June 29, 2005

Meaning Well, By Whatever Means Necessary

On the eve of Live 8, Prospect's David Rieff revisits Live Aid, and the vexing topic of how politics and the behavior of totalitarian regimes can complicate the ethics of even the best-intentioned relief efforts:

Did the mobilisation of public opinion through celebrity endorsement really play the positive role with which it is now credited? To ask this question is emphatically not to turn hagiography on its head and to demonise either Geldof or Live Aid. There is no smoking-gun evidence demonstrating that Live Aid achieved nothing, or only did harm. But there is ample reason to conclude that Live Aid did harm as well as good. It is also arguable that Live Aid may have done more harm than good...

The [Ethiopian] famine was the product of three elements, only one of which could be described as a natural event—a two-year long drought across the Sahel sub-region. The other two contributing factors were entirely man-made. The first was the dislocation imposed by the wars being waged by the central government in Addis Ababa against both Eritrean guerrillas and the Tigrean People's Liberation Front. The second, and by far the most serious, was a forced agricultural collectivisation policy pursued with seemingly limitless ruthlessness by Mengistu Haile Mariam and his colleagues in the Dergue (committee) who had overthrown emperor Haile Selassie in 1974 (and officially adopted communism as their creed in 1984). This collectivisation was every bit the equal in its radicalism to the policies Stalin pursued in the Ukraine in the 1930s, where, as in Ethiopia, the result was inevitable: famine.

It was this policy that western aid would unwittingly assist, even as it saved lives...


There's also this jaw-dropping (and revealing) quote from Bob Geldof, who blithely imagines a kinder, gentler World War II, in which a Live Aid-like organization would "help people" by delivering supplies to Auschwitz:

If Live Aid had existed during the second world war, and if we'd heard that there were people dying in concentration camps, would we have refused to bring food and assistance to those camps? Of course not!
There's the flaw in Geldof's worldview in a nutshell, perhaps. Of course, he means well. But maybe we need some smarter saints around here.

(crossposted on SG.)

Posted by Dr. Frank at June 29, 2005 08:44 PM | TrackBack
Comments

bob geldof is now certifiably ridiculous. hasn't he heard of the nazis, or do they not exist in his version of reality?

Posted by: kendra at June 29, 2005 09:20 PM


reality,what's that,reality not quite yet...
no seriously that's pretty bad. as if said nazis would happily approve of their brilliant generosity. i don't know,i think i'm an idealist but i know it just doesn't work that way.

don't i count as a smarter saint?

Posted by: JUST ME at June 29, 2005 09:47 PM

Ummm...Geldof? If you and you're life-saving supply caravan of wholesomeness could have brought supplies in during that time, then why couldn't troops have marched and simply freed the whole lot of the detainees?

I seriously want to sock his face. Is he insane?

Posted by: Megan at June 29, 2005 11:13 PM

I actually had some brief contact with Geldof in, precisely, 1986, and these quotes strike me as... not well established in context. Before I accept them, I want context and far better clarity. Perhaps he's suddenly become a jerk -- it happens -- but I want proof before believing some casual attacks.

I'll do you the same favor in twenty years, I promise, Frank.

Incidentally, his book in '86, Is That It? was readable.

Posted by: Gary Farber at June 30, 2005 01:18 AM

Just picturing loudspeakers blasting "Do they know it's Christmastime" over Bergen-Belsen...

He does mean well. Shoeing the children, and all that.

Posted by: Wes at June 30, 2005 02:05 AM

Yeah, Gary, I wish that particular quote had been specifically attributed. I doubt it was made up, though, and it's hard to imagine a context within which it would not reflect a considerable degree of, at minimum, naivety.

Posted by: Dr. Frank at June 30, 2005 02:13 AM

I heard David Rieff on the radio he doesn't support "humanitarian intervention" anymore.

Posted by: drydock at July 5, 2005 09:48 AM