EDITOR: In his letter to the editor in last Tuesday
’s Times, Jim Werkema poses a question for me which deserves an
answer, namely “Whose responsibility is it to police the
world?”
EDITOR:
In his letter to the editor in last Tuesday’s Times, Jim Werkema poses a question for me which deserves an answer, namely “Whose responsibility is it to police the world?”
To deal with first things first, Mr. Werkema accuses me of “trivializing the battles fought in Afghanistan and Iraq” as well as the “sacrifices our soldiers have made.” He claims that this was done in an attempt to “slam President Bush.”
My column was in no way, shape or form an attempt to “slam” Bush or trivialize anything; however, I am continually amazed of late by the sea-change our country has gone through since 9/11, one consequence of which is to implicitly grant imperial powers to the president and to deem any dissent, criticism or even questioning of the wisdom or propriety of his actions to be un-American or at least motivated by a desire to “slam Bush.”
There seems to be a feeling that the First Amendment is a precious right only if no one actually uses it. We have all seen editorial pieces and letters to editors overtly saying “Our soldiers fought and died for your freedom of speech, so how dare you speak freely.”
To the main question: Mr. Werkema, you say you have been a policeman for well over 20 years; therefore, you know that you were hired by your community to police it, and just as importantly, only it in accordance with the spelled-out laws and procedures of that community. So tell me, since you are a police officer do you believe that if you should read or hear about a crime committed in some other state you should take it upon yourself to go there and investigate, interrogate, and arrest whomever you deem appropriate? Does the term “policeman” automatically include universal jurisdiction?
Yes, Saddam is/was a terrible guy and yes, his regime was brutal and oppressive and yes, on one level it is a good thing he was made to give up power, but when did the world community hire, or even ask the United States to roam the world putting down bad guys in accordance with our own rules, which are not necessarily shared by the rest of the planet?
The only “world community” we have had in the modern era is the United Nations, which very pointedly did not tell or ask us to go into Iraq, to which our response was “to hell with you, we do what we want.” As a policeman, would you take it on yourself to go solve crimes in Phoenix or Omaha, and tell the public “to hell with you, I do what I want; I’m a policeman”?
Your question “Whose responsibility is it to police the world” is, in my humble view, one of the most important and profound questions currently on the global table, and while it may make us Americans feel good in the short run to go halfway around the world to knock down a dictator, in the long run I do not agree that it is in our or anyone’s best interests to unilaterally declare that we will police the world according to our own rules and standards.
Already we are seeing in Iraq that we are simultaneously touting the democracy we will “give” to the people, and declaring which persons and groups we will not allow to be elected. Apparently only those sufficently friendly to America will be permitted to administer the country, which certainly consitutes a rather subjective definition of “Iraqi freedom”.
If the existence of a bad ruler anywhere in the world is our criterion for starting a war, we have a great many wars ahead of us and a great many cultures to re-shape to suit our liking.
To police the world with force of arms is, inevitably, to rule the world. If that’s what the world wants us to hire us to do, perhaps we should consider it. But I haven’t heard the world asking – have you?
Robert B. Mitchell,
Morgan Hill
