On the Folly of the Liberal Interventionists
Let’s be clear; not only is Anne Marie Slaughter making less sense than Ross Douthat, she’s also making less sense than Paul Wolfowitz:
It is only in the context of a larger assistance strategy that a no-fly zone should be considered. It would be different from the prolonged and largely futile zones imposed over southern Iraq from 1991-2003 or over Bosnia from 1992-1995. Intended to stop the genocides of the Marsh Arabs in Iraq and of the Muslim population of Bosnia, they did neither. Critics accurately point out that the massacre of 11,000 Muslims in Srebrenica took place under a NATO-imposed no-fly zone. But the situation in Libya would be very different if the Libyan people are properly armed.
Say what you will about the tenets of neoconservatism, dude, but at least it’s an ethos. Wolfowitz has answers to most of the questions I pose here, while Slaughter is left shilling for an almost-certain-to-be-useless no fly zone that will serve mainly as a pretext for further intervention. Whether they leave the point implicit or explicit, the neocons are reasonably clear about their preferences; we should support the rebels to the extent that we can be certain that they’ll win, and then we should install and support whichever parts of the rebel alliance are most to our liking. Slaughter’s approach amounts to “no fly and pray.”
I can understand how some people, trusting Obama’s sanity to keep us out of this, could adopt a macho posture and call for painless, cost-free, perfectly effective military action, knowing that there is of course no such thing but trusting that their claims won’t be directly disproven by reality in this case. And as we’ve seen, it’s necessary for credibility in Washington to be seen as macho, to be publicly ready to spill the blood of people who live a long way away and speak a different language.
Thing is, I’d assumed Slaughter got her necessary supports-blowing-people-up credibility badge years ago; didn’t she back Dubya’s Excellent Mesopotamian Adventure? Or is there an expiration date on these things, so she needs a new one?
Women have to be twice as hawkish to get half the credit.
“trusting Obama’s sanity to keep us out of this”
LOL! Hey, he’s got a Nobel Peace Prize after all! Obviously Obama hates war, except for the one he escalated in Afghanistan, and the bombings in Pakistan, and the cruise missile strikes in Yemen, which have killed hundreds if not thousands of innocent people. And I suppose we might bring in his codification of pre-emptive detention and military commissions, his assertion of a presidential right to kill his own citizens without trial or even oversight of any kind, and his prosecution of whistleblowers while granting amnesty to torturers as evidence of his calm, peaceful temperment which is so resistant to the worst ideas of modern-day D.C.
Yes, it’s a good thing Barack Obama is far too level-headed to get us mixed up in ugly interventionism.
When did cruise missiles strike Yemen?
Also, do you have any idea how many have died in the Pakistani Army’s invasion of the tribal areas compared to the drone strikes?
Gotta love the Lebowski.
I will never say that the neocons are stupid. They do have a solid academic argument that is based on the assumption that America has a moral imperative to spread democracy across the globe. Nitze wasn’t dumb, he was very effective, if you care for that philosophy. The neocons didn’t get into high places of power by throwing around loose arguments.
However, Slaughter was a carry-over by the Clinton gang of liberal interventionalists, who also admire the ability to support democracy through global domination, although ideally through international coalitions. Similar to Doug Feith, there are always those few individuals who get carried along by their masters, despite their limitations.
BTW, I never really figured it out, what is the correct form, is it “liberal interventionalists” or “liberal internationalists” when describing the Clintonistas and similar-minded folks?
I’m fairly certain that “interventionalist” is not a word. I think you are looking for “interventionist”.
Yes, thanks so much for correcting a spelling error instead of contributing to the discussion. Okay, then is it “liberal interventionist” or “liberal internationalist”? Teh Wiki seems to suggest both terms are used.
Both terms are used, but they’re not interchangeable. You can be an internationalist without being an interventionist.
Thank you.
One would prefer a liberal internationalist to an illiberal nationalist, under almost all circumstances. An interventionist, not so much.
Unfortunately, we get interventionist nationalist imperialist Sierra Mist do the twist liberals.
This is what happens when excessive militarism is a prerequisite for a foreign policy posture to be taken seriously in Washington. The non-imperialist position ends up being totally incoherent, which makes it awfully difficult to shift the conversation any further left.
The Libyan rebels have called on foreign powers to assassinate Gadaffi. This is a far more rational response than imposing a no-fly zone.
Yet even as the past decade has been filled with declarations of DEAD OR ALIVE, I don’t see this being seriously discussed anywhere. Is Obama more comfortable calling for the deaths of US citizens than killing a fellow head of state?
With respect to Douthat and sense, when you are, as Krugman has so often pointed out, at the zero bound, an incremental reduction in sense is unmeasurable.
Ironically, a drone strike on Gaddafi and his sons would likely save more lives than any other such strike in the past eight years.
I’m extremely disappointed that interventionalist is not a recognized term to describe this level of idiocy. Likewise, I’ve clearly been remiss in not recognizing that a lack of diplomacy skills (see Turkey), lack of any discernible planning skills (see Iraq, no need for 300,000 soldiers), lack of common sense in hiring your girlfriends (see World Bank, Pentagon), no financial quantitative skills (see self-financing invasions) and the inability to dress oneself for public events (see socks, holes in) qualifies you as a serious leader for serious academics who simply get their rocks off by bombing available targets that have theftable resources.
It’s a serious flaw in our society that these people’s careers have not been flushed away, at least, and ostracized in polite society as undesirables.
how many liberals, really, criticized this sort of thing during the Clinton administration? Well, at least I give this blog credit for actually remembering that the Clinton administration happened, instead of pretending that all of our problems just arose out of thin air with George W. Bush and OMG Obama is just doing the same thing.