Democratic values? A nice idea ….

Just one more reason to not get involved. What percentage of those asylum seekers are the next Mohammed Atta? The number isn’t zero.

Asylum seekers should never be prosecuted for not having the legal right to enter the country where they’re seeking asylum. If you can enter the country legally you don’t need to seek asylum.

If you can enter the country legally you don’t need to seek asylum.

That’s not actually true. Entering on a tourist visa, or a student visa, or a work visa, and then seeking asylum is completely normal and often completely legal. This doesn’t change the point that those seeking asylum shouldn’t be prosecuted for not having the right entry papers (they shouldn’t, at least in the vast majority of cases) but it’s important to see that the last part just isn’t right.

The home countries bear a lot of the burden of migration too through internal displacement and they don’t register on any international lists.

I’m sure that Hague, May, and co. are motivated only by the deepest concern for the refugees’ welfare.

The climate in the UK is abysmal, and the food nearly constitutes a human rights violation all on its own.

That’s your point, isn’t it Ajay?

It does not in any sense justify the UK’s (or the US’s) policies on refugees to point out that <of course Jordan is going to have a lot more Syrian refugees than the UK, because they can walk to Jordan, while getting to the UK or the US is more complicated.

of course Jordan is going to have a lot more Syrian refugees than the UK, because they can walk to Jordan

It doesn’t always work like that…

We’ll democratically bomb Syria (or not, considering that ~10% of the US population is in favor) and democratically arm rebels, but democratically avoid actually making sure they win. Because think of the children and shut up, that’s why.

Chris: “b) the sums of money you list are paltry from the countries concerned.”

The amount from the USA is probably less than will be spent by dawn on day 1 of actual shooting; in fact I’ll bet it’s less than will be spent moving forces into place for the shooting.

I guess those who committed the atrocity of occupying Iraq can’t point to the fact that the actual major refugee crisis came out of that crisis.
But in terms of pointing to the hypocrisy of the mock democratic countries, one simply has to contrast the response to the massacres in Egypt committed by the military regime – massacres of prisoners, massacres of protesters, often caught on film – and the response to the massacres of Assad. On the one hand, you have such grave action as, uh, cancelling a joint military exercise, and on the other hand, bomb bomb bomb.
However, I think we can all grant that the president’s credibility (echo effects please) depends on us bombing the crap out of Syria. How can the leader of the free world feel all powerful if he doesn’t follow his red line rhetoric? I mean, this trumps all other considerations.

To be fair,

There is a difference between sticking up for someone in a fight vs. asking them to move in with you…

Slightly off-topic, but it may worth noting that a previous post by Chris Bertram, “Fingerprinting Migrants in France: The Back Story,” suggests that the UK Chief Inspector of Borders is not aware of the applicable legal regime for asylum. The inspector, John Vine, was quoted in a linked piece as saying something about migrants from France claiming or trying to claim asylum in the UK, when the Dublin Regulation, mentioned by Chris in the same post, requires those seeking asylum to claim it in the first EU country they enter, if I understand it correctly. So if someone seeking asylum first arrives in Greece, or France, or etc., they are barred from filing for asylum in the UK under the Dublin Regulation — unless I have misunderstood, which is quite possible.

” and is also one that’s likely to have superior outcomes for the refugees in question. ”

How?

Ajay says

“No, my point is that a situation where distant rich countries are paying for refugees to be housed in close-by (and in this case poorer) countries isn’t really a sign that anyone is skipping their humanitarian obligations, and is also one that’s likely to have superior outcomes for the refugees in question.”

And

“I *know* that May isn’t *acting* out *of* concern *for* their *welfare*.”

The dictionary says:

hu·man·i·tar·i·an
/(h)yo͞oˌmaniˈte(ə)rēən/
Adjective
Concerned with or seeking to promote human welfare

Maybe I’m missing something?

In defense of ajay here: refugees are people being rescued from a mortal danger in their country. Temporarily, until things get better there and they will be able to return. That’s the humanitarian part. Whether they wait in Jordan or the UK is irrelevant; where they want to be is irrelevant.

Adrian @23
That was my impression (and I was going to reply to JQuiggin) but I didn’t have the figures, so I’m glad you commented.

Aside from the horror of the whole situation, and the inability to chose a side to support in it: I am intrigued by the fact that the U.S. and Europe are willing to take some sort of action specifically on the use of chemical weapons. Is it possible that the this is what the future holds, i.e. not taking sides in any conflict that doesn’t have direct security implications, except to penalize any side that uses chemical weapons?

Is the West going to end up like referees at the match of the Islamic Reformation? Stay out of it, except to go in and slap someone who uses chemical weapons? Look at the pattern: Bush “brings democracy” to Iraq, they elect to be BFF with Iran, give oil rights to China, and now the country is slowly exploding in sectarian violence. Obama sides with democracy in Egypt, elections bring in the Muslim Brotherhood, they get thrown out, and now there’s another fight to the death, because the Muslim Brotherhood isn’t coming back without possessing a lot of guns. Consider this letter to a London newspaper:

“Iran is backing Assad. Gulf states are against Assad. Assad is against Muslim Brotherhood. Muslim Brotherhood and Obama are against General Sisi. But Gulf states are pro-Sisi. Which means they are against Muslim Brotherhood. Iran is pro-Hamas, but Hamas is backing Muslim Brotherhood. Obama is backing Muslim Brotherhood, yet Hamas is against the US. Gulf states are pro-US. But Turkey is with Gulf states against Assad, yet Turkey is pro-Muslim Brotherhood against General Sisi. And General Sisi is being backed by the Gulf states. Welcome to the Middle East…”

Aside from the fact that I think Obama is not pro-Muslim Brotherhood, but rather pro-“the results of any election” (as Bush had to claim to be, in Iraq, even after al-Sistani outmaneuvered him on the neocon intention of installing a US strongman, such as Chalabi), I think the writer of this letter points at the real problem.

The Protestant Reformation lasted about 130 years.

@ Layman #37 — Good question. To hang on to a vestige of humanity? To draw some kind of line in the sand?

I once read somewhere, and I wish I could find the source citation, that when the CIA started mucking around in the Middle East in the 50′s, they helped Nasser eliminate the lefty-liberal Egyptian intellectuals, among whom were some formidable brains. And since that time, there have been few or no books in the Western liberal tradition (Locke, Smith, Rousseau, etc.) available in Arabic editions.

That sounds like a pretty weak argument, to be honest. What, it’s been sixty years since Nasser and still no replacements have arisen? Is being an intellectual genetically determined in Egypt, like being a telepath?

And it’s not just the liberal intellectual tradition: there are very few translated books of any kind available in Arabic translation. IIRC the total number of books translated into Arabic from any language in the entire Arabic-speaking world over the last millennium is less than the total translated from English to Spanish in Spain in a single year. Whatever the reason for that, it’s probably got more of a cause than Nasser and the CIA…

People who had to flee from Afgahnistan due to working for the German army did not get asylum either. Some pro war voices seem to think like this: Letting refugees into our country is horrible, so we need to make sure Syrians dont have to run anymore, otherwise we might end up with that terrible refugee burden.

I wouldn’t scoff at the amount of aid being spent by the US and others, but granting everything in the post – that the pro military action politicians are being inconsistent with their stance on refugee policy – that doesn’t mean that the arguments those politicians are making are incorrect.

afaik, the idea is to raise the cost of deploying chemical weapons so that Assad does not resort to using them again. The US, UK, France, and other nations own the escalation ladder – Assad is unlikely to retaliate against military strikes.

If that idea is correct – a big if – then a limited and well calibrated military strike will pay off by deterring additional use of chemical weapons, which arguably will save lives. It’s a fair humanitarian argument, regardless of who is making it.

(I don’t know what happened there.)

We can take solace from the fact that it will be a limited one.

43: those numbers are slightly better but still pretty poor for a language spoken by so many people. 1500-2500 a year is still a tiny fraction of the figure for other languages. Point remains: there’s a general dearth of translated books in Arabic and it’s dubious why this should be ascribed entirely to Nasser and the CIA bumping off a few Egyptian intellectuals in the 50s.

The point about multilingual populations is an interesting one though, more for Morocco and North Africa than elsewhere I suspect – 35% of Egyptians have what the BC calls “intermediate” English, though I have no idea whether that means “happy to read books in English” and I rather suspect it doesn’t.

Fu Ko @41 seems to think that every time the U.S. fires a cruise missile it “goes to war.” It’s one way to look at things but not too helpful b.c it lumps a lot of v. different things together.

I’d remind Fu Ko of this (quote from the Wiki article on Aug. 1998 missile strikes):

The August 1998 bombings of Afghanistan and Sudan (codenamed Operation Infinite Reach by the United States) were American cruise missile strikes on terrorist bases in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan on August 20, 1998. The attack was in retaliation for the bombings of American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 224 people… and injured 5,000 others.

Fu Ko may think that Operation Infinite Reach was a case of the U.S. ‘going to war’, but I don’t find that a v. helpful description.

If I were a betting person, I would bet a large sum that the Obama admin will keep the U.S. direct mil. involvement in Syria very limited. There is no indication that a major mil. intervention is in the offing, as opposed to a limited, presumably one-off strike (on the merits of which I’m not expressing an opinion here).

It’s unclear at this point how the Syrian civil war will end. Best case scenario is some kind of political settlement, which seems right now to be remote. More likely is that the fighting will continue for some time. Assad’s fate at the moment is difficult to predict. Thus I’m not sure why Fu Ko refers to “Assad’s defeat” as if it is a foregone conclusion. It may end up that way, but at this point it’s not clear. I wish I had a crystal ball like Fu Ko’s.

Lee Arnold @39

Is the question why is there no real Arab left? Afaik there is, and has been historically, although it has been weakened in the past number of decades (by, for example, the failures of Pan Arabism and lose of institutional support, the defeat in 67, larger regional trends in increasing religiosity, the rise of the oil states and greater institutional support for religious intellectuals etc. You also have some hostility in post colonial countries (initially anyway) to western intellectual traditions which were often used as cover for imperialism)
But its complicated, I think (and thats only my non expert, simplified first take on an answer) If you get a response from the Egyptian IR scholar will you post it here?

ps I remember B Lewis running with that ‘how many books were translated into Arabic’ talking point a few years ago and it doesnt strike me as saying anything particularly useful, more a political soundbite

I don’t think Nasser needed CIA help squelching independent thought in Egypt. The generals came up with that by themselves. Squelched the Muslim Brotherhood too. More generally, the Arab left got co-opted. Authoritarian states made the right noises about public control of the economy and ramped up delivery of basic social services through increased public sector jobs, while the Cold War stances kept the Arab left in a pro-USSR position (in addition, Arabs were getting graduate education in eastern Europe in the 60s and 70s and coming back with that era’s version of Marxist economics). By the 1990s, all the pillars of that world view were gone, but the posturing continued, and Islamism, not socialism, was rising to fill the void.

Katherine, isn’t the lack of any reasonable course of action in and of itself a good justification for inaction?

(Where I take it that by “action” you mean some level of Western military intervention, and by “inaction” you mean “no Western military intervention.”)

Where you can foresee no likelihood of making things better by getting involved, you should not get involved.

To call this “righteous laissez faire” is simply to muddy the water with name-calling. The reasons for staying out are no better, and no worse, if those not involved feel righteous or distraught or agonized or anything else. As Westerners, our feelings are really not the point. The point is that we cannot make things better by military intervention, no matter how we feel about it.

Katherine and pedant, If someone uses chemical (or nuclear) weapons, I think a lot of other people are going to come to the conclusion that a line has been crossed, and that it won’t stop there, or even be kept inside Syria. Remember that 90% of people in the US want no action on Syria — but that was last week’s poll.

That was my other question above — is breaking the war conventions the new excuse for intervention?

“A line has been crossed”–when did this phrase become an automatic off-switch for thinking?

Since a line has been crossed, we should no longer reason about our national self-interests in the traditional ways? We should no longer respect international norms? We should no longer consider how other nations will respond to our intervention?

Since a line has been crossed, we should now do things that have no realistic chance of making the present or the future any better?

Assad ought not to have used chemical weapons. That is not in dispute. But as he says today, in an exclusive op-ed he penned for the Onion, “Trust me, I am incapable of being taught a lesson at this point.”

This has always been the reality of chemical weapons conventions. So long as the violations do not affect the vital national interests of major powers, they will go unpunished. This is not something new. Obama did not create this. Even Bush and Rumsfeld, when they green-lighted Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons against Iran, did not create this. It has always been true.

A line has been crossed. And nothing has changed about the wisdom of military intervention.

1) layman @53: “there is no agreement among international lawyers on the definition of war”– Bledsoe & Boczek, The Intl Law Dictionary (ABC-Clio, 1987), p.343. The quoted statement is roughly 25 yrs old but I believe it remains true today.

2) Katherine: see e.g. posts/links at Duck of Minerva; Monkey Cage, already linked by ronan, above; and recent (8/28) disc. on PBSNewsHour w Daalder (for a strike), Melem, and Mearsheimer (against a strike).

LFC @ 62

I think you’re straining language and reason to no real purpose. According to the Geneva Conventions of 1947, the law of war is triggered by the existence of ‘armed conflict’ between states. So, legally, firing cruise missiles into Syria creates what international law considers a state of war.

The idea that one can bomb one’s neighbors without ‘going to war’ is in my view pernicious. If Syria were to launch cruise missiles at the Pentagon, which would you opine: That Syria had committed an act of war against the United States; or that they hadn’t, because, after all, Bledsoe & Boczek tell us ‘there is no agreement among international lawyers on the definition of war’?

LFC @ 63

I still don’t understand your objection to using ‘going to war again’ as a description of deciding to bomb Syria. I think it’s because you want to make distinctions between this example and other examples of ‘going to war’. OK, but you need to make those distinctions. How’s this different?

‘Btw, why didn’t Fu Ko say “France is going to war again” or “Britain is going to war again”? ‘

I don’t know. Maybe he lives in the US, and is therefore concerned about what the US does in a way he isn’t about Britain or France? Maybe he thinks Britain and France would do nothing without the ‘leadership’ of the US in this matter?

In any event, it’s an odd objection. If I say ‘Germany went to war again in 1939’, is that statement false because I failed to mention that Italy also went to war again in 1939?

LFC @ 67

If I were to say ‘the US is going to war again’, what I would mean is that the US seems incapable of learning any lesson about the limits of military power and intervention. In the long list of wars you mentioned earlier, it’s hard to pick many that ultimately served even US national interests, much less humanitarian ones.

All indications are that we’ll bomb Syria enough so that no one can say we did nothing, but that we’ll be sure to limit the bombing so as not to unduly irritate Russia, Iran, etc. Framed that way, the action can’t possibly prevent the Assad regime from visiting misery on the people of Syria again and at length. We’ll kill people, probably some innocent people, for no reason except to avoid embarassment.

It’s foolishness. Plus, by even entertaining the notion, we get the added spectacle of Donald Rumsfeld (!) complaining about our lack of justification for acting in Syria.

*for links*

Potential options? There’s all sorts of things that could be done, from humanitarian aid to better-armed observers to the distribution of gas masks. There’s a bit of a lack of imagination.

Meanwhile, Fu Ko is right; deliberately bombing another country is an act of war, regardless of who the participants are. It may be a war justified by UN resolution, but you can’t say it’s not a war. (If it’s covert and denied by the aggressor, it’s terrorism instead)

(Off topic) Are there any cognitive scientists out there, to answer the question – why is it that when I post in anger I always produce more typos than otherwise? On the whole, I’d rather be writing ‘Philadelphia’.