As reported by James Taranto’s Best of the Web, Obama has changed his tune on genocide. From BoTW, quotes from the Anointed One:
“…preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.” From that AP report:“Well, look, if that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now–where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife–which we haven’t done,” Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea,” he said.
Obama was wrong about Iraq: it would not be morally or strategically acceptable for us to simply leave Iraq. If our precipitous withdrawal led to genocide (probably of Sunni Arabs by their Shiite “brothers”), we would bear some responsibility.
But the key word is “strategically.” The only reason we are in Iraq, as opposed to Congo or some other African hell-hole, is that we have actual national security interests in a free and stable Iraq.
Iraq is at the crossroads of the Middle East; it holds the second-largest proven reserves of oil. On the other hand, what are our strategic interests in Sudan or Congo? Zip. Nada. Bupkas. So, Obama was half right.
But, in typical whiny elite snob mode, he makes the invidious comparison of Iraq with Congo and Sudan: because we don’t intervene everywhere, we should not intervene in the Middle East.
Are there valid humanitarian grounds to intervene in Congo and Sudan, and other places? Sure. But, absent an American national security interest, we have no business doing so. Advice to Barack Hussein Obama: stick to community organizing, whatever that is. You don’t seem to know much about anything else.
