"...it's not the training to be mean but the training to be kind that is used to keep us leashed best." ~ Black Dog Red

"In case you haven't recognized the trend: it proceeds action, dissent, speech." ~ davidly, on how wars get done

"...What sort of meager, unerotic existence must a man live to find himself moved to such ecstatic heights by the mundane sniping of a congressional budget fight. The fate of human existence does not hang in the balance. The gods are not arrayed on either side. Poseiden, earth-shaker, has regrettably set his sights on the poor fishermen of northern Japan and not on Washington, D.C. where his ire might do some good--I can think of no better spot for a little wetland reclamation project, if you know what I mean. The fight is neither revolution nor apocalypse; it is hardly even a fight. A lot of apparatchiks are moving a lot of phony numbers with more zeros than a century of soccer scores around, weaving a brittle chrysalis around a gross worm that, some time hence, will emerge, untransformed, still a worm." ~ IOZ

Aug 24, 2011

R2P

There are, if der guegler speaks a binary truth, thirteen million two hundred thousand results for a search of "Responsibility to Protect." Der guegler provided, right at the top, a non-profit linked to in posts below, and no less than the usual suspects (The Economist, Foreign Affairs, The CFR, Foreign Policy, The NYT and Brookings) offering the expected fare, ranging from measured approval (The Economist) to bleating cheer leading (no surprise here, The New York Times).

Let's save them all a lot of trouble.

Kipling, in his own Kiplingerian way, has already sussed it all out for us:

"Take up the White Man's burden--
Send forth the best ye breed--
Go bind your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need;
To wait in heavy harness,
On fluttered folk and wild--
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half-devil and half-child.

Take up the White Man's burden--

In patience to abide,
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple,
An hundred times made plain
To seek another's profit,
And work another's gain.

Take up the White Man's burden--

The savage wars of peace--
Fill full the mouth of Famine
And bid the sickness cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The end for others sought,
Watch sloth and heathen Folly
Bring all your hopes to nought.

Take up the White Man's burden--

No tawdry rule of kings,
But toil of serf and sweeper--
The tale of common things.
The ports ye shall not enter,
The roads ye shall not tread,
Go mark them with your living,
And mark them with your dead.

Take up the White Man's burden--

And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better,
The hate of those ye guard--
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light:--
"Why brought he us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?"

Take up the White Man's burden--

Ye dare not stoop to less--
Nor call too loud on Freedom
To cloke  your weariness;
By all ye cry or whisper,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your gods and you.

Take up the White Man's burden--

Have done with childish days--
The lightly proferred laurel, 

The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years
Cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!"

5 comments:

Tao Dao Man said...

One of my [go to guys] Pepe Escobar talked about R2P.

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/MH24Ak01.html

As usual Pepe is always spot on.

Unknown said...

Please help me for Christ sake

Jack Crow said...

RZ,

Gratis.

Majid,

What's your need?

Abonilox said...

Irony at its best, no?

Richard said...

". . . the military aspect of the Afghan model . . . "

you have to appreciate the insight of someone who can cull out the good from the bad like that