Today is St. Patrick's Day. Most of us probably associate it with green beer, leprechauns and "Kiss Me, I'm Irish!" shirts. How many of us know the actual story of St. Patrick? He was born in Wales and captured as a teenager by Irish raiders. He was taken to Ireland and enslaved until he escaped several years later and returned to his family. He entered the priesthood, was ordained a bishop and eventually returned to Ireland as a missionary.
Why did St. Patrick return to the very place that had enslaved him for the better part of a decade? At least according to legend and tradition, he felt compelled to go and preach Christianity to the Irish; he had Christianity, and he wanted them to have it, too. In essence, he had something he felt was too good to keep to himself.
As Americans, we are justifiably (or unjustifiably!) proud of our country. We feel, rightly or wrongly, that we have something good - a democratic tradition and strong record of human rights - and we think these are so good we want other countries to have them. So, in theory at least, we try to export democracy, freedom and human rights.
Of course, reality is much darker. When democracy or human rights threaten our self-perceived trade or national security interests, we are more than happy to throw them aside (witness, for instance, how we've treated Hamas, the democratically-elected leadership of the Gaza Strip). But for the time being, let's focus on evaluating the ideal: America as a shining beacon across the world of freedom and democracy, as a city on a hill.
How should our foreign policy reflect this? Should we be concerned enough with democracy and human rights to intervene militarily in other countries in order to prevent atrocities and establish democratic governments? Let's consider two examples to try to guide our way: Sudan and Iraq.
First, let's think about the ongoing genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan. Even though it's not been significantly reported in American media, since 2003 nearly half a million people have died and over two-and-a -half million have been driven from their homes. If there's any humanitarian crisis in the world right now that warrants intervention, this is it. And yet, has this been a major election issue? How many of us have agitated for intervention? How many bills authorizing the occupation of Sudan have been put before the floors of the House and Senate? None.
This suggests that we don't actually believe in our ideal. After all, on average nearly two hundred people are killed in Darfur every day; we apparently don't value the lives of these people above sending American troops into Sudan. In fact, we don't value their lives enough to give them significant media coverage. If we really cared about human rights, freedom, and democracy, we'd have intervened long ago.
What happens in the rare situation when we put our ideal into action? Let's think about Iraq now, leaving aside the lies we were fed about weapons of mass destruction and instead considering the ad hoc "spreading-freedom" rationale. Did we really spread freedom? When we invaded and deposed Saddam, we were incredibly ill-prepared for occupation. Instead of imposing iron law and order on the country while putting an interim government in place, we touched off a bloody orgy of sectarian violence that dissolved the country in murders and bombings, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions.
In other words, when we actually do try to carry out our ideal foreign policy, we screw it up horribly. What does this suggest? Merely this: that the ideal of America as a shining beacon spreading democracy across the world suffers the same fatal flaws as communism. It is terribly impractical and overlooks real-world issues like apathy, corruption and incompetence.
Like St. Patrick, we think that we have something great to give the world. Unlike St. Patrick, though, for us it's mostly talk and much less walk; and when we do talk the talk and walk the walk, it's more of an unsteady stagger. Should we really hold these ideals in the first place, then?
Write to Neal at necoleman@bsu.edu
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