Is human rights the new imperialism? spectator.org/archives/2013/06/13/endless-wars-pin-up-girl "Human rights. Images of doves and bumper stickers reading “Free Tibet.” Campaigns to free prisoners of conscience. International organizations exposing war crimes. That was your father’s human rights. Today’s version, as articulated by Barack Obama’s pick for United Nations ambassador Samantha Power, is about going on the military offensive. Human rights “can now mean helping the Marine Corps formulate counterinsurgency techniques; pounding the drums for air strikes (of a strictly surgical nature, of course); lobbying for troop escalations in various conquered nations — all for noble humanitarian ends,” Chase Madar has written in the American Conservative. For Ms. Power and her ilk, campaigns and press releases are for wimps. Real human rights demand military intervention. That means a larger presence for the U.S. military abroad. In this respect, Ms. Powers’ heroes are the great imperialists and disparagers of national sovereignty of yore — men like William Ewart Gladstone (“Do not let me be told that one nation has no authority over another. Every nation, and if need be every human being, has authority on behalf of humanity and of justice”) and Teddy Roosevelt (Nations sometimes commit crimes “on so vast a scale and of such peculiar horror” that we have a duty to step in. Depending on the “degree of the atrocity and upon our power to remedy it” it may require the “force of arms…to put a stop to intolerable conditions”)."
Posted on: Thu, 13 Jun 2013 13:46:34 +0000