Assignment 03
Wendy Brown’s essay, “‘The Most We Can Hope For…’: Human Rights and the Politics of Fatalism,” is a decidedly scathing – and compelling – critique of the prevailing Human Rights discourse articulated by establishment liberalism and embodied, in this case, by Michael Ignatieff. Brown had much to criticize considering that Ignatieff had been the director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, yet also supported the massive bombing campaign and subsequent invasion of Iraq headed by the US military in 2003.
Ignatieff’s position on the Iraq war is, perhaps, Brown’s strongest piece of evidence against the notion that Human Rights work – at least, of the type promoted by the likes of Ignatieff – has much to do with defending those who can’t defend themselves against the powerful. Brown is certainly justified in pointing this out. Indeed, the US bombing campaign against Iraq, nicknamed “shock and awe,” was the most devastating in world history. Estimates of the dead reach into the millions – including nearly 500,000 children – and the utter destruction of multiple towns and cities created what was, at the time, the largest refugee crisis the world had ever seen. Of course, the US was (and remains) the largest, most powerful military force in the world. If the world standard for human rights discourse does not even deem it necessary to defend those on the receiving end of that most massive and powerful of bombing campaigns by trying to prevent it, does it really adhere to any minimal standards as it claims? By almost all accounts, the war in Iraq did not help anyone, most certainly not those who were killed, lost loved ones, or left without a home or even a neighborhood. To do all of this under the mantle of humanitarian intervention only makes it more hypocritical.
Brown also challenges Ignatieff’s arguments about the primacy of, for example, freedom of speech over more basic rights like food, shelter, and healthcare (456). Clearly, the latter three basic necessities form the foundation for human survival. Brown aptly demonstrates that Ignatieff’s insistence on ignoring what should be the most basic of human rights and instead focusing on the lofty and uber-democratic sounding freedom of speech is suspect. First, she makes the rather salient point that, given the political order of a world dominated by corporations and their mouthpieces, “freedom of speech” takes on an almost sinister dimension. She then uses Ignatieff’s own words to show that his real concern has very little to do with defending the defenseless and much more to do with maintaining the ideals of a free market economy – i.e. the ability to pursue profits unimpeded.
Here too, I agree with Brown. That the head of a human rights agency can not concern himself with making sure first and foremost that everyone in the world is properly nourished – a totally attainable goal, in my opinion, if profit didn’t stand in the way – says something deeply troubling about the real agenda of such an agency.
Moreover, Brown’s point about the obsession with individual over collective rights – a throwback to the ridiculous hysteria of cold war anti-communism – is well taken. This, too, seems like a classic bait and switch. Put in the starkest terms, why shouldn’t the right to healthy food be a collective one? I cannot think of an argument against that. Least of all any argument that claims to speak in defense of human rights.
