How do we prevent the next Syria, Gaza, Iraq.... genocide?

[LoveFoolMe]

How can society help prevent another genocide?

Whilst short-term humanitarian and medical help are great I'm wondering if there're any longer term ideas.

What sociology-political conditions or philosophical approaches are needed to minimise the threat of future ideaological terrorism? What kind of education is needed? Is economic prosperity vital? Can democracy be developed quickly or does it need to develop naturally? How do you break down differences that separate communities and lead to fear, jealousy and violence?

What are your ideas on this?

wafflyversatile-you see the Islamic extremists as "freedom fighters"?? Try telling that to the women who are beaten up for showing their faces in public the religious minorities who are massacred or forced to flee, the families of the people who have been beheaded or crucified.

Try reading what I wrote instead of what you've decided I wrote.

You asked why people go and join foreign conflicts. I answered with some guesses. I'm a middle aged white atheist woman who dislikes christianity and Islam and Judaism equally. I can only guess at why young men do this. It's not a new thing. Many young men went to fight in the spanish civil war. This link has some quotes from men who went 'it was war, not just an adventure'

I don't see George Bush's shock and awe, him and Tony's illegal war on Iraq or many other actions of 'christian'/ western governments as any more moral with their crocodile tears at the largely muslim 'collateral damage'.

crescent, this govt is definitely looking to compete in the race to the bottom, at our expense, not their own, of course.

sorry link here

www.theguardian.com/galleryguide/0,6191,395635,00.html

People and human nature are the issue

Really? Aren't there enough people who don't like the end result to keep the others in check/make them see reason?

Also agreeing with waffly's posts, particularly with regards to over consumption, not over population being the problem.

Love - that's an interesting question. Most people just want to live their lives, those who initiate conflicts are rarely at the front line of them. There seems to be such a self-destructive, yet innate human desire to be "King of the Castle".

Totally impractical but sending children to be brought up by 'the enemy'.

If All Israeli families had a child living in Gaza would they be so free with the bombing?

Obviously the Israeli family would be looking after a Gazan child and might just notice they are human and have a lot in common.

I think the root of genocide is seeing a group of people as sub human. It has happened time and time again, before the genocide there is always a media campaign attributing things to the group about to be slaughtered making them less human or at least undesirable human, so that the genocide is then thought of as getting rid of a problem, an anomaly of nature, a problem the world needs to see the end of.

Maybe this image should be posted on every billboard in every country in the world with Carl Sagan's quote. Maybe it would give people some perspective as to the futility and pointlessness of their actions.

'Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.'

I'm probably being very naive.

Sorry to be so long in replying but life got too busy.

I love the picture of our little blue marble floating through the universe and the Carl Sagan quote. Yes it puts it all into perspective; we're all here together. So, if you're naive, OneEgg, then so am I.

I think sassh really gets down to the issue. If we had educational exchanges between different cultures wouldn't we understand each other better. Nothing tackles fear and resentment as well as getting to know someone.

In fact, an education at all would be a start. I've just signed a petition - I hope it's okay to link to it here. UpForSchool

This is what horrifies me.

It's a good thing to be thinking about, but I'm not sure there is a solution.

Take oil for example. If we invented cheap fusion power tomorrow we could say "keep your oil", but how would that really help? They'd just have less money to spend. They can't eat the oil.

Does anyone think if we built a big wall and kept to our side, that those countries would all become peaceful and just?

Back, do you think if you built a big wall that all the western world's problems would be solved and it would become a just and peaceful utopia? I suspect just like after the cold war ended the western powers would just find another enemy/bogeyman to distract their citizens from the biggest threat to their well-being, peace and security which is our own governments and the corporations they are enslaved to.

'The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion (to which few members of other civilizations were converted) but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do'. Samuel P Huntington author of the The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order

A simple answer to your question OP. Asking our government and its allies to stop interfering in those countries.

'To preserve Western civilization in the face of declining Western power, it is in the interest of the United States and European countries … to recognize that Western intervention in the affairs of other civilizations is probably the single most dangerous source of instability and potential global conflict in a multicivilizational world.' Samuel P Huntington

It may or may not bring peace to those countries but it would certainly give us peace here.

dysfunctionalbedlam, no I don't think it would bring utopia here either though my main point was that even if the western world was out of sight and not interfering they'd still be killing each other. We've done plenty of bad things, but we're not the only or even the main cause.

A simple answer to your question OP. Asking our government and its allies to stop interfering in those countries.

There's at least one thread at the moment demanding that we go and prevent the latest round of atrocities. Do you really recommend that we say "hey sort it out yourself. We're just going to watch you slaughter each other?"

In one way maybe that would best as we can't really fix their problems anyway. But you know that people would be saying "let's bomb the west for not helping us"

The Israelis wouldn't be too happy with that plan either.

we're not the only or even the main cause.

Actually if we just take the three examples given in the OP and look at the historical incidents that have led to the current situation in those countries I would say Western countries have played a major part in causing the problems there some of them deliberately created by colonial policies of European countries. With Gaza and Iraq its fairly well known how the British and Americans played a big role in the situation there but the role the French played in bringing the minority Alawites to dominance in Syria is less known.

'When the French began to occupy Syria in 1920,[30] an Alawite State was created in the coastal and mountain country comprising most Alawite villages; the French justified this by citing differences between the "backwards" mountain people and the mainstream Sunnis. The division also intended to protect the Alawite people from more-powerful majorities, such as the Sunnis.

The French also created microstates, such as Greater Lebanon for the Maronite Christians and Jabal al-Druze for the Druze. Aleppo and Damascus were also separate states.[31] Under the Mandate many Alawite chieftains supported a separate Alawite nation, and tried to convert their autonomy into independence.

The French encouraged Alawites to join their military forces, in part to provide a counterweight to the Sunni majority (which was more hostile to their rule). According to a 1935 letter by the French minister of war, the French considered the Alawites and the Druze the only "warlike races" in the Mandate territories.[32]'

Basically the French sowed the seeds of the sectarian strife we are currently seeing now in Syria. You know the saying 'divide and conquer'.

Also looking at the three countries history they have not been blighted with bloodshed throughout and have had periods of turmoil and periods of peace and prosperity just like any other other part of the world so your assertion that they would be 'killing each other anyway' as if they are some sort of sub-human savages that enjoy war is just a load of rubbish.

As for your comment about Western interference in the region the problem is we are not honest brokers. We talk about human rights violations in one place and then ignore the abuses of our allies. We talk about lack of democracy across the middle east but then prop up dictators. We start wars because of supposed violations of UN resolutions an then actively ignore or veto actions to deal with violations of UN resolutions by Isrealis. No we cant solve the problems of the region but we can certainly stop making them worse with our ruthless pursuit of our own economic interests regardless of the consequences an human costs to people living in those countries.

Oh if you go back to root causes we do have a lot to answer for, but I disagree that we're the main cause now.

your assertion that they would be 'killing each other anyway' as if they are some sort of sub-human savages that enjoy war is just a load of rubbish

Fine. Do you propose for example that we invade and kill all the ISIS people next week? Will that help and is it even possible?

Or should we feed the world? To get food to many of these places we'd have to begin by taking them over. That probably would help with food since there'd be no one left to eat it. We'd be fighting not just the country we decided to 'help' but most of the neighbouring countries too.

Or the other way? We can announce that we will never interfere again. ISIS will be pleased and about 20 minutes after we make that announcement I suspect Israel will be fighting a major war.

Do you have any solutions other than wringing our hands and feeling guilty because we have a better life?

Of course you don't want to invade and kill all the ISIS people, but you want us to make it better somehow.

The funny thing is I agree with you on Israel. Creating a Jewish state there was madness in the first place and wouldn't have been considered if it wasn't that god said it belonged to them already. (and people claim religion is harmless)

I agree on interfering generally, but we should have stopped long ago. Just stopping now probably isn't an option.

If we refuse to help people in need then lots of them die and the others will bomb us. If we help then we are interfering so some of them bomb us.

Look around MN and you will see posters saying we are committing crimes by not sorting out ISIS and saving those lovely people and so on. Just as people did for each of the atrocities that have happened for decades. Each time someone dies people demand we go and interfere and when the dust settles they say we caused it by interfering.

If we abandon Israel then I do think you will see a major war which I assume they will lose. Unless they do have nuclear weapons in which case that solves most of our middle east problems.

In the sense that a sin of omission is better than one of commission I would like us to walk away from it.

It might make good TV if we sit back and watch and we can smugly say "we didn't do it this time" but then I guess we'd lose the oil and all of our civilisations would collapse. Let me know if it looks like we're going with that one as I will need to buy a gun and a lot of supplies.

Of course you don't want to invade and kill all the ISIS people, but you want us to make it better somehow.

[Hmm] What is that supposed to mean? I would rather the Middle Eastern countries invade and kill the ISIS people which they are perfectly capable of doing. Wonder why they arent? I mean ISIS considers all the leaders of muslim countries to be apostates and their lands to be the rightful property of their 'caliph' so you would think they would have a vested interest in getting rid of them. But why should they when Western leaders for some reason or another are willing to do their dirty work for them. See the thing is the people who do want the Western countries to get involved are ISIS. They can then produce some videos of innocent women and children killed as a result of western military intervention and hey presto. Great recruitment tool for them. Also for the Arab leaders its win win because we can distract ISIS from focusing on fighting them plus we rid them of a horrible threat to them without them having to lift a finger. Better for us to take a step back and avoid military involvement and instead provide humanitarian assistance to those badly effected by ISIS. Isnt that what we do in the rest of the world where there is no oil?

If we abandon Israel then I do think you will see a major war which I assume they will lose. Unless they do have nuclear weapons in which case that solves most of our middle east problems.

I guess thats one way to achieve your objective/desire of what was it again...disintegrating Islam or something like that. Can keep your hands clean too and cheer from the sidelines. I assume that's what you meant by this post.

It might make good TV if we sit back and watch

Its hugely doubtful that any of the Middle Eastern countries with the exception of Iran would actually directly fight Israel knowing they have nuclear weapons. Plus it would distract them from their only goal which is to maintain their own precarious grip on power in their countries. See as much as Islamophobes bitch and moan about the Middle East what they dont realise is their governments like the situation just as it is. Maintaining the status quo is the point of all of these interventions. Who cares about sunnis, christians, shias, yazidis, jews, homosexuals, women, atheists. They can all be sacrificed on the altar of national interest for all they care.

It might make good TV if we sit back and watch

Did you think OP that some people dont want to stop genocides in middle eastern countries. Seems watching people get killed is quite entertaining for some.

dysfunctionalbedlam you're not following this are you.

You're the one who wants us not to interfere. I'm pointing out that we could sit back and watch it on TV if we took your advice, but it would be a disaster.

You said Better for us to take a step back and avoid military involvement

but then you said some people don't want to stop genocides as a dig at me.

You can't make up your mind can you. Sort out what it is that you think first then tell us.