Strategic political interpretation: the bane of the humanitarian act
I have deliberately sought to keep this blog free of traditional politics but I am breaking this moratorium here. Seeing the US State department and the President repeatedly tout it's humanitarian mission in South Asia as being evidence of it's goodwill towards the Muslim world taints the humanitarian motives of this mission. While America and the whole world are showing a truly admirable outpouring of support straight from the heart, such a strategic justification seems to be completely out of place. I strongly feel that the "liberal media" bears a good share of the blame, by adopting this spin to critique the government in the wake of Jan Egeland's statement about the rich countries being "stingy" in their aid contributions to this disaster. (PS: I watched the entire press conference where he made this comment and the knee-jerk imputation that he was talking about the US was not at all the case. He was referring to "rich countries" including the newly rich in Eastern Europe, the Middle-East, elsewhere in Asia, Latin America, Africa to also contribute rather than just expecting countries in the Northwestern corner of the world to be the sole donors).
I do not say this in the "blame-the-West/blame-the-media" mode (which I find acutely tiresome) but these pronouncements by career politicians adds to my growing disgust in already seeing Indian politicians seek to draw political mileage out of this crisis by ham-handed criticisms of the "other" party -- of the party in power for being inefficient, and of the opposition parties for not placing partisan concerns aside.
Finally, as bloggers are prone to do, I have found a convenient article on the web to justify my opinion (there always seems to exist an "authoritative" article on the web to support every opinion however crazy -- including mine -- isnt there?).
From a press release of Doctors Without Borders(Medecins Sans Frontieres), when they pulled out of Afghanistan:
"The violence directed against humanitarian aid workers has come in a context in which the US backed coalition has consistently sought to use humanitarian aid to build support for its military and political ambitions. MSF denounces the coalition’s attempts to co-opt humanitarian aid and use it to “win hearts and minds”. By doing so, providing aid is no longer seen as an impartial and neutral act, endangering the lives of humanitarian volunteers and jeopardizing the aid to people in need. Only recently, on May 12th 2004, MSF publicly condemned the distribution of leaflets by the coalition forces in southern Afghanistan in which the population was informed that providing information about the Taliban and al Qaeda was necessary if they wanted the delivery of aid to continue."
That's my verbal diarrhea discharge for the day. "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."
posted @ 9:21 PM
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5 Comments:
'Man is by nature a political animal.'
Aristotle, Politics;-)
The observation that humans are political animals in just that an observation and not a justification. By being thinking animals they also possess the discretion to be apolitical.
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Man, being a social being, aligns himself to various social groupings and the 'success' of a society is dependent on the ability of its members live in peaceful cohabitation, in freedom and security, and to pursue happiness, the satisfaction of physiological needs etc. I think of politics as a social activity; the government is essentially a political entity, the means through which a society makes the decisions concerning its general wellbeing and its betterment, and if possible, that of other nations - everyone has a vested interest in politics. That is why democracy is an ideal system. The decisions my government (and more often than not, other governments) make affect me in one way or another, I cannot afford to be apolitical.
:( I guess I am now thoroughly confused and am at a loss as to what to say in response as I thought the issue was something entirely different.
I must humbly admit that I do not have any particularly articulate opinion about "Man's Nature" (or whether I even believe that that such a thing even exists), but from the limited experience of having being one for several years now I can vouch for the ability to deliberately choose to not interpret certain things through the lens of power relations between groups (i.e. politics), or as having a thread leading up to The Government.
Maybe I am naive in not seeing everything as being political but it will be another time and place before I undertake a more thorough defense of the merits/caveats of this position.
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