The timing of a major attack on a Catholic school this week in Nigeria is—I confess—a bit uncanny—and not at all helpful for those of us who oppose U.S. military intervention in the country (though this is, to state the obvious, hardly the worst or most important thing about it).
For weeks, after all, Donald Trump has been catering to evangelical voters by railing against alleged anti-Christian persecution in the country. But when he first started talking about it—it wasn't all that clear exactly what he had in mind.
It's true: there have been a variety of armed groups committing atrocities in Nigeria for years—against all major religious groups. But many of the most high-profile incidents of violence involving groups like Boko Haram, for instance, had occurred more than a decade ago. There didn't seem to be any particular precipitating cause to trigger the White House's sudden interest in this issue—other than a desire to throw a bone to some evangelical leaders who are (rightly) worried about global anti-Christian persecution (and who have otherwise gotten very little solace out of Trump's regime).
Now—however—events seem to have intervened in the most bizarre way to prove Trump's point for him. An armed group took hostage more than 300 schoolchildren this week, from a Catholic school in Nigeria. It's an atrocity by any standard, and I have no trouble describing it as a form of anti-Christian persecution. What else could it be?
Many in the media respond to Trump's allegations of anti-Christian bias in Nigeria by saying something like: "but persecution and violence are affecting all religious groups in Nigeria." And I'm sure this is true as well. But it's not exactly a ringing endorsement. Trump is wrong, surely, to single out Christians as the only group we should care about. But evangelical leaders are right to suggest there is an actual problem here that merits global concern and solidarity.
It seems that Nigeria is indeed failing as a state—for whatever reason—to protect its people from religious persecution.
The interesting question, though, is—what should the U.S. do about it? Trump's proposed solution was quite literally to go in "guns a-blazing." That's what he actually said.
This is one of several recent places in the Trump era when we have seen a strange recrudescence of neo-conservative rhetoric and beliefs: the idea of the United States as the "global policeman." (People who bought the hype that the Trump presidency would be "isolationist" are doubtless surprised by this; but those of us who always took somewhat seriously Trump's frequent imperialist rhetoric and threats to invade or annex sovereign countries will be less so.)
We see some of the same creeping neoconservatism in Trump's Venezuela policy as well—complete with a Bush-era–style op-ed in the New York Times earlier this week—penned by an old-fashioned hawk who had likewise cheerleaded the Iraq War two decades ago—calling for the forcible overthrow of Maduro.
This op-ed by Bret Stephens, though, already contained its own refutation. "Intervention means war, and war means death [...] The law of unintended consequences is unrepealable," Stephens concedes. Which—to my mind—is reason enough on its own not to do it.
But Stephens seems to think that the cost here would be worth paying—that the "balance of risk" weighs in favor of war with Maduro. In other words—these particular eggs—Venezuelan civilians—would be worth breaking for the sake of this particular omelette—a more U.S.-aligned (and—maybe—more democratic and stable) Venezuela.
But I think the philosopher Isaiah Berlin ought to have put such brutally callous means-ends rationales beyond the pale of civilized thought decades ago.
As he puts it, in his essay, "The Pursuit of the Ideal": "The first public obligation is to avoid extremes of suffering. Revolutions, wars, assassinations, extreme measures may in desperate situations be required. But history teaches us that the consequences are seldom what is anticipated; there is no guarantee, not even, at times, a high enough probability, that such acts will lead to improvement."
There is no such "high enough probability" in this case that invading either Venezuela or Nigeria would lead to a humanitarian improvement in either country, to be sufficient to justify intervention.
Stephens is, on some level, perhaps, aware of this—which is why he added that line about "unintended consequences." He should go and meditate on his own insight in that passage a little bit harder.
People throughout modern history have been urging massive wars and killings on us for the sake of what Berlin called "distant goals"—such as achieving democracy or human rights in Venezuela or Nigeria. (Twenty years ago, it was Iraq and Afghanistan that people were saying this about.) Each time, we are told: Sure, there will be sacrifices in the near term—"Intervention means war, and war means death," as Stephens so casually concedes—but, we are assured, it will all be justified in the fulness of time by the importance of the goal we seek.
Yet, in the end—as Berlin put it—"The one thing that we may be sure of is the reality of the sacrifice, the dying and the dead. [... T]he ideal for the sake of which they die remains unrealized. The eggs are broken, and the habit of breaking them grows, but the omelette remains invisible."
I have no hesitation whatsoever in saying that this is what would happen in the case of a U.S. invasion of Nigeria or Venezuela too. The omelette of democracy or stability or human rights or whatever it is would remain unrealized, but countless thousands of innocents would suffer and perish along the way. It's simply not worth the price.
(And this is not even to mention the larger deontological objection to the U.S. invading other countries without their consent and in violation of the UN Charter—which one might also oppose for wholly non-consequentialist reasons.)
But does this mean the United States ought to simply do nothing when innocent schoolchildren are kidnapped and persecuted?
Hardly. I would say that there's a great deal our government could do to help victims of religious persecution around the world—if it were truly so inclined; things that don't involve the risk of so many "unintended consequences"; things that don't involve deliberately inflicting "war" or "death"; things that don't require breaking so many eggs in pursuit of the phantom omelette.
One of these things would be to rely on the international institutions that have grown up over decades—but which the Trump administration has so conspicuously disavowed and disowned—that are intended to address and bring accountability for human rights violations (things like international mechanisms of justice, for instance).
But another—even more obvious and simpler to implement—of these mechanisms—would be to simply not deport the victims of religious persecution (or other forms of persecution) when they reach U.S. soil. In other words—we could just actually implement our own asylum laws, and international refugee law, which were set up to provide a form of protection for people fleeing persecution on the basis of their religion or identity.
And yet—at the same time he talks about going in "guns a-blazing" the save Christians in Nigeria—Trump is meanwhile shredding U.S. refugee commitments that are intended to protect people in precisely such cases; indeed, he is working to deport Nigerian victims of persecution, specifically, back to the very persecution they fled in Nigeria!
Just two months ago, for instance, Trump's regime master-minded an illegal scheme to send asylum-seekers back to Nigeria—by the indirect route of Ghana—even though these individuals had already received orders from U.S. immigration courts saying they faced a serious risk of persecution or torture in Nigeria, and were therefore entitled to protection under international covenants.
People are right to care about the fate of victims of religious persecution in Nigeria, then—including the Catholic schoolchildren who were attacked this week. But that's exactly why we should honor the UN refugee convention and the Convention Against Torture—rather than violating them in order to send people back into the jaws of religious persecution.
It's also why we should do things like honor the dignity of migrants and asylum-seekers—including Catholic ones—who are being held in U.S. immigration detention. At the same time Trump is seething about anti-Catholic persecution in Nigeria, after all—it's worth noting that he is simultaneously facing criticism from U.S. Catholic bishops for withholding religious services and pastoral care to Catholic immigrants in detention—and otherwise depriving people in U.S. custody of their dignity and human rights.
If Trump really opposes anti-Catholic persecution, then—maybe he could start by not persecuting the Catholics whom he has imprisoned on our own shores.
I'm reminded of Lord Byron's 1812 speech in the House of Lords—one of only three he ever gave in front of that ever-futile chamber—in which he spoke out in favor of Catholic emancipation.
He was struck, at the time, by what he called "the difference between our foreign and domestic policy." He noted that Great Britain, under King George III, seemed to have no objection to allying in its foreign entanglements with reactionary Catholic monarchs abroad. If any of them, he said, "stand in need of succour, away goes a fleet and an army, an ambassador and a subsidy, sometimes to fight pretty hardly, generally to negotiate very badly, and always to pay very dearly[.]"
But all the time, Byron noted, the British government oppressed and disenfranchised Catholics in its own borders. "[L]et four millions of [Catholic] fellow-subjects pray for relief, who fight and pay and labour in your behalf, they must be treated as aliens; and although their 'father’s house has many mansions' [, t]here is no resting-place for them."
So too—the Trump administration, and its suddenly-converted neoconservative apologists—who are finding in the supposedly "isolationist" president an unexpected new avatar for their defeated dreams of neo-imperial conquest—propose to undertake a war of aggression—with untold consequences in human suffering and evil—for the sake of the deeply uncertain proposition that it might, indirectly, and in the fullness of time, yield a better humanitarian outcome for Catholics in Nigeria.
But in the meantime, they are indifferent to the suffering of the Catholics and Nigerian refugees or victims of religious persecution already in their own custody. Indeed, they are worse than indifferent—Trump and his officials are actively sadistic toward these innocent men and women; slandering them relentlessly in public as "criminals" and monsters; denying them communion and spiritual succor; and confining them in inhuman conditions where they are crowded twenty to a room and forced to eat moldy spread and sleep amidst the smells of the sewer.
Quite a "difference between our foreign and domestic policy" indeed!
If we actually want to help victims of religious persecution, whether from Nigeria or elsewhere—how about we start by declaring a moratorium on deportations or detention; or—at the very least—honor our own country's court orders not to deport them to the very countries they fled.
Likewise with Venezuela: if we despise Maduro (and we should), and wish to show solidarity with his victims, then let us start by welcoming the people who have escaped him to our borders. Let us stop reversing TPS for Venezuela or trying to use the "Alien Enemies Act" to send people without charge or trial to a hideous prison in El Salvador. Let us stop treating them as "aliens," as Byron put it, even as they "labour" on our "behalf" (often working miserable jobs and paying taxes to support public benefits for U.S. citizens to which they themselves are not entitled, because of their immigration status).
Instead of pursuing ever-receding "distant goals" and invisible omelettes that we will likely never reach—in short—let us start with the more obvious and practicable ways to mitigate and prevent suffering in the here and now: such as by providing people refuge and succor from injustice.
They were already daring and desperate and resourceful enough to reach our shores and ask for it. The very least we can do—though it is apparently too much for our current government—but the least, I say—is to allow them to stay and work on our behalf!
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