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Thursday, June 28, 2007

Genocide and Iraq

I thought mathgimp's post was pretty interesting, and it got me thinking (again) about definitions of genocide and war crimes. More on that after the jump.

But, as an incentive for participation the first person to post or comment today (that's not mathgimp or I) gets a round of drinks on me, either in ATX this weekend or the next time I see ya round the District. We've had 369 unique visitors to the blog, which is pretty rockin' - yesterday alone we had 52. Who are you people? Why don't you write things?



Before obsessing about whether people validate me by visiting my blog, for a very long time I was fascinated with the way that genocide is defined and deployed. I wrote a paper about it but the paper's saved on my home computer, so I'm going to ramble instead. What follows is a roughly synthesis of my thoughts on genocide, Iraq, and war crimes.

I've always found the UN definition of genocide kind of strange. Let's read the definition backwards. The following are acts of genocide:


  • Killing members of the group

  • Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

  • Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

  • Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

  • Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group



Under this part of definition, when you're just evaluating action and effect, the sanctions in Iraq, the famine in Bengal, the occupation of Ireland, and some of the "more debatable" genocides like East Timor certainly qualify, but really, any war or skirmish or border clash does as well. As mathgimp points out, there is a tricky distinction between war and genocide, which is where part one of the definition comes in. It says: "genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group." Cool. So, when you're thinking in terms of the Holocaust, this definition makes perfect sense. Hitler wanted to destroy the Jews (genocidal intent), and so he employed a vast array of genocidal actions to fulfill his goal.

Things get more complicated, though. There are easy criticisms of the definition, such as the fact that political and social groups aren't covered, and probably should be. Would it be genocide to kill all of the Republicans or Democrats in the US? Gay folk? The bourgeois/intelligentsia (one of the populations specifically targeted in CambodiaCambodia)? Additionally, the phrase "inflicting on the group conditions of life that.." does not specifically condemn environmental or indirect actions that target a specific group and lead to their extermination (like sanctions: see, for example, former US AG Ramsey Clark's arguments that the Iraqi sanctions in the 1990s were genocide).

Before we talk about Iraq, though, we have the troubling notion of intent, which is considered the most important part of the UN definition of genocide. Ya gotta have genocidal intent to commit genocide. Hitler's intent was obvious: the complete eradication of Jews from Europe. Same is true of Rwanda: Hutus mobilized to directly target and kill every Tutsi in Rwanda, leaving up to 1 million dead in 100 days. But what if you have a would-be genocide, but with more complex motivations? The Khmer Rouge, under Pol Pot, wanted to "restructure Khmer society." The Indonesians wanted to "civilize" the East Timorese, and bring them back under control. In my mind, genocide occurred in East Timor and in Cambodia, but had multiple layers of intent. Much like British occupation of Ireland, the ruling parties were perfectly willing to sacrifice 20 or 30 percent of the population to achieve their grander goals of assimilation and control. The definition of genocide should be elastic enough to describe more than the Holocaust, but probably should be narrow enough to exclude slavery, abortion, class warfare, etc. Somewhere in between fall the interesting and horrible examples: are sanctions a genocidal act? Did Indonesia intend to "civilize" the East Timorese, or to murder 1/5 of the population?

And, of importance today, what in holy hell is happening in Iraq? Using the word genocide in relation to Iraq isn't unique; Saddam Hussein was executed for committing genocide against the Kurds, Ramsey Clark, amongst others, labeled the US-led sanctions policy of the 1990s as genocide, and Samantha Power (who is, to my mind, the world's foremost expert on genocide) has warned that the current violence between Sunnis and Shi'ites demonstrates genocidal intent. Indeed, Republicans (such as John McCain) argue that the US should remain engaged in Iraq in order to prevent genocide - an argument that Samantha Power critiques in her LA Times editorial back in March.

What's less clear to me is whether the US and allied forces are currently engaged in genocide, which is the argument made in yesterday's article. The author makes the argument that civilian deaths were avoidable, that the occupying forces did not take reasonable steps to preserve the quality of life of civilians, and that lots of people are dead and displaced. He says that the "Iraqi Holocaust" has reached 3.5 million deaths, which is comparable to the 5-6 million victims of the Jewish Holocaust. Hault. Stop. Back up. It's different, different, different. I am NOT proponent of Holocaust uniqueness, but numerical comparisons DO NOT make it genocide. The Holocaust was characterized by the systemic eradication of a group based on ethnic, social, and religious characteristics. In Iraq, we lob bombs and don't care where they go. There is not systemic eradication. The author says we're waging a war that disproportionately affects Muslim women and children, which is true: the US has a policy of hostile indifference towards quality of life. If the entire country would just be democratic already, then we would stop bombing and let folks live. It's not our intent to exterminate everyone in the country, but it is our intent to show that we're willing to. I'm not convinced that our actions there, as horrendous as they may be, are actually genocide.

The second point Dr. Polya brings us closer to the truth, and to an actionable argument. The US has violated Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilians in Time of War. Despite the fact that the Convention is a quaint little document, we signed and ratified it. We owe it to the people of Iraq, and any other countries we choose to invade, to follow its precepts as a doctrine for occupying another country.

So how do we hold our government accountable to the Geneva Convention? How can we condemn and punish the actions of nations that refuse to adhere to international law? How can we nuance the debate in the public arena WITHOUT using genocide as a trump card? We need to develop language that allows us to label, condemn, and punish events like human made famines and violent occupations without to reverting to the term genocide. Our willingness to apply the term where it doesn't belong is a failing of the language we have to discuss atrocities: we have "war" (which ain't no thang) and "genocide" (the ultimate horror) and nothing in between. Enriching our understanding, use, and persecution of crimes against humanity might preserve the label of genocide, while allowing more room to condemn, punish, and work to change atrocities that aren't genocide.

A unique spot international law and international morality should be reserved for condemnation of genocide, but that does not absolve us of our obligation to condemn outrageous acts of war and oppression that do not fit our definition.

If what's going on in Iraq IS genocide, then we need to work hard to change the definition in the UN, or to prove why the actions of the US and allies meet the current definition. But it's not just a numbers game. And accusations of genocide should not be the "nuclear option" that the left or the humanitarian community resorts to because we can't figure out how else to describe the depth of our horror at the situation.

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