Rieff on liberal imperialism

[Seth Ackerman]

I cannot read these liberal interventionists without feeling that on some
level they're operating out of tremendously bad faith. I'm sure Rieff cares
at some level about saving the lives of the Kosovars, but what he and the
rest of them are *really* enamoured of is having the * West's armed forces *
"save" the Kosovars. It's like they've been waiting all their lives for
history to give them a chance to act out their graduate school dissertations
about Just War theory; to finally save the Jews.

If the Kosovo crisis had been solved through diplomatic means, without
bloodshed, people like Rieff would have been crestfallen. And that's so
damning.