>The question of the 'right' of the US to intervene in the Rwandan situation
can
>not be separated, IMHO, from the obligations it -- and every other
nation --
>had to prevent and stop genocide.
But isn't this the justification America and the other great powers gave for their "humanitarian" intervention over Kosovo? As far as I know, their evidence of genocide subsequently turned out to be a carefully crafted BIG LIE. Their intervention on that occasion in fact had nothing at all to do with humanitarianism. Or I could go back a bit further to the time when intervention against Iraq was based on "defence" of Marsh Arabs and Kurds. A lot of the left even fell for these arguments at the time and failed to oppose the Allies' bloody war which culminated in the massacre of several hundred thousand Iraqis, like "fish in a barrel" (as an American military spokesman put it), on the road to Basra.
So do we trust these people to intervene some of the time? All of the time? Never? I may be what you consider a bit "simple", but given America's record of oppressive interventions to date around the world, I'd argue that we should never give them an inch.
Russell