The Dis-abstraction of genocide

■"Mr. Bush's Better World, editorial, Washington Post, 21 November 2004, p. B6.

■"At Holocaust Museum, Turning a Number Into a Name, by Joseph Berger, New York Times, 21 November 2004, p. A13.

The Washington Post editorial board is blasting the Bush Administration for doing nothing about Sudan, where likely well over 100,000 are dead (probably four times the number of dead in Iraq since the war began, according to realistic estimates, but let's be unrealistic and say it's probably only two times as many dead). The paper is right to push Bush on this issue ("How can it recognize genocide, shrug its shoulders and then carry on claiming that its vigorous foreign policy is about creating a better world?"), but why not push the entire Core, to include China for holding up a stronger response in the UN Security Council out of oil interests there (China's got it right, huh! Sudanese blood for Chinese oil).

Everyone wants to blame Bush and the Neocons, but frankly we created the conditions for this messóAmerica itselfóyears ago by refusing to admit the world would need serious administering following the end of the Cold War. We created the Powell Doctrine, we didn't rebalance the military forces as military-operations-other-than-war effectively quadrupled in demand across the 1990s, and we decided to invade Iraq without an adequate plan for the peace because we didn't have an adequate understanding for that mission much less the force structure to implement it. Our failure in occupying postconflict Iraq is rooted in America's ambivalence about its role as alleged global cop following the collapse of the Soviets, and it's that ambivalence that's on full display yet again on Sudan. We can't do anything about Sudan because we're so tied down in Iraq, and we're tied down in Iraq because we don't "get" SysAdmin work, don't want to do it, haven't prepared for it, and run away from it every time we bump into its ugly realities.

And we always blame the other guy. In the 1990s the right blamed Clinton and his do-gooders for wanting to do all that nation-building crap. Now the left blame the Neocons for wanting to try . . . God forbid! . . . . nation-building. When will we stop running from the international security environment, pretending that it can be either left alone or treated merelyóin Powell Doctrine-styleóby going in, shooting up the place a bit, and then being sure to pull out fast lest we fall into any Vietnam quagmire. The Gap itself is globalization's ongoing quagmire. It's only a question of how much failure and pain the Core must endure before coming to grips with the reality of what it will take in terms of military employmentóboth warfighting and peacekeepingóto really shrink the Gap.

In the Core and Core-like states trapped in the Gap like Israel, we treat tragedies like the Jewish Holocaust as something worth rememberingóperson by person. That's what the Israeli Holocaust museum seeks to do: put a name and address to every one of six million that died. That's the responsibility of societies that value individuals. When we begin to view the Gap in the same way, we won't stand by while genocide unfolds, because we'll stop seeing this carnage as abstract statistics, and begin seeing individuals dying.

And we'll be moved to do something about it.

And when we do want to do more that just flag our jaws, we'll need both the Leviathan to win the wars and the SysAdmin to keep the peace.