Against Liberal Intervention

"To the extent that the Bush-Blair doctrine of pre-emptive war encompasses human rights and the “right” to overthrow tyrants, this one was very much a “left-wing” war.

Of course, I don’t buy George Bush’s human rights rationale for Gulf War II any more than I bought his father’s epiphany in 1990 that Saddam Hussein was the new Hitler. Too many murderous American clients, including Saddam, have gone in and out of favor since 1898 (the year we “liberated” Cuba from Spain) for me to take seriously the altruistic prattle emanating from this White House.

But a surprising number of liberals did take Bush at his word (as they had his father) whenever he turned misty-eyed about Baathist atrocities (real and fabricated), as well as the urgent need for “liberating” the Iraqi people. Behind their dovish compassion lay a ferocious streak of Wilsonian [Woodrow Wilson, ídolo dos NeoConservadores, foi o presidente que quis fazer a "Guerra para acabar com todas as Guerras" e fazer o "Mundo mais seguro para as democracias" - resultado: o fim das monarquias, o comunismo e nazismo e a Segunda Grande Guerra e ainda a vitória de Estaline sobre metade da Europa e do mundo...isto porque a Áustria resolveu combater o "Estado terrorista" da Sérvia..."unintended consequences"] hawkishness that had first presented itself during the Bosnia crisis in the early ’90s.

It was then that human rights hawks adopted the principle of “liberal intervention” laid down in the ’80s by two Paris-based intellectuals, the international law professor Mario Bettati and the physician-activist Bernard Kouchner. Eventually, as Ian Buruma recently wrote in the New York Review of Books, the rhetorical grandstanding by Kouchner—“the day will come ... when we are able to say ... ‘Mr. Dictator, we are going to stop you preventively from oppressing, torturing and exterminating your ethnic minorities’”—took hold and nice liberals started sounding like nasty, pre-emptive militarists."

Comentário: Blair já afirmou publicamente que é favor da intervenção militar para acabar com todos os maus regimes. Como Conservador, assisto descrente à construção da nova ordem mundial e o fim do Estado Nação. O que diria Burke? Bem, não sei. Sei que se tivesse sido NeoConservador diria que Thomas Jefferson e George Wasghinton eram 2 terroristas separatistas e que Napoleão assumiu unilateralmente o ónus de deitar abaixo, pela força militar, as barreiras da "velha ordem" Europeia e Médio Oriente, na prossecução de um "Império benevolente" mais esclarecido.