The American University community held its first Table Talk lunch of the 2004-2005 year on Thursday. The topic, "Humanitarian Intervention: Still Needed But No Longer Fashionable?" is part of a semester-long series in which AU students and faculty meet to speak about matters of moral, social, and ethical concern. Table Talk lunches are twice-monthly events sponsored by the Office of the University Chaplain.
Joe Volk, executive secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation (a Quaker organization), and Holly Burkhalter, U.S. policy director for Physicians for Human Rights, spoke at the event.
"These folks who are speaking today are drum majors for justice," University Chaplain Joe Eldrige said.
"In order to achieve humanitarian intervention, sometimes we need military presence," Burkhalter said. "For instance, in the eight-year Clinton presidency, there was humanitarian intervention in Bosnia, Kosovo. ... There wasn't a lot of war-fighting but there was a strong military presence."
Burkhalter also mentioned that the Bush administration has given interventions a bad name. "Iraq was a catastrophe," Burkhalter said. "There's the notion now that the United States can't lead countries out of a burning building."
Volk echoed Bukhalter's concerns.
"We need to create a toolbox that has a lot more tools than just a military hammer," Volk said. "The trouble with people in Congress is that they are too focused on power. ... They're ignorant to alternatives to military intervention. ... There is a need for the current policy to accept the need for policy change."
The next Table Talk topic will be "U.S. Partisan Politics: Is Civility Possible?" on Sept. 22 at noon.
