That Family Up the Street

Have you ever heard an analogy  like this used to defend US military excursions across the globe:

“If my neighbor is beating his child in front of me, I should stop him. If he takes the child a few blocks away, my obligation doesn’t change—were I to know about it.”

I've heard this or something similar many times used to justify our involvement in any number of places around the world. Most recently I heard it as a result of the tragic story in Time Magazine about the shameful treatment of women in Afghanistan.  The argument is that the US must continue to wage war there because to pull out would be to turn these women over to the Taliban and, after all,  we have a moral obligation to bring truth, justice and the American way to the whole world.

However, this analogy falls flat for several reasons:

 
First of all the individual and the state are not one - except in totalitarian societies.  They do not have the same interests, function, or responsibility.  So, what an individual should or should not do in a particular situation really cannot be extrapolated to the state. The job of the US military is to protect US lives and territory, not to be nation builders or the world’s policeman.

 
Secondly, we’ve applied this particular kind of “justice” very selectively. We’ve had many “neighbors” who were beating their children that we not only did not invade, but we subsidized (think Suharto, Marcos, Pinochet, the Saudi Royal Family, etc.)

Thirdly, the analogy should really be this: You see your neighbor beating his child.  You then go around to the rest of the neighborhood and assess everyone a fee to deal with it.  You then hire the children of some of your other neighbors to go and deal with the situation.  Exercising your own sense of justice is one thing, expecting other people to exercise it for you at the cost of their lives and treasure is another.

Finally, the analogy assumes we have the ability to actually to stop this kind of thing as well as the resources to do so - we don't. We’re going on these foreign excursions using money we’ve borrowed from the Chinese because we’re broke. You know the Chinese, they’re that family up the street who beats their kids, but heck, they provide us with a lot of stuff so what can you do?

(Interestingly, another travesty that was actually stamped out by the Taliban has seen a resurgence among the 'good guys' that we support in Afghanistan - the rape of young boys. Could it be that neither side has the moral high ground and we should just mind our own business?)