A Swiss firm called Achair Partners, and an Italian waste company called Achair Partners, made a deal with Ali Mahdi, that they were to dump containers of waste material in Somali waters. These European companies were said to be paying Warlords about $3 a ton, whereas to properly dispose of waste in Europe costs about $1000 a ton.What's the Right's response to this? You guessed it:
In 2004, after a tsunami washed ashore several leaking containers, thousand of locals in the Puntland region of Somalia started to complain of severe and previously unreported ailments, such as abdominal bleeding, skin melting off and a lot of immediate cancer-like symptoms. Nick Nuttall, a spokesman for the United Nations Environmental Program, says that the containers had many different kinds of waste, including "Uranium, radioactive waste, lead, Cadmium, Mercury and chemical waste." But this wasn't just a passing evil from one or two groups taking advantage of our unprotected waters. The UN envoy for Somalia, Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, says that the practice still continues to this day. It was months after those initial reports that local fishermen mobilized themselves, along with street militias, to go into the waters and deter the Westerners from having a free pass at completely destroying Somalia's aquatic life. Now years later, the deterring has become less noble, and the ex-fishermen with their militias have begun to develop a taste for ransom at sea. This form of piracy is now a major contributor to the Somali economy, especially in the very region that private toxic waste companies first began to burry our nation's death trap.
Now Somalia has upped the world's pirate attacks by over 21 percent in one year, and while NATO and the EU are both sending forces to the Somali coast to try and slow down the attacks, Black Water and all kinds of private security firms are intent on cashing in. But while Europeans are well in their right to protect their trade interest in the region, our pirates were the only deterrent we had from an externally imposed environmental disaster. No one can say for sure that some of the ships they are now holding for ransom were not involved in illegal activity in our waters. The truth is, if you ask any Somali, if getting rid of the pirates only means the continuous rape of our coast by unmonitored Western Vessels, and the producing of a new cancerous generation, we would all fly our pirate flags high.
To end Somali piracy, disproportionate measures against the shore should be taken—for every one pirate assault, a lethal air assault should immediately follow.The absurdity! AmCon is exasperated:
A lethal air assault on what? [He] knows there isn’t a nice isolated buccaneer cove with a bar marked “Pirate Shack–Bomb Here.” He would kill women and in children in retaliation for what a gang of street-criminals-on-the-waves gets up to. Hanson is the Ward Churchill of the neocons: civilian deaths mean nothing in themselves to him, they’re just fuel for his power fantasies — sinners on the wrong side of progress.Aren't you glad we don't have a similarly war-crazed nut like McCain in the White House?
Update: I'm again reminded of a scene from episode 3 of The West Wing:
PRESIDENT BARTLET
[pause] Did you know that two thousand years ago a Roman citizen could walk across the face of the known world free of the fear of molestation? He could walk across the earth unharmed, cloaked only in the words Civis Romanis. I am a Roman citizen. So great was the retribution of Rome, universally understood as certain, should any harm befall even one of its citizens.
Where was Morris' protection, or anyone else on that plane? Where is the retribution for the families and where is the warning to the rest of the world that Americans shall walk this earth unharmed, lest the clenched fist of the most mighty military force in the history of mankind comes crashing down on your house!? In other words, Leo, what the hell are we doing here?
CHIEF OF STAFF LEO
We are behaving the way a superpower ought to behave.
BARTLET
Well our behavior has produced some pretty crappy results. In fact, I'm not a hundred percent sure it hasn't induced them.
LEO
What are you talking about?
BARTLET
I'm talking about two hundred and eight-six American marines in Beirut, I'm talking about Somalia, I'm talking about Nairobi.
LEO
And you think ratching up the body count's gonna act as a deterrent?
BARTLET
You're damn right.
LEO
Then you are just as dumb as these guys who think that capital punishment is going to be a deterrent for drug kingpins. As if drug kingpins didn't live their day to day lives under the possibility of execution. And their executions are a lot less dainty than ours and tend to take place without the bother and expense of due process. So my friend, if you want to start using American military strength as the arm of the Lord, you can do that, we're the only superpower left. You can conquer the world, like Charlemenge, but you better be prepared to kill everyone and you better start with me cause I will raise up an army against you and I will beat you!
BARTLET
He had a ten-day-old baby at home.
LEO
I know.
BARTLET
We are doing nothing. They dest...
LEO
We are not doing nothing. Four high rated military targets.
BARTLET
And this is good?
LEO
Of course it's not good, there is no good. It's what there is. It's how you behave if you're the most powerful nation in the world. It's proportional, it's reasonable, it's responsible, it's merciful. It's not nothing, four high rated military targets.
BARTLET
Which they'll rebuild again in six months.
LEO
So we'll blow 'em up again in six months! We're getting really good at it. [beat] It's what our fathers taught us.
"The absurdity! AmCon is exasperated"
ReplyDeleteThis from supposed "realists." Massive retaliation against suspected pirate bases was one traditional method of dealing with them. Why? Because it worked. Shelling suspected pirate ports does indeed kill civilians -- that's the idea. People who live in port cities don't like having them bombarded, seeing their families killed, their houses destroyed, and their livelihoods ruined. They tend to turn against pirates after a couple such episodes. Allowing pirates to operate from a port, if you know that some navy is going to bombard it in retaliation, just isn't in the interests of the inhabitants.
It may be inhumane and indiscriminate, but it's far from absurd.
Sometimes inhumane actions can prevent greater problems later on. And sometimes during various types of conflicts, inhumane measures and assorted dirty, otherwise reprehensible tactics can be useful, or even necessary.
ReplyDeleteWe already accept this principle. That's why we are willing to accept civlian deaths during military operations, and have in the past deliberately targeted them when we thought it necessary or useful. The line just happens to be different in each individual situation. Interpetations differ.
Sometimes. But it's very hard to know how effective inhumane measures will be ahead of time. And I hardly think they're justified after the first pirate attack of a U.S. ship in 200 years. We are not and should not be desperate to use disproportionate force in this situation. The Right is in for a long exile if it doesn't fix its trigger fingers.
ReplyDelete