Friday, 04.25.08
A Farewell to Arms
Source: WikiLeaks
What could be more stirring than the sight of a few thousand Durban longshoremen standing up against one of Africa's great despots? Consider me duly stirred. But this triumph of organized labor in South Africa has a worrisome side as well.
The dockworkers' refusal to unload the weapons earned them the solidarity of South Africa's truckers, then its Anglican archbishop, and finally its High Court, which sent the An Yue Jiang back to China. What's alarming is that the High Court would likely never have been asked to rule on the issue had it not attracted so much international attention. The reason: the shipment was probably legal. Its bill of lading, "leaked" last week to South African media, concealed neither its cargo nor its destination. One can't be sure what the Zimbabwean Ministry of Defense intended to do with the three million rounds of AK-47 ammo and thousands of rockets and mortars, but it can't have been good. However, the Chinese and Zimbabweans were open about their cargo, and it appears that they followed all necessary protocols to send it along.
Shipping agents load and unload the machinery of death all the time -- think not only of arms shipments, but also, if you want to be green about it, mining equipment that will almost certainly help poison streams and destroy villages. With few exceptions, the shipping agents send them along and allow countries' own customs departments decide what should or shouldn't be allowed in. The Durban longshoremen are essentially policing their customers in lieu of a morally adequate customs force in China, South Africa, or Zimbabwe. The unions' diligence is admirable in this case, but it sets a dubious precedent.
The job of spotting wicked shipments should belong to customs agents, not to the moral whims of private individuals or unions (who, by the way, always have a stake in the deal). Viktor Bout, the arms-dealing sociopath alleged to have supplied weapons to almost every conflict in Africa, has a point when he says that he is just a taxi driver: no one expects a taxi driver to scrutinize his fare and decide whether he's on a morally righteous outing. Likewise, we'd be enraged if postmen expressed their political preference by refusing to carry letters with RNC return addresses. True, there are strict laws that criminalize mail fraud. But it's not the postman's job to find the mail fraud: he's there to deliver the mail, without prejudice.
In extreme cases -- this is one -- we do want shipping agents to exercise their judgment. We'd be even more enraged if the taxi driver unquestioningly drove a man with a ski mask and assault rifle to the local pre-school. But these extreme cases are exceptions, not models. One can imagine a (very fickle and inefficient) system in which private logistics companies are expected to scrutinize their cargo, and to eat the costs of carrying shipments that a transiting country's dockworkers collectively decide to reject. Perhaps that would cause the price of odious shipments to rise -- not an unwelcome development, and maybe a bit like "odious debt." But for now, as long as I'm unsure whether those private moral policemen would be a courageous South African union or Viktor Bout, it's still safer to put the authority, as well as the moral burden, with the countries of the shippers, consignees, and their ports of transit. Longshoremen bear enough burdens already.
A human tideThe New York Times reports that waves of desperate refugees are fleeing violence in Zimbabwe for South Africa. |
A tyrant's strategyMichael Wines examines Robert Mugabe's embrace of China with his "Look East" policy. |
Above the tideLucy Moore warns that if arms cannot get to Zimbabwe by sea, they may go by air. |
Arm the victimsGlenn Reynolds says an unintended consequence of arms control in Africa is unarmed victims of genocide, and that guns may be the next international right. |
Workers of the world....Christopher Hitchens calls the refusal of South African dockworkers to unload arms "a clear-cut case of solidarity and internationalism." |
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SAINT JOHN, N.B. (CP) - Longshoremen in a New Brunswick port have declared that any military cargo destined for the Middle East is "hot cargo" and will refuse to move, load, or help ship the goods. "We don't want to handle this port's cargo, or any cargo, intended for Iraq," said Patrick Riley, a spokesman for Local 273 of the International Longshoremen's Association in Saint John. Riley said his membership believes any war on Iraq would be immoral. "We have educated ourselves about what the issues are and we believe very strongly that we should take a strong stance against this war," he said. The last time the Saint John longshoremen declared a "hot cargo" edict was in 1979. At that time the longshoremen, along with their national counterparts, refused to handle any nuclear reactor parts destined for Chile, believing they would eventually be used to build that country's nuclear arsenal. Riley said the current initiative was not being done in conjunction with any other port or longshoremen's local. He said any military cargo leaving Canada via the Saint John port would be highly recognizable, as it was during the Bosnian conflict. (Copyright Canadian Press Mar 17, 2003)
So human rights and decency prevailing is bad because it is bad for business? Somehow I am missing the lens through which this article is written. Protecting human rights is not economic, it is moral and you cannot view moral decisions through an economic prism. Rules should never prevail over immoral acts. As King reminds us “an unjust law is no law at all” and "one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws".
Moore worries about the hazard of such acts to the integrity of a system that would allow activities that shock the conscience. I would argue that such a system that would be forced to allow such an act to occur has no integrity at all.
I believe we should encourage more people to stand up for what they believe and see as right and moral. People should always stand up for injustice when they see it. The real dubious precedent that would be set is to tell people that they are powerless to stop injustice.
This story was exactly what I needed today. I'm sure to many of you that see what's wrong with the world but don't know what to do in order to fix it, these South African dockworkers are the perfect example of having a moral compass. I stand behind them and congratulate them on standing up for what they feel is right for their own country.
Fine, cut off their arms supplies. But please remember that the "Western world" has been much harder on Mugabe's regime than they have on other African (or other) dictators and only barely democratic thuggish leaders.
Some mainstream sources used to acknowledge those facts. Now thats an inconvenient truth.
In fact, I was shocked the other week when one mainstream source reverted and compared what was done to Mugabe's Zimbabwe to what was done to the German Wiemar Republic. Well, it used to be well known that Europe practically drove Germany into WW2 through onerous repayment requirements that acted like the sanctions do on Zimbabwe. (This did not and does not exonerate Third Reich leaders who were also found guilty of preemptive war against future threats, but apparently that's one aggression which is acceptable now. Ask George Bush and Dick Cheney. Or maybe they got a special exemption from God.)
But the difference between Mugabe's Zimbabwe and Kenya or even South Africa (where a small black middle class has developed among friends and family of the black leaders, but most of the Africans still live as they did under apartheid) is less the thin veneer of regular world approved voting we call democracy than the fact that SA didn't attempt to throw out whites, and Kenya stopped repatriating their land about a decade ago and is even being re-invaded by European companies that don't pay their workers enough to eat meat, leading to the inevitable poaching.
And look at the difference between our actions regarding Zimbabwe and how we've coddled Pakistan under Mugabe and various other dictator thugs.
The basis of democracy (including a kind of world democracy we pretend to attempt to create) is supposed to be fairness. That's sorely lacking right now.
I'll fess up: if I were a taxi driver, I would take a person with an assault rifle any place he/ she wanted to go.
I don't think Mr. Wood has to worry about the world suddenly getting excessively conscientious. That is generally not the trend; tradition, routine, even apathy are far more likely. This action of the dock workers will remain a rare exception, I'm sure.
Posted by Chris Gilbert | April 25, 2008 7:00 PM