How many deaths will it take - not what you think

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

I thought of these words by Bob Dylan because I am reading Dan Schorr, a book entitled Come to Think of It: Notes on the Turn of the Millennium, which is a collection of his commentaries on NPR during the period 1990-2006.   And one commentary challenges our thinking about the use of the US Military.   But as my title notes, this will not be what you think. At least, I think not.  But I hope it will provoke some serious discussion.
Each year, near the end, Schorr was in the habit of doing a broadcast essay on the state of peace in the world, perhaps comparing it to the previous year,  I am going to quote three paragraphs near the end of his 1997 essay, appearing on p. 156 on his book, first two, and then one.  And the one by itself will be my primary focus.

    What is peace, anyway?  North Korea poses no imminent threat of war. But can imminent starvation be called peace?
    The annual report of UNICEF says 12 million children die in a year in the developing countries, more than half of them because of malnutrition.  Surely that cannot be called peace.

We as Americans are often moved by evidence of great famine or suffering, that is, if we get see pictures.   But we can also be ignorant, or perhaps our leaders don't want us to know.

For example, note this exchange on 60 Minutes on May 12, 1996 (quoted from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting):

Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it.

Again, let me offer the lines from Dylan:
Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?

I was already thinking about this, remembering the exchange between Stahl and Albright, and then I read this:

    Gerald Scully, a University of Texas economist, has studied thirty countries where governments have systematically killed their own people.  In this expiring century, 55 million in the Soviet Union, mainly in Stalin's time; in China, more than 35 million, mainly in Mao's time.  And then down through Germany, Cambodia, and the rest, for a grand total of 170 million human lives snuffed out by their own governments, four times as many as the 42 million who died in international and civil wars in this century.

Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?

The world has accepted that a nation's sovereignty is not unlimited, that other nations can, and sometimes are required to, intervene.  The clearest situation occurs when there is a situation on ongoing genocide.  Perhaps that is why the Clinton administration refused to label what was happening in Rwanda as genocide, because then we would have been required to intervene, and of course we did not.  

I find myself in a difficult place after being confronted with those numbers, even if they might be slightly askew.  These are deaths absent war, that is, two armed parties.  And far too many wars, civil or otherwise, are a form of genocide.  Nor do these figures include all the disruption and cultural if not physical genocide that occurs because of ethnic cleansing, whether in Bosnia, Kosovo, Croatia, the Palestinian territories, the American West (some of which has been a part of our 20th century history), Turkey, and what is ongoing in Iraq (whose ancient Christian community is being almost completely obliterated).

I am a Convinced Friend.   I have come to accept the principles of the Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers.   And our Peace Testimony is almost 350 years old.  In 1661 the early Friends wrote to Charles II

We utterly deny all outward wars and strife and fightings with outward weapons, for any end or under any pretence whatsoever. And this is our testimony to the whole world.

I cannot justify the use of military force to occupy a nation for its mineral wealth, or merely because we don't like its leader.   And there is a strong sense that asking our military to go into harm's way absent a real threat to the United States is wrong.  But here, despite my Quaker leanings, is where I think I disagree, and thus am conflicted.

We know that small grievances can fester, that a people suppressed will seek to find a way to strike back.  And in the world in which we now find ourselves isolationism is impossible.  We certainly are forced to address this with respect to the threat of pandemics, whether Bird Flu or other as yet unidentified diseases, which since they are not identified we cannot preclude the entry into this nation of the means of transmission.  

Similarly, we are so diverse that in a sense it is amazing that the fraternal and other conflicts overseas do not more often spill over into violence here.  But we could have Serb versus Croat in Cleveland or Chicago, we could clearly have Palestinian versus Israel in New York or Los Angeles.  California could have Armenian versus Turk.   So far such incidents have been fortunately few.  

But there is something much more basic.  It is our basic humanity which is at stake.  And here I want to take those of you who are much younger than me back to something that happened in the U.S.   I want to take you to Kew Gardens, in Queens, NY, to the night of March 13, 1964.   You can read the full details at Wikipedia if you want.  A woman was attacked near her home, stabbed, and when she screamed the attacker ran away.   But he later returned, tracked her down, and killed her.  The span of the attacks was about 30 minutes.   One person was apparently aware she was stabbed in the first attack.  Another in the second.  A few minutes after the final - and fatal - attack, that witness did call the police.   But of the many people who heard either attack, most dismissed it - perhaps it was a lovers' quarrel, or people did not want to get involved.  And Kitty Genovese died.   The NY Times story, probably inaccurately, said that 38 people had heard the attack and done nothing - perhaps the number was only a dozen.  But people assumed it was not their concern.  And Kitty Genovese died, and not from her wounds in the original attack.

In the 1930's there were an escalating series of events from which much of the rest of the world recused themselves from responsibility.   It did not matter if it was Italy in Ethiopia, proxy warfare in Spain between Hitler and Stalin, Japanese expansionism on the mainland of Asia.  The world, perhaps still weary from the Great War, stood by and did not sound a meaningful alarm.  When Hitler began stripping rights from his own people, telegraphing his intent to follow up on things he had written in Mein Kampf, very few people sought to intervene - after all, it was an internal German matter.  

But is it an internal matter when any government brutalizes a part of its own people?  When does it become a matter, a responsibility, for the rest of the world?  If we say that attacking another nation, however artificial its existence is and however much you may think it should be a part of your own, is wrong and will not be tolerated - as we did in reaction to Iraq's seizure of Kuwait in 1990 - does that give Turkey the right to bomb N Iraq because it is the center of the largest ethnic group not given a homeland of sorts or even autonomy after the Great War, a group which believes it has been betrayed multiple since, but whose territory overlaps that of Turkey who refuses to recognize a different ethnicity?  Are we not acquiescing in actions that will continue to build resentment, with possible explosive consequences?

I don't have answers.  I fully recognize that the US is limited in what it can do by itself.  On the one hand some will argue for economic sanctions, but as we saw with the Iraqi children in the 1990's who died because of sanctions, the ones who suffer are often unable to affect change in a government which operates on any degree of totalitarian control.  Thus we weigh and balance, and perhaps needing economic trade with China and wanting their cooperation on N Korea we basically allow them a free hand to destroy the culture of Tibet.  

It seems to me that if we are ever going to be willing to use force - economic or military - the full scope of what we are prepared to do MUST BE CLEAR from the beginning.  Only then is there a meaningful possibility of deterrence, of dissuading a nation from killing its own people or invading or subverting its neighbors.  And what we do should be above board, which may be difficult, given our own history of interfering in the affairs of other nations for out benefit, for the advantage of rulers compliant to our interests, whether or not it is in the interest of the people they ostensibly govern.  If we do not speak out and make clear our willingness to intervene, then, as with World War II, the only alternative may be to find ourselves sucked into a total war with nigh total destruction and awful consequences.

We confront this same issue right now in Pakistan.  Perhaps at this point there is nothing we can do.  But why is it that we consistently find ourselves in a situation where a government does horrible things to its own people and we sit by, like the neighbors of Kitty Genovese, unwilling to get involved?

Dylan was poet, and in some ways a prophet, as many poets often are.  I could quote Hillel again, or Jefferson, or even more of Dan Schorr, who at times has been quite insightful in a journalistic life that covers about 7 decades.   But I prefer to stay with Dylan, at least for now, and to remember that the song from which I quoted contains a warning -  

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Do we hear the cries?   Do we count the deaths?  When will we say enough?  To our government, to all governments?  Do we realize the gathering storms, the winds real - because much of these endeavors also damage the environment - and figurative - as cyclones of resentment form and begin to move, as they already have, in so many parts of the world.

Do we hear the cries within other nations?  Or do we plug our ears so that we do not have to listen?  How many ears will it take us?

Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

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