what Ignatieff meant to say...

My fellow blogger has inspired me to develop one of the ideas found in his previous post.

Consensus seems to be that if Ignatieff falls, it will be on Afghanistan. I don’t know why that is necessarily the case. Given all the academic muscle he has built working through issues of state intervention, war, human rights, etc. Afghanistan looks like a big fat fastball coming right down the middle of the plate. There is no denying, however, that the Saturday debate was a big swing and a big miss.

His defence – that he voted for the mission extension because a soldier died that day – simply made no sense. It sounded like the kind of Conservative rhetoric liberals have rightfully pilloried. Bob Rae was justified in calling it “unfair.” It was an appeal to passion intended for the party of reason. One wonders if it is reflective of bad coaching – because it is a bad misrepresentation of what he actually argues.

It also put those of us who favour his position in a difficult place. I must now explain that I support what he means, but not necessarily what he says. As such, I have taken the liberty of rewriting history. With the help of Ignatieff himself (a selection of quotations from the past, wherein he argues eloquently and persuasively for intervention in the interest of human security), this is how the debate should’ve gone:

IGGY:
I believe passionately in this mission because I believe passionately in our responsibility to defend the liberal values that we cherish for ourselves. I arrived at this belief partially through my travels in Afghanistan, and my encounters with the Taliban.

I began the journey as a liberal, and I end as one, but I cannot help thinking that liberal civilization – the rule of laws, not men, of argument in place of force, of compromise in place of violence – runs deeply against the human grain and is achieved and sustained only by the most unremitting struggle against human nature. The liberal virtues – tolerance, compromise, reason – remain as valuable as ever, but they cannot be preached to those who are mad with fear or mad with vengeance. In any case, preaching always rings hollow. We must be prepared to defend them by force, and the failure of the sated, cosmopolitan nations to do so has left the hungry nations sick with contempt for us (taken from Blood and Belonging).

I was proud of my appointment, by Lloyd Axworthy, to the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty. Our conclusion, sanctioned by the United Nations, was that “The responsibility to protect implies the responsibility not just to prevent and react, but to follow through and rebuild. This means that if military intervention action is taken … there should be a genuine commitment to helping to build a durable peace, and promoting good governance and sustainable development (taken from The Responsibility To Protect).” I believe this, and I believe this is reason to remain in Afghanistan until the job is finished.


BOB RAE: I profoundly disagree. Who are we to export our Western values and call them universal, etc. etc. blah blah stuff that sounds suspiciously like New Democratic Relativist Isolationism. (Yes I also conveniently rewrote Rae, but we all know this is the stuff he loves).


IGGY: Stow it, Rae. The language of human rights is the only universally available moral vernacular that validates the claims of women and children against the oppression they experience in patriarchal and tribal societies (taken from Virtual War)…

[Interrupted by applause]

- Mike (SCG)