought the most sociopathic tyrants in HISTORY. Make that the last eighty years...don't suppose i can lay the blame Vlad the Impaler, Caligula, Alexander the Great and Oliver Cromwell at your feet. Although as a Buddhist, we go along with the idea of rebirth...hmmm