Becky and I just got back from the DeBartolo, where we watched a screening of the documentary Screamers, part of Notre Dame’s spring film series of movies about genocide. And I must say, as movies about genocide go, Screamers is an odd one. It’s about 50 percent historical documentary about the Armenian genocide, 30 percent concert tour DVD for System of a Down, and 20 percent a mish-mash of other elements, including endless interviews with Harvard professor Samantha Power, who is apparently academia’s one and only expert on genocide.

[UPDATE: Here’s Becky’s review of the film. It’s kind of funny how we make a lot of the same points, though we didn’t talk about our respective reviews until both were finished — although we were sitting on the couch next to each other, writing them simultaneously. Heh. We’re such freaking nerds.]

[UPDATE 2: Welcome, InstaPundit readers! Please have a look around. If you don’t like college basketball, you may want to visit my Non-Sports Page instead of my homepage, as there are a whole lot of hoops-related posts right now. On the other hand, if you like hoops, go here for all my posts on Championship Week(s).]

The movie’s oddest moment occurred during one of the “concert tour DVD” segments. System of a Down (”SOAD” to the cool kids) is a metal band comprised of four grandchildren of Armenian genocide survivors, and they make it a point to educate their legions of fans about the oft-denied atrocity that killed off most of their ancestors. So, in the movie, we see them at one of their concerts, standing silently on stage while a mini-documentary about the genocide is played for concertgoers on a giant screen. In the background, we hear the typical sort of noises that you’d expect at a rock concert, including quite a bit of hooting and cheering, which is strange enough when it happens while a narrator is talking about the mass extermination of millions of people. But then came the strangest moment of all, when the face of one of the Turkish leaders who orchestrated the genocide appears on the screen. The crowd starts vigorously booing him, as if he’s some sports idol they don’t like. More than anything else, it reminded me of how the crowds at ESPN GameDay react when someone from the opposing team is shown on the screen. Yet here, the crowd was reacting not to a hated coach or quarterback, but to the architect of a crime against humanity. I suppose booing is better than cheering, but the reaction still seemed grossly inappropriate somehow. A negative reaction is of course appropriate, but they’re reacting to something so much weightier and more profound than a simple “boo” can possibly hope to express. It was just weird.

As for the substance of the movie… it had its moments, made some valid points, and of course the basic bottom-line message — that genocide is very bad, and that people who say “never again” but then let it happen again are hypocrites — is pretty much impossible to argue against. That said, I was struck by the naivete and, well, hypocrisy, actually, of many of the true believers. One bloke waiting in line for a SOAD concert in London said he likes the band because they’re “anti-Bush and anti-Blair,” like him. He asserted that this position is obviously correct because (this may not be a direct quote, but it’s close) “I’m anti-war in principle, and that’s something you can’t really argue against.” To which I could only think: “Oh, really? So I guess, since you’re ‘anti-war in principle,’ you would have been opposed to World War II as well? You know, the war that finally — far too late, of course — ended the Holocaust? Yeah, can’t really argue against that!”

Look, I’m not saying that wars are always justified, nor even that every war that ends a genocide or takes out a genocidal madman is necessarily justified; if non-military means can accomplish the same end in the same time frame, of course they should be used (unless there’s some other compelling reason why force is necessary). Nor am I suggesting that leaders who seek to justify wars on the basis of stopping or preventing genocide are necessarily interested purely in the humanitarian rationale. That would be naive to the point of idiocy; of course other reasons generally take priority (regardless of what might be said in public), and when those other reasons don’t exist, we don’t usually get involved. And it’s perfectly reasonable to criticize our leaders for that.

What isn’t reasonable, in my view — and I’d love to hear a coherent argument for why I’m wrong — is to state that you are “anti-war in principle” while at the time demanding that all genocides can and must be stopped. The reality is that some genocides — not necessarily all, but certainly at least some, and probably most — cannot be stopped without military action. And moreover, even among those that can be stopped without military action, the plausible threat of military action is generally a prerequisite to successfully putting any sort of diplomatic pressure on genocidal regimes. It may be an oversimplification to say that “the only language they understand is force,” but certainly when we’re talking about the sort of people who would commit genocide, it’s a concept that can’t be blithely ignored. Simply put, genocidal regimes are not generally run by nice people, and they’re unlikely to stop just because you ask nicely. All the rock concerts, earnest petitions, U.N. resolutions, State Department missives and even economic sanctions in the world won’t make an iota of difference if there’s nothing to back them up. If you’re unwilling to put your money where your mouth is, no one will care what you think.

And yet if you believe System of a Down and its followers, and (implicitly) the documentarians who made this movie, exercises of military might are all about nations striving to prove “who has the bigger c**k.” While that song plays, the filmmakers intersperse concert video with stock footage of military planes taking off, bombs dropping, etc. — all penis substitutes, we’re obviously supposed to conclude. Another song asks, “Why don’t presidents fight the war? / Why do they always send the poor?” (Nevermind that most of our presidents have fought in wars.) Various similar anti-war sentiments are sprinkled throughout the film, but never examined in any detail.

Here’s the thing. Such knee-jerk anti-militarism is fundamentally and irreconcilably inconsistent with any realistic, meaningful, real-world stance against genocide. You can be opposed to particular wars or the way they’ve been waged, or to the reasons and processes that generally underlie decisions to wage war. You can believe that American and British policy is generally hypocritical and counterproductive. You can believe our policies have nothing to do with any sort of ideals or virtues, and are simply the product of pressure and bribery by evil corporations and the military-industrial complex. But you can’t be “anti-war in principle” and regard military activity as an evil in itself, while in the same breath demanding that governments do whatever it takes to stop genocide. Because more often than not, “whatever it takes” is going to involve military action, or at least the plausible threat thereof. In an ideal world, that wouldn’t be so, but — as anyone familiar with past and present genocides should be well aware — we don’t live in an ideal world.

The filmmakers’ interviews with former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds bring these contradictions into sharp relief. Edmonds points out the hypocrisy of Colin Powell, Dick Cheney and others fighting tooth-and-nail in 1988 to prevent sanctions against Iraq for its massacres of the Kurds, then using those same massacres as a justification for war in 2003. Fair enough. But what about the hypocrisy of the people on the other side, the anti-war folks who were so upset about those massacres in 1988 but then vehemently opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003? How can anyone who supports taking whatever steps are necessary to prevent future genocides possibly have opposed taking out Saddam Hussein, a known perpetrator of genocide? That’s not to say they can’t criticize the way the war was conducted, the ulterior motives that they believe underlied it, and so forth. But to say that removing Saddam was a mistake — how can that position possibly be reconciled with a “whatever it takes” approach to preventing genocide?

The hypocrisy is relevant to the future as well. Suppose we pull out of Iraq, the radical Shiite militias effectively take over the country, and a full-scale slaughter of the Sunni population begins — a not-altogether-unlikely scenario if we withdraw before the job is done. Will System of a Down, its fans and ideological fellow-travlers, and the makers of this documentary feel any responsibility for supporting the course of action that led us over that cliff? More importantly, will they support the president — whoever he/she is, whatever party he/she belongs to — if the president decides to send our troops back to Iraq to stop the bloodletting? Nay, will they demand that the president do so, in the same of “never again”? Or will they be content to blame Bush and let the genocide continue?

Presidents Clinton and Bush come under considerable criticism in the movie for failing to take adequate steps to stop the genocides in Rwanda and Darfur, respectively. I personally believe that criticism is warranted. But I also believe it is empty and hypocritical, given its source, because if either Clinton or Bush had taken muscular steps to stop those genocides (and in Darfur’s case, we really should be talking in the present tense still), those steps would inevitably have involved military action, and they would have been roundly criticized by those who are “anti-war in principle,” especially if — wonder of wonders — our troops encountered resistance from local militants who would prefer us gone, possibly leading to a “quagmire.”

My point is simply this: there is an awful lot of hypocrisy on both sides, and nothing will improve until both hypocrisies — the hypocrisy of the powers-that-be who use genocide as an argument when it suits their geopolitical interests but ignore it otherwise, and the hypocrisy of the anti-war folks who demand muscular action to prevent genocide until such action actually happens, then condemn it as imperialist warmongering and/or glorified penis-size contests — are relegated to the dustbin of intellectual history.

On the ride home from the movie, Becky made an excellent point: we only know about genocides that actually happened, not ones that might have happened if some pre-emptive action hadn’t been taken to prevent them. So, for example, we’ll never know if Saddam Hussein, had he been allowed to remain in power in 2003 because “sanctions were working,” would have gassed the Kurds (again) or the Shiites in, say, 2009. Likewise, if Bush’s “surge” is successful and Iraq ultimately becomes a stable democracy, we’ll never know whether the Shiites would have massacred the Sunnis if John Murtha & co. had had their way in 2007. In other words, just as law-enforcement and intelligence officials get no credit for actions disrupting terrorist plots that we don’t know about, world leaders get no credit for actions which prevented genocides that would otherwise have occurred. On the contrary, they get endless grief for everything that goes wrong in their policies, and if, heaven forbid, those policies have unintended consequences that lead to genocide or civil war, they get the blame. Which isn’t necessarily wrong, but I think it’s important to remember that we only know the consequences of the actions we’ve taken, not the ones we didn’t take. This is especially important for pacifists and psuedo-pacifists like System of a Down and its adoring legion of follwers to keep in mind. Such people are quick to remind us that “war is hell,” and it surely is. But sometimes, “peace” is worse. Like, for example, when “peace” means ignoring the mantra “never again” and leaving a genocidal regime in power. Just something to keep in mind.

UPDATE: Becky makes the same point, and I think she articulates it better:

If the government intervenes before a human rights tragedy, or even after one, as in the case of Iraq when the US gov’t deposed Saddam, no credit is given for removing a brutal tyrant from power. Rather, fingers are pointed, the band rages about how the US is pissing on the world, screaming my c**k is bigger than your c**k… If past behavior is the most revealing indication of future behavior, then Saddam was likely to commit another hideous genocide against his own people. Therefore, the US military intervention in Iraq may have prevented future genocide. But “may have” isn’t really good enough. It’s a Catch-22. You want to intervene before there’s a genuine humanitarian crisis, but in the absense of such a crisis (or sometimes, even in its presence), intervention is seen as imperialism, or any humanitarian benefits from military action are considered unintentional byproducts of an unnecessary war.