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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

(This is a recurrent fantasy of mine) I think we should have an independent armed forces with the power to intervene in gross violations of human rights, something like the UN but with exponentially more authority (current UN peace keeping forces are a joke, e.g. see Srebrenica massacre, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srebrenica_massacre, for just one example of many). This force would have the initiative to wage war on authoritative regimes, like the Taliban, Kaddafi, and the one in North Korea.

Currently this is done in a haphazard way, through NATO (e.g. Libya) or countries acting by themselves (e.g. France in Ivory Coast).

Thinking of the practical problems clearly shows that this is an impossible idea. But on a theoretical level, is it valid (e.g. where does this force take its authority from)? I think so.

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The most powerful military the world has ever known already exists; and it would not be capable of "fixing" North Korea or Libya without sustaining (and more importantly, inflicting) significant casualties. The best course of action, militarily speaking, would probably be to significantly nuke Pyongyang quickly and have S. Korea take over administration of the country. This is not politically or morally acceptable.

That's part of the problem: The moment you declare a regime as morally bankrupt, you are stating your own goals are somehow more enlightened and worthy. In some cases this works, like against the Nazis, but in most, like the Yugoslav war you cite, it's only a matter of opinion - For every Srebrenica there is a Krajina, unfortunately. The people involved in such generational hatred do not escape their own guilt, regardless of which particular side they may be on in any particular indecent. Getting involved in these quagmires often only intensifies the conflicting hatred for a later date. Even worse, who then protects us from the protectors?

Your desire is a noble one but unfortunately completely at odds with human nature.

I totally agree with your points (i.e. "who watches the Watchmen" and accumulative hatred) but I'm not happy to be so. Goethe said that "to be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state". Even if we're not pleased with the notion that no better solution exists (or can be found), still it makes one sad about humanity.

That is a totally valid feeling.

Of course these are just extensions of our own personal hatreds and prejudices. The best way to change them is to change these feelings within yourself.

This I totally disagree with. Saying there's no evident solution for a problem is one thing, stating that the problem is actually "imagined" or just has something to do with our perception is a totally different thing.

I believe in cultural relativism only weakly, I firmly believe there are well-defined wrongs: female circumcision is wrong (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/12/opinion/12kristof.html?_r=...), putting your own citizens in concentration camps is wrong, etc. To say that these acts are unequivocally wrong has nothing to do with "our own personal hatreds and prejudices".

Um, I didn't say the problem was imagined. I said the problem on a macro scale is just the extension of behaviours on a micro scale.

In other words: the best way to change the world is to change the person looking back at you in the mirror. The extension of your hatred, your desire for revenge, your jealousy, your moral outrage is all these things you are complaining about.

It sounds good until you explore the details. At the end of the day, someone pays the bills, and whomever controls the checkbook tends to set the agenda. There is no such thing as independence.

Flashback to 1985. The Soviet puppet government was committing all sorts of atrocities against people in Afghanistan. Clearly the moral imperative was to stand up for the "freedom fighters", right?

Right, any human-governed force will be corruptible. Now combine this with another fantasy: A benign Skynet-like central authority for such a force, its prime directive being the maximization of welfare for humans (a utilitarian approach, that has its flaws). Or the authority can be made totally decentralized, i.e. "all people on the world with cellphones vote: should we attack North Korea"?

One problem with this would be the "saving fish from drowning" syndrome, e.g. intervening certain acts where the "victims" are all too willing. An example is France's draconian recent law (which I totally back) against burqas: evidently these women are doing this willingly (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/10/france-burqa-law...), so how can our force intervene?

The more you think about it, the more you realize that, although the current situation is unacceptable and despicable, there are no clear alternatives to it. This is indeed a sad thought.

>Or the authority can be made totally decentralized, i.e. "all people on the world with cellphones vote: should we attack North Korea"

That's great until you replace "North Korea" with your unpopular region. Asking that same question right now about the US would probably come close to passing.

The western world is founded on the rights of the individual above that of the collective. Your suggestions are counter to this philosophy.

I 100% agree, imagine if we had invaded North Korea rather than Iraq. Both had bad tyrants/dictators but North Korea makes Iraq look like Disneyland. Same as number of other countries, I think we should be tackling objectively worse humanitarian problems as higher priority.

If we had invaded North Korea, it is highly likely that the death toll would be in the tens of millions and that several cities in Asia would no longer exist.

Add to that the fact that life expectancy around the world would probably dip sharply due to the widespread effects of radiation.

It is a known fact that North Korea has at least 6-8 nuclear weapons. It's also a know fact that China will defend North Korea if it feels the situation is not in its best interests, as they did the last time we invaded.

There are worse things than a prolonged limited regional conflict. Just because you have not experienced these within your lifetime does not mean they won't happen.

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