Intervening in our name

Charles Blow

Saturday, Aug. 16, 2014 | 2 a.m.

Americans, it must be admitted, are not always the most engaged people on world issues. It’s a sad truth.

But the world, at this moment, is aflame, and more Americans must perk up and pay attention. Before we know it, we will have already been drawn into these conflicts.

President Barack Obama recently said he had authorized limited airstrikes against the Islamic State, which the president said threatens some citizens of northern Iraq with “genocide.” The president, ever-conscious of his own commitment to extract us from the war in Iraq and of American weariness about our re-engaging, added: “As commander in chief, I will not allow the United States to be dragged into another war in Iraq.”

Most Americans probably had not heard of the Islamic State until a few months ago, but we have known about the civil war in Syria for years. Many Americans, understandably, didn’t want to engage in another foreign conflict, but from this region sprang the Islamic State. We, understandably, were eager to exit Iraq, but into that void flowed the Islamic State.

Russia annexed the Crimea, a commercial airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine — likely by Russian-backed Ukrainian separatists — and now Russia appears to be gathering a menacing troop presence on the Ukrainian border. As Reuters reported last week:

“Russia has amassed around 20,000 combat-ready troops on Ukraine’s eastern border and could use the pretext of a humanitarian or peacekeeping mission to invade, NATO said.”

The on-again, off-again cease-fires in Gaza have yet to produce a lasting peace. Before last week’s cease-fire, according to United Nations figures, there had been “1,814 Palestinians killed, including at least 1,312 civilians, of whom 408 are children and 214 are women.” By comparison, the report said there were “67 Israelis killed, including 64 soldiers, two civilians and one foreign national.”

An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey released last week asked Americans if they were satisfied with, dissatisfied with or didn’t know enough about how the U.S. was dealing with many of these topics, and the answers were thoroughly depressing.

On the Islamic State, Syria, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and Israel and Hamas, at least 32 percent — and as high as 42 percent in the case of Syria — said they didn’t know enough to have an opinion. Of respondents who did have an opinion, those who were dissatisfied far outnumbered those who were satisfied, and most of the dissatisfied said their dissatisfaction was rooted in their belief that the U.S. wasn’t involved enough.

More Americans need to be more engaged, because these conflicts are complicated. There are no easy answers. Sometimes there will be no clear choices between good guys and bad guys but only choices among lesser demons. Sometimes conflicts are a swirl of history, ambition, grievance, vengeance and egos. Sometimes actors can only see righteousness in their wrong. Sometimes nobility and savagery coexist.

But if America, as the world’s last remaining superpower, is to faithfully play a role — if we must play that role — as a check against tyranny and terror in the world, its citizenry must be up to the task of discernment.

You don’t necessarily have to be privy to national security reports to be part of the national conversation. Those who know more don’t always know better. It has been my experience that truth has a way of revealing itself to those willing to search for it.

We have a responsibility to stay abreast of the conflicts in the world so that we can support or reject our leaders’ efforts to navigate them.

Abdicating that responsibility inevitably seems to grant more power to the war machine and its warmongers who have never seen a fight they didn’t want to join.

But we continue to be reminded that what’s left in the wake of force can be worse than what existed before it. Sadly, not every population can be freed, nor every life saved, by an exterior force when threatened by the reign of dictators or the rise of terrorists. This is a hard truth to swallow in the land of the free and home of the brave. Our hearts hurt for the oppressed and the slain.

But sometimes, we must use softer power. As the president said in May at West Point: “Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail.”

Sometimes sanctions will be the more appropriate path, sometimes appeals for peace. And regardless of our approach, we have no guarantees of success. There are limits to all expressions of power. Sometimes we can only influence — but not dictate — events.

Sometimes the best we can do is to maintain constant pressure, so that we slowly bend the world toward freedom and justice.

Whatever our politics, we must at least make an effort to know enough about the issues to take a position.

Charles Blow is a columnist for The New York Times.