The Futility of Well Wishers and Genocide Fighters

"Fight the genocide in Darfur. Support Challah for Hunger."

Such slogans would be laughable if they weren't so damaging, but alas they are damaging for the very virtue they extol -- "charity." But it is not charity in the Christian sense -- that is to say "uplifting" sense of the term -- but in the modern welfare state idea of food as a right to be doled out by a worldwide welfare state.

The Stop Genocide movement is really, at base, an effort to expand the power of the U.N. (Useless Nations) at the expense of America's interests, of which they are few in Darfur. Unlike the days of old when activism meant going to fight against evil as American communists and fellow travelers did against Fransisco Franco's Spain, most of the people calling for boots on the ground in Darfur aren't the ones that will bear the brunt of the consequences that will likely occur.

In case you were wondering, the Claremont Colleges have divested from Darfur, all but eliminating the only influence we could have had in the region and giving over said influence to the Chinese. Curiously, though, the same group of students that called for divestment works to provide "charity" for the people of Darfur by enabling students to donate via PayPal, Flex, cash to their cause. Instead of actual work that would be provided by American companies and their involvement in Sudan, modern progressives would rather put the Sudanese on their beneficent -- and unpredictable-- doles.

Does that mean that I oppose economic sanctions? In principle, no, but in practice, they have seldom, if ever achieved the ends they sought.

You might remember a post I wrote several months ago on this very point.

Brian T. Kennedy of The Claremont Institute and I had coffee a week ago and discussed this very matter vis a vis Iran. Mr. Kennedy argued that Iran is a modern day evil, analogous to the tyranny of the Soviet Union or Nazism. After some deliberation, we agreed that there were an evil regime and that something must be done to disrupt that regime's stability, though we did not agree as to ends. Mr. Kennedy still favored a divestment, while I cautioned him against such rash action as depriving ourselves of leverage over what is an evil regime.

I argued that the progressives in the academy might retaliate by boycotting Israel, which I take as a serious threat. Since our conversation, I have thought hard on how a state might short of war disrupt another state's activities in favor of some end.

How might we unseat leaders that are hostile to our interests?

One such way is assassination, which would be the surest way of guaranteeing a regime change, as Harvard economist Ben Olken makes clear in his paper described by the American.

In “Hit or Miss? The Effect of Assassinations on Institutions and War,” Olken and Jones looked at the effects of political assassination, using a strict empirical methodology that takes into account economic conditions at the time of the killing and what Olken calls a “novel data set” of assas­sination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, between 1875 and 2004.

Olken and Jones discovered that a country was “more likely to see democratization follow­ing the assassination of an autocratic leader,” but found no substantial “effect following assassinations—or assassination attempts—on democratic leaders.” They concluded that “on average, successful assassinations of autocrats produce sustained moves toward democracy.”

But it seems unlikely that the Challah for Hunger people would favor such means, preferring to bake bread while others die.