Kenyan Mall Attacks

Nobody can deny the horror of the attack that occurred on September 21 at the Westgate Mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Such incidents have unfortunately become common place in this tumultuous, religiously torn part of the world. The number of religiously based terror attacks that have occurred in Kenya over the past ten years is absurd, most of them perpetrated by al-Qaeda and al-Shabab. Many of the other incidents are similar to the mall attack; ruthless massacres in which there are many unarmed civilians of all ages. As noted by many survivors of the mall attack, it seems as though these attackers are being brainwashed from a very young age in order to carry out these killings. Now the biggest question is whether or not the United States needs to intervene in order to stop such horror, and the simple answer is no. The reality is that there is no way for the United States to intervene that would cause less damage. In the eyes of the extremists who committed these atrocities, the U.S. is perhaps the greatest enemy of all. If we sent troops or CIA operatives, they would only serve as a knew target. This would potentially endanger even more civilians. Frankly, the CIA doesn't have a very good reputation when it comes to taking down extremist factions either, and it is not particularly difficult to imagine a CIA sponsored coup ending in a civil war or a similar tragedy. The best thing the U.S. could do is to stay out. Even sponsoring a government from afar would do more harm then good, because anybody receiving U.S. aid would immediately become a new target. So, although it is very difficult to sit by and allow such tragedy to transpire, the United State's hands are tied.

Many Americans today are not wholly comfortable with the views of John Stuart Mill. A staunch anti-interventionist, Mill would see great fault with much of the United State's foreign policy regarding un-democratic nations. In his opinion, the billions of dollars that the United States has spent in the effort of installing democratic governments around the world has been fruitless.
In basic term, Mill "claimed that many societies were fit for representative government, but others, in their present state, were not; those peoples truly bent on self-rule, he claimed, would successfully fight for and achieve it" (Slatery, http://www.iop.harvard.edu/utilitarianism-and-neoconservative-conceit). Personally, I believe that this should become the stance of the United States. Attempts to instill democratic feelings in people overseas has been proven to be exhausting mentally, physically, and financially for America. Nothing proves this better than the ongoing "War on Terror." What was supposed to be a brief stint turned into an 11 year long endeavor. Had the Mill influence been infused early on, it is likely that the war could have been cut short especially when it comes to the effort put into democratizing Iran. The toll on America would have been far less great if we had left after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and now President Obama is considering engaging the United States into another potential political escapade. The current Syrian regime has taken an extraordinary amount of well deserved grief for it's use of chemical weapons on its own people. Despite such an atrocity, given the past decade of hardship and misfortune the U.S. has faced overseas, it is hard to believe that President Obama is considering re-igniting the flames of this fading fire. One cannot help but foresee what is to come if the U.S. intervenes. United States retribution will lead to a backlash from the Syrian government, a U.S. sponsored coup, and a new U.S. sponsored government. Somehow Obama seems to have forgotten the fact that doing exactly this in Iran was incredibly difficult. At this point Obama should observe Mill's belief and resist intervening. As proven by the past two years of Syrian civil war, the people of Syria clearly do wish for a democratic government however the only way for them to create a secure government is to establish it themselves. The entire political culture of Syria must change before they can achieve democracy. Iran's political culture was far from democratic when the United States was establishing a government for them, which is what led to riots and fraudulent elections (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Iranian_election_protests). After this can the United States even claim Iran's "democratic government" a success? Take a look at the turmoil occurring in Egypt, a country must undergo such drastic change or turmoil in order for a democratic culture to exist. Now Egypt is revolting against the Muslim Brotherhood without any aid from the U.S. This sounds quite similar to the United State's own revolution. Such is the reason that U.S. intervention is useless. Syria must find it's political identity on its own, otherwise there will be backlash and greater conflict.

I found section five of Hutcheson's An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, to be incredibly insightful. His ideas about human community are vastly different from those of Mandeville, and in my opinion are more agreeable as well. When comparing the ideas of Mandeville and Hutcheson it is very easy to dismiss Mandeville for being a cynic. While self-interest certainly drives many people it can by no means account for every action and the level of cooperation found within a community. For these reasons I consider Hutcheson's argument to be stronger. It makes more sense that if people had been designed to work together than obviously community would come about very easily. If every person operated solely out of self-interest then there would be no way for a functioning government or economy to be sustainable. People need to be able to see the big picture otherwise the government would have an unprecedented amount of corruption, and corporations would fall apart due to unruly employees or mismanagement. When everybody works only for themselves it leads to riotous behavior. Hypothetically, let us say that employees at a major corporation wanted more money for their efforts. However, management refused to give the employees a raise because it would cut into their bonuses. The employees would strike, so management would bring in strikebreakers. With enough momentum, the employees would ask the government to provide them with protection from such tactics. This would lead to a bribe from the corporation and ultimately no government protection. Clearly this is incredibly chaotic and does not resemble the society we now live. Although this example does remind one of certain times in history, the point is that those time have been overcome through people working together not out of self-interest. The only logical way to explain this would to side with Hutcheson and agree that humans must have been made to work together through some means.

Plagiarism Exercise
http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/04/06/196778/political-conflict-isnt-about-free-markets/?mobile=nc

1. I think this is very insightful. Where it goes wrong, though, is in concluding that there’s something “weird” about this inversion. I think if you look at political conflict you’ll see that attitudes toward property rights are really all over the map. I like the idea of allowing people to build more densely, which would be a form of strengthening property rights, whereas Cato’s Randal O’Toole doesn’t like this idea at all. The main difference between left and right with regard to property rights is simply that the right is invested in a lot of rhetoric about markets and property rights and the left is invested in different historical and rhetorical tropes.

2. I think this is very insightful. Where it goes wrong, though, is in concluding that there’s something “weird” about this inversion. I think if you look at political conflict you’ll see that attitudes toward property rights are really all over the map. I like the idea of allowing people to build more densely, which would be a form of strengthening property rights, whereas Cato’s Randal O’Toole doesn’t like this idea at all. The main difference between left and right with regard to property rights is simply that the right is invested in a lot of rhetoric about markets and property rights and the left is invested in different historical and rhetorical tropes. (Yglesias, 2010, http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/04/06/196778/political-conflict-isnt-about-free-markets/?mobile=nc)

3.   Yglesias claims that the right is more concerned about market and property rights while the left concerns themselves more with historical findings.

Yglesias, Mathew. "Political Conflict isn't About Free Markets," www.thinkprogress.com
April, 2010 http://thinkprogress.org/yglesias/2010/04/06/196778/political-conflict-isnt-about-free-markets/?mobile=nc

4. In his article, Yglesias claims that politicians on the right are willing to make inconsistent claims so long as they align with what best suits big businesses.(Yglesias, 2010. "Political Conflict isn't About Free Markets")