>Maybe it is a surprise to you, but no 'military intervention' by
>imperialists was ever undertaken for the purpose of saving some oppressed
>people's lives, nor will be in the future, for all their rhetoric --
>period.
I was just reading chunks of Eric Thomas Chester's book, Covert Network: Progressives, the International Rescue Committee, and the CIA last night, because it's got some stuff on Irving Howe & Dissent's relation to the U.S. imperial project (further grist for the anti-Dissent mill <http://www.panix.com/~dhenwood/Dissent.html>). The IRC was founded in the 1930s by socialists, after World War II it morphed into a imperial partner of the CIA. It used lots of humanitarian rhetoric to get liberals and social democrats to sign onto the Cold War in the 1950s. The wife of an IRC bigwig, Joseph Buttinger - another socialist turned Cold Warrior - gave bundles of money to keep Dissent afloat in the 1950s, and Buttinger himself was deeply involved in U.S. Vietnam policy in the 1950s. He wrote an article for the magazine in 1959, in Chester's words, that presented "a glowing picture of the Diem regime, while ignoring its many faults. Rather than provide its readers with an account of U.S. policy in Vietnam by a critical observer with expert insight, the editors of Dissent published a detailed defense of official actions by a participant in the very events being analyzed, a participant with intimate, albeit covert, ties to the intelligence community."
The relevant point here is that the the CIA used the IRC to get liberals and social democrats who might otherwise have objected to U.S. Vietnam policy in the 1950s and early 1960s to sign on. And their rhetorical strategy was to emphasize humanitarian concerns, specifically refugees and medical aid. Rhetoric and strategy have hardly changed over the last 40 years, though the liberals and social democrats are a lot easier to woo than they used to be - and sometimes they're the most enthusiastic interveners.
Doug