Reckless Endangerment

On a morning when the US, French and British are attempting to save the Libyan uprising with “surgical” air strikes, the New York Times carries the following story about President Obama’s message to Iranian youth on the anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/20/obama-urges-irans-youth-to-shed-chains/  The video message connects their struggle, the now dormant Green Revolution, to the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, and tells Iran’s youth that “they are not bound by the chains of the past” and that Obama “is with them”.

What are we doing here exactly?  Urging them back into the streets to face the murderous thugs and gunfire that put down the post-election street demonstrations after the rigged 2009 election?  That’s sure what it sounds like.  And what happens when they do?  How do we help them?  With UN Resolutions?  With stern condemnations of the inevitable killings and wave of repression?  With airstrikes?  

Iran’s student uprising tore at my heartstrings, and it revealed the contemptible dictatorship in the name but not spirit of Islam that has imprisoned them.  But by urging them to fight, we expose ourselves to the same moral dilemma as the first President Bush did when he urged the Kurds, Shia and Marsh Arabs to rise up against Saddam Hussein.  They were slaughtered by the tens of thousands, and their blood was on our hands.

We’re heard this rhetoric before.  John Kennedy’s famous Inaugural address, when he promised to “bear any burden and fight any foe” to advance the cause of freedom, a call to arms which led directly to Vietnam.  We are up to our eyeballs in the Middle East and drowning (and borrowing ourselves into oblivion to pay for it).  

It’s time to tone down our rhetoric and be mindful of the risks, not only to young people who struggle with unjust societies, but also our own young people, whom we may send to help them without a way to bring them home. We cannot save peoples’ lives or freedom with high flown rhetoric and we’ve long since reached the limits of our ability to do it with our military power.