"There is a distinction between the complexity of a country’s problems,
and the question of whether the U.S. should intervene militarily as part
of a solution. The latter should be
differentiated as NOT complex. The burden of proof should not be on the
part of the war resister to explain how to solve the problems of Yemen,
Syria, Afghanistan, etc. And not everyone needs to understand all the
nuances of the conflict. We only need understand that our military
intervention makes things worse, regime change always ends badly, drone
bombing breeds more terrorists, the concept of “blowback”, etc. This
logic doesn’t make one a pacifist, but a pragmatist. Self defense and
humanitarian interventionism may well be very noble ideas in theory.
But if those are the arguments, the burden of proof should be placed on
the war-enabler to explain precisely how our own citizens are being
“defended ” (or those of the target country, for that matter), and how
exactly the “humanitarianism” will outweigh the carnage of war. The
argument should be backed with a case study using a recent war as
evidence…if only the results of our engagements in Iraq, Lybia,
Afghanistan, the instability and increase in terrorism, didn’t appear to
prove precisely the opposite."
