Anyway, I just looked at the website and at the bottom there was a link to a poll, and I thought the results were interesting.
Quick Vote
Should military force be the first or last resort to end genocide?
First resort 79% 8447
Last resort 21% 2208
Total Votes: 10655
This is not a scientific poll
Obviously, not only is this not scientific, but it's arguably sort of a biased set-up: Hey check out all these horrible atrocities and no one did anything to stop it and that's horrible too, now take this poll. Then again, maybe the results reflect that the program made a good point. Who knows (not me)...
But it reminded me of a similar discussion we had in my class a week or two ago about whether or not, in the absence of UN support for intervention, a state should act unilaterally to stop human rights violations. Our professor took a quick poll of the class. I usually don't raise my hand in these sorts of situations, because a simple raising-of-the-hand doesn't let me qualify my answer, and I'm a huge relativist so like, that sucks. But I decided to go ahead and be really American and raise my hand "yes" (this felt awkward in the wake of the prof talking about countries using humanitarian intervention as a pretext, with Iraq as the example there). I saw several Irish students raise their hands "no", but I didn't really get the chance to see how other students answered. Ever since then, though, I can't stop thinking about all of the qualifications I would have liked to make to my answer.
Maybe it'll be an essay question.
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