It’s August – but the news will not quit. Reutersgate update, at Pajamas. Another Reuters scam. God knows how many times this same distraught lady has lost a home in Lebanon? Ynet notes that the Qana thing was staged, and by now everyone knows about t…

OK, I consider myself *socially* liberal, hope that’s good enough (the term “liberal” has become a hollow phrase with no clear definition). I’ll give it a go, although I’ll have to start by saying your comment (quoted above) implies that World Opinion (WO) is by definition liberal, an assertion I disagree with.

I agree with the writer that WO is usually reluctant when it comes to the use of violence, and that when violence is called for, it isn’t always capable of recognizing that fact. But personally I think that’s the way it should be. There are enough wars on this planet without WO getting trigger happy. Besides, it isn’t pacifist per se. During the first gulf war WO was very much on the side of the US and in favor of intervention.

So what to say to those millions of victims mentioned above?

Well, as for Stalin I reckon WO was pretty much stacked against the Soviet regime and its Siberian labourcamps, at least in the western world. I think opinion in Russia itself was against it too, but expressing such opinion would usually get you a one way ticket to said camps.

What about Mao? Well, I think WO wasn’t exactly on Mao’s side, but it was more a matter of not being able to do anything. The guy had nukes, and any intervention that started out conventionally, wouldn’t have ended that way.

Next up, Pol Pot: If memory serves, WO turned against him in a massive way, as the images of the killing fields reached the outside world. Yet, there was no political will to invade, not in Europe, not in the US.

What about Rwanda? Interesting the author should mention this one, because there was a huge public outcry for sending troops, at least in Europe. In fact, it was none other than the USA who blocked militairy intervention via the UN. This led to a disgraceful scene of pressroom theater, where US officials refused to use the word “genocide” (as this would oblige the US to intervene) and in stead used the phrase “acts of genocide”. You may recall one reporter cynically asking “How many acts of genocide constitute an actual genocide?”. To my knowledge, that question has never been answered. The fact remains that one million men, women and children were hacked to death in 100 days, and AFAIK, to this day the United States officially denies it was genocide.

Next! North Korea. Ever since the Korean war, there’s not been any political will to invade. It has been out of the public eye for thirty odd years. The only reason you and I have ever even heard of it, is because of it’s nuclear program. So in this case, yes, the author is probably right. But what do you expect? For decades the public has ignored this country, and politicians were ok with that. Now those same politicians suddenly want us to care about it and be scared of it. You can’t just change WO overnight, especially if you’ve just blown all your credibility on a phony invasion of Iraq (that’s WO, not necessarily mine).

Tibetans then. That’s an easy one. States and multinational compagnies want to do business with/in China, so they shut up about Tibet. This is not about WO, it’s about the worlds consumers who refuse to boycot those compagnies. Are you wearing Nike, Reebok or Adidas by any chance?

And the Afghans? Well, I was very young at the time, but I do remember widespread anti-Russian sentiment, so I don’t see how WO hurt the mudjahedin cause. Ironic, in retrospect, but still.

So, what then is the autors main assertion?

That world opinion is always wrong? That’s just stupid. Was the world wrong to support Bush senior when he built his gulf war coalition? Was world opinion wrong to cry out for intervention in Rwanda? Of course not, WO is sometimes right and sometimes wrong, just like people.

His claim of WO being “morally cowardice” is equally foolish. He implicitly states that when you do something everybody else disapproves of, it must be the right thing to do. The consideration of right and wrong is no longer an analysis of the situation and careful consideration of the priciples one holds and the alternatives one has available, ohh no. It is a conclusion based on the presumption that you a right, so if everybody disagrees, that means *everybody else* is crazy. This is a self fulfilling prophesy, an implicit statement of ones own infallibility. So unless the autor is God, this is BS. This is something Goebbels could have written to explain to the Germans why the world was against them.

To assert that all those atrocities are caused by WO being wrong, is just ludicrous. And the author reveals exactly how limited his grasp on the subject is when he states that “World opinion has little or nothing to say about the world’s greatest evils”, because that’s just about all opinion does. It’s a value judgement, a statement of what is good and what is bad, according to the person who states it.

The real problem is that World Opinion wields no real power, neither militairy nor political. Only in democracies can public opinion have some influence via the electoral proces, but especially Americans will note that this influence is very limited. Most of the atrocities mentioned proceeded unhindered either because there was no political will to intervene, or because it simply wasn’t viable, regardless of World opinion.

What puzzles me is the fact that the autor ommited a very good argument for dismissing World Opinion, namely that it is easily manipulated by shocking images and stories, that may or may not be true (Kuweiti incubator baby, anyone?). But of course, as this writer is probably a neo-conservative (judging by his inability to distinguish between bravery and stupidity), in all likelyhood he wouldn’t see that a bad thing.

By the way, World opinion isn’t as much against Israel as some whould have you believe, at least in my experience. It’s just that there does not seem to be any meaningfull move forward that can come from this conflict. For a detailed analysis of the situation I would implore you to pick up this weeks Economist.

J..

PS: I left out one or two of the examples mentioned in the article, simply because I’m not familiar with them.