Beyond the Drum Circle: Stopping Genocide in the Real World

There is within us some hidden power, mysterious and secret, which keeps us going, keeps us alive, despite the natural law. If we cannot live on what is permitted, we live on what is forbidden. That is no disgrace for us. What is permitted is no more than an agreement, and what is forbidden derives from the same agreement. If we do not accept the agreement, it is not binding on us. And particularly where this forbidden and permitted comes from a barbarous conqueror, who limits life to one made in his image, his murderous and larcenous views. 

— from the Warsaw Ghetto  diary of Chaim Kaplan  

Because this is a blog about North Korea, I  expend many words here on the subject of  genocide:  what the word means and  who defined it, what can be done to stop it, who is trying, who has done and  is doing nearly nothing about it, who is perpetuating it, and who is joining in  it.   

The most consistently astonishing thing about genocide in our time is  how little those who  write and speak movingly about the genocides of the past often  seem to  say and do about genocides that can still be stopped.  Jules Crittenden inspires me to think more about this today, when he  looks at  the popularization of  feel-good responses to genocide. 

These feel-good responses have several common points.   First, all are the stuff of  drum circles  —  concerts,  solemn words, and toothless sanctions, all apparently based on the presumption that the Janjaweed are gravely concerned about George Clooney’s disapproval.  Second, they cease to be feel-good and are abandoned when any cost is attached to them.  Third, the sanctimony almost always comes too late to save anyone.  I can think of no better example than Kofi Annan’s apology for a genocide  in Rwanda that he could have  prevented, but didn’t, even as he continued to fail to take effective action  against genocides in Darfur and North Korea, and just as the depth of Saddam Hussein’s corruption of Annan’s U.N. was revealed.  You wouldn’t think that the phrase “never again” was  meant to be  posthumous, but  it  became the  epitaph of  the last century.  So far, this one doesn’t seem to be going any differently.   A thousand mass graves could have been marked with “never again” before they were filled.

[Jewish resistance fighter, Warsaw Ghetto, 1943]

I’ll add a fourth common point about the feel-gooders:  their condemnation  of genocide is  seldom directed at oppressors who successfully cast themselves as enemies of America.  Hating America  has become  a license to commit genocide, because when a tyrant acts as ventriloquist for  his nation’s hatred of America,  it must be  our fault for failing  to “understand” and “engage” with the murderers.   That may be why you will seldom hear any Hollywood actor, liberal politician, or anchorman breathe the words, “Camp 22.”  If you’re new to this site, you’ve probably never heard of the place, although in its cruelty and scale it’s easily comparable to Tuol Sleng or Mauthausen.  Fifty years from now, schoolchildren will  make solemn visits to memorials at Camp 22, and  grad students will write theses about it.  Yet  today, while Camp 22’s next victims can still be saved, it’s another unpleasant topic we choose not to bring up for the sake of a diplomatic dance  whose end result is mournfully predictable.   The angst of those who should be talking about Camp 22 is wasted instead on places that aren’t remotely comparable to Tuol Sleng or Mauthausen, though  too many  would  squander their credibility and betray their true motives  by suggesting otherwise.

It’s also why you’ll never hear feel-good featherweights  like George Clooney, Barack Obama,  or Nancy Pelosi advocate any remotely plausible  plan to prevent an undeniably likely genocide in Iraq.  There is no feel-good, cost-free, plausible way to prevent that genocide or the other wars that will emerge from it, which  puts the question beyond their competence and compassion.  What they don’t realize is that it’s just as true of Darfur.  We’ve been talking about Darfur for years now, and no nation or international body has yet taken  a single  effective step to stop the genocide there.  This isn’t because we don’t know how.  It’s because the  things we could do to deter and mitigate this genocide quickly wouldn’t make enough of us feel good about ourselves.  Yes, recruiting public support is often  a prequisite to effective action, but  if feel-good activism isn’t leading us  toward effective action,  it’s  an exceedingly selfish  form of compassion.

What would  quickly slow and eventually stop  the Genocide in Darfur would be to  arm the  surviving victims so that they can defend themselves and their families.  What all of the great genocides of this century have in common is that the victims were unarmed.  With the exception of international armed conflicts between mechanized armies, war is almost always less costly in human life than genocide, and once the forces on the field reach stalemate,  wars  are also  easier to negotiate to a conclusion.  Genocidal tyrants don’t negotiate when they’re getting their way through other means.

[Jewish partisans in a Polish forest, 1943]

Today, the law gives  the President the authority to declare groups “terrorist,” and certain states to be “sponsors” of terrorism.  Those declarations have legally significant effects on things that really affect the capacity of groups and states to terrorize:  trade, banking, finance, technology transfers, diplomacy, immigration, and travel.  Similarly, there should be a law by which Congress can make a legally significant declaration of “genocide” and certify classes of aggressors and victims.   The class of aggressors should be denied the same benefits that are denied to terrorists, but we have learned that sanctions work too slowly to save lives in the short term.  They may even encourage aggressors to speed up work that they doubt they can sustain over the long term. 

That’s why the certification of classes of victims  is also necessary (needless to  say, terrorist groups and their supporters  must be  excluded).   Victims of genocide should have access to small arms at low or no cost, and  should receive  training in their use.  The small arms — assault rifles, antiaircraft guns up to 23 milimeters,  and antitank rockets as needed — should be just enough to drive the aggressors from the victims’ midst and restore the military balance.   The law should include a termination provision by which the President  may  declare the military balance restored and reduce the supply of arms and ammunition to a maintenance level.  If and when a peace agreement is executed, or in the exceedingly  unlikely event that there is some effective international intervention,  the President may declare the genocide conditions to be over and stop the supply of arms. 

This isn’t a recipe for nonviolence, of course.  A transition from genocide to nonviolence is almost never possible.  It is not a way to end bloodshed and suffering, but it is a way to greatly reduce it, and to reduce  the share of the burden borne by noncombatants.  If there is any right more fundamental than the right to self-defense against crime, I do not know what it is.  It is a right we have reserved to our own selves, it is enshrined in Article 51 of the U.N. Charter, and it has nothing to do with the criminal’s status in the General Assembly:

[T]hey are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. –That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. 

Finally, it should be noted that many genocides have a regional, religious,  or ethnic character.  Genocides are almost always waged by states against  restive ethnic or  religious groups concentrated in specific regions.  (North Korea is a more complex case of  mass murder-by-deprivation.   A disproportionately high percentage  of the victims are  members of  hereditary political classes classified as “hostile” and concentrated  in the northern and eastern  provinces.)   Thus, the law should recognize that states have a duty to protect their populations  and  elevate this principle to a concrete disincentive  against genocide.  Clearly, when a state sanctions or  commits genocide against its population, its  capacity to protect that population is called into question.  The people are best qualified to judge whether the greater state  should continue  to govern them. 

Thus, when a state commits genocide against people concentrated in a particular region — Bosnia, Kosovo, Darfur, East Timor, the Ukraine — it should be the policy of the United States that the  affected region has the right to a plebiscite of independence.   

Update:   Welcome, Gateway Pundit and DPRKS readers.

Update 2:   Linked by Claudia Rosett — a supreme honor.

See also:

*  Not new, but relevant to this post, is  this chronology of resistance against the North Korean regime. 

* Most Suggestive Headline of the Week goes to the Russian news service  Novosti:  China Gives the Korean Stalemate a Happy Ending.

*  Fox News is reporting that  President Bush and President Karzai are meeting at Camp David, and that the unconfirmed rumors (or trial balloon)  is that they’re talking about paying ransom for the South Korean hostages.

*  Two senior al-Qaeda commanders are killed in three days, both in  key areas  where they thought they’d find safe haven from our Baqubah offensive.  First, it was  the “emir” of Mosul on Friday; today, it’s the “emir” of Samarra, the architect of the mosque bombing last year that caused us such trouble.  They will be replaced, but as Michael Yon puts it, the stupid ones are already dead.  These were two of AQ’s more cunning murderers, and their replacements will likely be less clever, less experienced, and less effective.  It’s by small steps like these that fewer  decisions are made to pay the insurgents or join them, and  that more decisions are made to report their whereabouts or oppose them.

*   Not Ready, Part III:   The latest Obama blunder is pretty much self-fisking:

“I think it would be a profound mistake for us to use nuclear weapons in any circumstance,” Obama said, with a pause, “involving civilians.” Then he quickly added, “Let me scratch that. There’s been no discussion of nuclear weapons. That’s not on the table.”

Just what we need — a jittery finger on the button.