Clarification on the purpose of Thread "Intervention in Haiti Proposed By UN"

[Sara]

I'm making a thread here to ask the staff in general about what the purpose and thread for for the thread https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/intervention-in-haiti-proposed-in-un.109435/

The thread was originally created about a Washington Post article https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/intervention-in-haiti-proposed-in-un.109435/ titled U.S. backs sending international forces to Haiti, draft proposal says with the byline "A draft U.N. resolution, citing instability and violence in Haiti, suggests the Biden administration may be willing to participate in a multinational mission that has a military component."

Recently, a staff notice has been posted in the thread

"Since apparently it was not made clear with my original action with this thread, I am going to make this as blunt as I can: when I moved this thread out of the Active Conflicts subforum and changed the thread title, it was my intention that the thread would not be about earning Internet points talking up the evils of an American intervention that was not happening and continues to show no signs of happening. My hope was that, despite the inauspicious start, a productive discussion grounded in the reality of what actually can and is happening internationally to address this crisis would emerge. Instead an American military intervention has been taken as fait accompli and people have happily jumped on the opportunity to score Internet points talking up the evil American military invasion to do a neocolonialism that isn't actually happening.

From here on in, this will be a thread policy: If anyone drags this thread back to scoring points dunking on a non-existent American military intervention in Haiti, they will be permanently ejected from the thread. If there is actually proof of such a military intervention happening or being soon to happen then that will of course be treated differently, but no more of this gesticulating atop suppositions. If someone wishes to discuss the problems with military interventions they may, but not in this thread and not in the way that the discussion in this thread has been conducted."

Given the primary subject of the article has been directly banned as part of the discussion, it's remains unclear as to what actual thread topic is and I'm requesting clarification from the staff.

 

[CallMeIsmail]

Look I'm going to be honest here. The impression I received from reading through that thread is that absolutely no one involved in that discussion/shitshow had any kind of special insight or emotional connection to the situation in Haiti. The (horrific and awful) circumstances in the country, as far as I could discern from the thread, have not substantially changed since the thread died in late October. In fact, most of the article that was posted to revive the thread chronicles what was going on in the country months ago, back when the proposal that spawned the thread was made.

So what happened was that @megrisvernin posted a genuinely interesting BBC article about the ongoing situation:

Haiti's terminal collapse is ongoing:

Inside the capital taken hostage by brutal gangs - BBC News

Orla Guerin reports from Port-au-Prince, where Haitians live in fear of killings, kidnappings and rape.

www.bbc.com

I'd argue they're well into failed state status here.

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The immediate response was bait calling back to the old discussion/shitshow...

Still, it's better than foreign intervention, right?

All the oppressors are homegrown and live within a few dozen city blocks of you.

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...and the people who had been involved in said discussion promptly latched onto said bait and relitigated the entire fucking months-old argument for, let's see, 9 pages. Because without any insight or personal connection, all there is to do is signal and dunk. It seems clear from @Interested Party's post as a moderator that he (and the Staff as a whole, probably) would like the thread to instead discuss what is currently actually happening in Haiti. It also seems clear to me that SV is not interested in having such a discussion in that thread, if at all.

Frankly, my advice would be to lock the thread for good, ask people to take their general discussion of UN/western intervention into @Dogboy's thread (which you could maybe move to the War & Peace subforum), and create a new N&P thread for discussion of the ongoing situation in Haiti, which will probably die after like half a page of thoughts and prayers.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Given the primary subject of the article has been directly banned as part of the discussion, it's remains unclear as to what actual thread topic is and I'm requesting clarification from the staff.

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The primary subject of the article isn't an American military intervention, and thus has not been directly banned. To the contrary, the article's primary subject is that basically everyone they could find in Washington is either denying that such an intervention will take place, or "no commenting," while the US restricts its official statements to supporting a UN intervention in general and potentially offering logistical support for said intervention.

What has been directly banned are "dunks" and "gesticulating atop suppositions." There are ways to have a conversation about Haiti, or some other subject, that is not that.

 

[Sara]

What has been directly banned are "dunks"

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Would you qualify the original post reigniting the discussion about intervention into Haiti quoting above you as?

 

[Simon_Jester]

Would you qualify the original post reigniting the discussion about intervention into Haiti quoting above you as?

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It was, I admit, cynical and snippy.

It was, in my defense, at least grounded in the facts at hand- that there is a terrible situation in Port-au-Prince and by extension the rest of Haiti, and that this situation involves violent oppression of the great majority of Haitians by an armed and ruthless minority of other Haitians.

The Haitians are dealing with quite a lot of homegrown oppression right now; that much is fact.

But the fact remains, my tone was cynical and snippy. I'm not confident enough in my grasp of slang to have a firm opinion on whether that makes it a dunk.

If you think it qualifies as a dunk, I'm not going to argue.

Though if you think it qualifies as a "[dunk] on a non-existent American military intervention in Haiti," that I would argue with.

Even so, I'm going to be trying to keep my posts in that thread firmly grounded in the facts, and I will try to be consistently less snippy than the people around me. I can't promise to be less cynical; it's the kind of situation that makes a man cynical.

 

[Magery]

Given the primary subject of the article has been directly banned as part of the discussion, it's remains unclear as to what actual thread topic is and I'm requesting clarification from the staff.

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I haven't worn my 'moderation deputy' hat in public before, so please be gentle here while I try to explain.

Fundamentally, @Interested Party makes clear what he intends the actual thread topic to be in this sentence in his Staff Post.

My hope was that, despite the inauspicious start, a productive discussion grounded in the reality of what actually can and is happening internationally to address this crisis would emerge.

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That is to say, he envisages the purpose of the thread as one which would produce useful and salient discussion of the crisis in Haiti, how it reflects on the international stage, and what reasonable avenues there are to help.

To this end, he enacted a thread policy that is both clear and specific: it forbids a single topic of discussion (the non-existent American military intervention into Haiti) and identifies the consequences of disobeying that specific instruction (removal from the thread).

This was intended to help drag back the thread to this "productive discussion", as opposed to a discussion that generated 18 separate reported posts, including one that was reported 19 times (possibly the most reports I recall seeing on a single post in all my tenure on the Staff).

I hope this answers your question!

(To speak more broadly to the wider audience beyond you and your question: accordingly, if there are posters who are having difficulty engaging in "a productive discussion grounded in the reality of what actually can and is happening internationally to address this crisis" without relating that discussion back to an American military intervention that did not happen, and this means they cannot post any further in the thread without risking a threadban, then this is the thread policy working as designed and it is unlikely to be adjusted to accomodate them.

In the end, the worst consequence for these posters is their inability to post in a single thread, which is, frankly, not a very dramatic consequence.)

 

[CallMeIsmail]

This was intended to help drag back the thread to this "productive discussion", as opposed to a discussion that generated 18 separate reported posts, including one that was reported 19 times (possibly the most reports I recall seeing on a single post in all my tenure on the Staff).

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HIGH SCORE!!!

 

[Simon_Jester]

Question for clarification:

My understanding is that the prohibition is on discussion of a purely hypothesized US military intervention when there is no evidence that such an intervention will be taking place.

In the hypothetical event that the US does declare intent to intervene, or that some specific event takes place in Haiti that makes a US military intervention seem significantly more likely,* would it then be within the envelope of the mod ruling to discuss things in light of those new facts?

Likewise, would it be within the envelope of the mod ruling to discuss US actions that do not involve a military intervention in Haiti? For instance, comments on the US's involvement in Haiti's national debt.

Because some people in the thread are acting as if the United States is basically Voldemort and they are not allowed to speak the country's name. And are, in point of fact, making rather playful commentary on the subject.
_________________

*(say, an armed attack on the US embassy, just to pull an unlikely but possible example out of a hat

 

[prometheus110]

I haven't worn my 'moderation deputy' hat in public before, so please be gentle here while I try to explain.

Fundamentally, @Interested Party makes clear what he intends the actual thread topic to be in this sentence in his Staff Post.



That is to say, he envisages the purpose of the thread as one which would produce useful and salient discussion of the crisis in Haiti, how it reflects on the international stage, and what reasonable avenues there are to help.

To this end, he enacted a thread policy that is both clear and specific: it forbids a single topic of discussion (the non-existent American military intervention into Haiti) and identifies the consequences of disobeying that specific instruction (removal from the thread).

This was intended to help drag back the thread to this "productive discussion", as opposed to a discussion that generated 18 separate reported posts, including one that was reported 19 times (possibly the most reports I recall seeing on a single post in all my tenure on the Staff).

I hope this answers your question!

(To speak more broadly to the wider audience beyond you and your question: accordingly, if there are posters who are having difficulty engaging in "a productive discussion grounded in the reality of what actually can and is happening internationally to address this crisis" without relating that discussion back to an American military intervention that did not happen, and this means they cannot post any further in the thread without risking a threadban, then this is the thread policy working as designed and it is unlikely to be adjusted to accomodate them.

In the end, the worst consequence for these posters is their inability to post in a single thread, which is, frankly, not a very dramatic consequence.)

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I don't get why the thread wasn't locked and a new one made, then. It seems to me that, if nothing else, the thread title should have been changed to reflect the new direction the moderator wanted it to take. From the start the thread was about a potential US intervention due to the US proposing a bill in the UN for "the immediate deployment of a multinational rapid action force", so it seems odd that discussion of a hypothetical US intervention was banned instead of the thread being locked in favour of a broader one or the name being changed.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I don't get why the thread wasn't locked and a new one made, then. It seems to me that, if nothing else, the thread title should have been changed to reflect the new direction the moderator wanted it to take. From the start the thread was about a potential US intervention due to the US proposing a bill in the UN for "the immediate deployment of a multinational rapid action force", so it seems odd that discussion of a hypothetical US intervention was banned instead of the thread being locked in favour of a broader one or the name being changed.

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The thread title had already been changed in favor of a broader one in the initial mod rulings. Because the linked article in the OP made it quite clear that there was no concrete evidence that the US was contemplating or planning participation in the intervention force discussed or suggested in the proposed UN bill. What little evidence there was was evidence for "no, no the US will not."

Insofar as the thread was "about potential US intervention" and nothing more, it was at best a misrepresentation of its own source material.

If it was allowed to remain open then, perhaps it was because the moderators saw merit in the idea of discussing the possibility of foreign intervention in general or of operations helpful to Haiti but short of intervention, or of the general situation in Haiti that had inspired anyone to even consider intervention.

 

[Magery]

In the hypothetical event that the US does declare intent to intervene, or that some specific event takes place in Haiti that makes a US military intervention seem significantly more likely,* would it then be within the envelope of the mod ruling to discuss things in light of those new facts?

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This is also addressed in the Staff post:

If there is actually proof of such a military intervention happening or being soon to happen then that will of course be treated differently

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Material discussions relevant to things that are actually happening are not prohibited by the thread policy.

Likewise, would it be within the envelope of the mod ruling to discuss US actions that do not involve a military intervention in Haiti? For instance, comments on the US's involvement in Haiti's national debt.

Because some people in the thread are acting as if the United States is basically Voldemort and they are not allowed to speak the country's name. And are, in point of fact, making rather playful commentary on the subject.

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The thread policy is quite specific: accordingly, if a post is not about the United States intervening militarily into Haiti, and it is otherwise relevant to the crisis and "the reality of what actually can and is happening internationally to address this crisis", then it is not forbidden by the thread policy.

If posters wish to self-regulate themselves further—beyond the scope of the thread policy—because they do not believe they can appropriately handle discussing Haiti and The Country That Must Not Be Named even when not speaking about its military, we of course welcome their initiative in keeping the thread calm and contained, even if they do not have to.

It seems to me that, if nothing else, the thread title should have been changed to reflect the new direction the moderator wanted it to take.

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This is a reasonable suggestion, and one we will discuss internally. Thank you for raising it!

 

[prometheus110]

The thread title had already been changed in favor of a broader one in the initial mod rulings. Because the linked article in the OP made it quite clear that there was no concrete evidence that the US was contemplating or planning participation in the intervention force discussed or suggested in the proposed UN bill. What little evidence there was was evidence for "no, no the US will not."

Insofar as the thread was "about potential US intervention" and nothing more, it was at best a misrepresentation of its own source material.

If it was allowed to remain open then, perhaps it was because the moderators saw merit in the idea of discussing the possibility of foreign intervention in general or of operations helpful to Haiti but short of intervention, or of the general situation in Haiti that had inspired anyone to even consider intervention.

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Simon, can you please stop being contradictory for the sake of it? I was very clearly refering to the current title being changed to reflect the moderation's current wishes, not the very first title the thread ever hosted. The fact a change was made once, months ago, has at best almost no relevance to my point, and I will not be entertaining this side dicussion further.

This is a reasonable suggestion, and one we will discuss internally. Thank you for raising it!

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Thank you. I think that will be useful.

 

[BiopunkOtrera]

I must admit, "no discussion of potential foreign intervention in Haiti" strikes me as a little bit of an odd policy given the fact that I can find multiple American media articles that are less than a week old talking about whether the US or other foreign powers should intervene in Haiti, for instance:

Opinion | Should America Intervene in Haiti? ‘Go to Hell’ and Other Views

Nick Kristof and Lydia Polgreen debate the lessons learned from America’s foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

www.nytimes.com

Why Haiti Asked for an Intervention

The small nation has asked for international aid to pull it back from the brink of a humanitarian disaster.

www.nytimes.com

U.N. expects Haiti sanctions regime to be running by January

MSN

Expert Urges: ‘Stop Making Things Worse in Haiti’

JURIST Features Editor Ingrid Burke Friedman talked with Brian Concannon, a human rights lawyer and the executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti about the ongoing civil u...

www.jurist.org

So I've got to say I think it's a little bit strange to impose a thread policy of "you can't mention the possibility of US or more general foreign intervention and whether it's a good thing." It's pretty clear that this is still an active topic of discussion in the US media.

 

[Simon_Jester]

If it can be discussed without a ton of posturing and chest-beating, then I for one would welcome that.

I think the mods are concerned that maybe it can't.

 

[Interested Party]

Per the discussions in this thread, the other thread has been renamed "The Humanitarian Crisis in Haiti".

I must admit, "no discussion of potential foreign intervention in Haiti" strikes me as a little bit of an odd policy given the fact that I can find multiple American media articles that are less than a week old talking about whether the US or other foreign powers should intervene in Haiti, for instance:

Opinion | Should America Intervene in Haiti? ‘Go to Hell’ and Other Views

Nick Kristof and Lydia Polgreen debate the lessons learned from America’s foreign policy in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

www.nytimes.com

Why Haiti Asked for an Intervention

The small nation has asked for international aid to pull it back from the brink of a humanitarian disaster.

www.nytimes.com

U.N. expects Haiti sanctions regime to be running by January

MSN

Expert Urges: ‘Stop Making Things Worse in Haiti’

JURIST Features Editor Ingrid Burke Friedman talked with Brian Concannon, a human rights lawyer and the executive director of the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti about the ongoing civil u...

www.jurist.org

So I've got to say I think it's a little bit strange to impose a thread policy of "you can't mention the possibility of US or more general foreign intervention and whether it's a good thing." It's pretty clear that this is still an active topic of discussion in the US media.

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Given the behavior of the thread, spiraling a possibility that everyone in power in the US has rejected into a certainty without and evidence further than "it is the US and Haiti," I am not willing to grant that topic to the thread until it actually looks like a possibility that exists outside the minds of opinion-piece writers and pundits. I also would draw a distinction between discussing the act of an American military intervention and the desire for an intervention. That is, if you want to talk about how Haitians do or don't want to see an intervention, which Haitians are in favor or against, and why that is, I would not think that warrants action. Jumping from that to "so the US is going to send troops in, here's how that's awful" until there is clear evidence that such is actually happening would not be okay.

 

[BurnBright]

That is, if you want to talk about how Haitians do or don't want to see an intervention, which Haitians are in favor or against, and why that is, I would not think that warrants action. Jumping from that to "so the US is going to send troops in, here's how that's awful" until there is clear evidence that such is actually happening would not be okay.

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Okay, now I'm confused again. Are we allowed to mention the long history of interventions and their success rates, both in Haiti and otherwise? Like, we're allowed to say "okay, if the US did send troops in, here are the long list of reasons that Haitians have to believe it would be awful in these particular ways", and that would be 100% fine?

 

[Interested Party]

Okay, now I'm confused again. Are we allowed to mention the long history of interventions and their success rates, both in Haiti and otherwise? Like, we're allowed to say "okay, if the US did send troops in, here are the long list of reasons that Haitians have to believe it would be awful in these particular ways", and that would be 100% fine?

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No. Not because of my prohibition, but because by that point you're discussing the history of interventions in general and not the crisis in Haiti and are getting off topic.

 

[hghwolf]

No. Not because of my prohibition, but because by that point you're discussing the history of interventions in general and not the crisis in Haiti and are getting off topic.

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But intervention is regularly brought up by posters on SV as a possible solution to all and sundry crises in the world. It was immediately defended when the thread started up as reasonable and viable IIRC, specifically citing the supposedly wildly succesful intervention in the DomRep, AKA the other side of Hispaniola. Are you saying that when someone brings up a hypothetical intervention in response to Haiti's problems one is not allowed to tell them that's far more likely to worsen the situation because X, Y and Z ? Cause that's what it reads like to me.

Seems a bit biased if that's so, and it's not exactly a millet thread.

 

[Simon_Jester]

No. Not because of my prohibition, but because by that point you're discussing the history of interventions in general and not the crisis in Haiti and are getting off topic.

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What about the history of interventions in Haiti in particular, which strongly influences many people's (quite reasonable!) aversion to new interventions today?

It would seem that the big problems here all fall under two headings:

1) Specifically treating American intervention in particular as a fait accompli that will inevitably happen and then turning the entire thread into a fully generic discussion of how abusive and hateful the US is, OR

2) Fully general violations of Rule 2, 3, or 4, such as willful verbal abuse of other posters, ignoring people's stated position or imputing to them the opposite position without clear grounds, statements of a clearly and unreasonably inflammatory nature... and wildly off topic discussions that greatly clutter up the thread or otherwise cause problems.

My understanding is that the special ruling is targeted at preventing problems of the first kind, specifically, as you say. It would seem to me that the history of interventions in Haiti in particular is germane enough to the subject at hand that it wouldn't present a problem of the second kind in and of itself, as long as people could be decent to each other while having the conversation.

But intervention is regularly brought up by posters on SV as a possible solution to all and sundry crises in the world.

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On which note, I think a large part of the reason we see the thread blowing up repeatedly instead of people being decent to each other about it is, well... this.

Statements made by any single person get inflated into "posters on SV said," then exaggerated, then imputed to several people, then re-exaggerated.

If Alice can say "I honestly have a hard time believing this will kill less people than UN peacekeepers" and someone twists that into something tantamount to genocide advocacy, or if Bob can say "It is inconceivable that an intervention could be anything other than massacre and no humanitarian crisis should be used as a pretext for sending soldiers into a place like this" as something tantamount to Holodomor advocacy, then that's bad. It's just bad for the conversation on every level, and no matter what special rulings are or are not in place, it blows everything up into a giant fire-salt-storm.

So whatever the purpose of that thread is, we're going to have to be willing to actually listen to each other and engage, or it's going to get hella toxic hella fast.

 

[BurnBright]

No. Not because of my prohibition, but because by that point you're discussing the history of interventions in general and not the crisis in Haiti and are getting off topic.

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So... just to be clear, we need to treat any intervention as if it is being done with a country with no history of interventions outside of Haiti? We can't draw patterns if they involve any intervention or action that didn't directly involve Haiti?

 

[prometheus110]

To add to the above: Would we even be able to bring up that interventions can and do fail catastrophically, or would we have to act like it would be the first intervention in the world?

 

[BurnBright]

To add to the above: Would we even be able to bring up that interventions can and do fail catastrophically, or would we have to act like it would be the first intervention in the world?

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We are allowed to bring up past interventions in Haiti specifically, but beyond that, it's unclear.

 

[Secretariat]

Some threads require accepting ground rules in order to participate. The Radical Leftism thread requires accepting the plausibility of radical leftism as a governing system.

This thread requires accepting that things that haven't happened and everybody says is not going to happen, hasn't happened.

This isn't difficult, and trying to find workarounds is silly.

 

[Simon_Jester]

Anyone who can't make a case for "an intervention in Haiti has a pretty high chance of failing to achieve its objectives and may make things worse" just by referring to past interventions in Haiti, specifically is either incompetent or not trying.