>What, exactly, are the likes of Chomsky, Cockburn, and Said et al "doing"?
>I seem to remember Chomsky crying wolf about the humanitarian disaster that
>the US was attempting to quietly inflict on Afghanistan... and ignoring the
>fact that US intervention likely helped alleviate the famine alluded to, I
>can't recall Walzer saying anything half as stupid.
At a repulsive and tedious Dissent event last week, which for some reason I subjected myself to, Walzer & Co. launched their latest issue on human rights interventionism. The air was thick with concern - though a very depoliticized concern. We heard about Rwanda and Bosnia - and U.S. indifference to both - but never anything about the politics that produced these disasters. "We" just had to intervene. Hardly a word about the causes of U.S. indifference, and never a word about, you know, imperialism. At one point, a rather mild-mannered German got up to ask Walzer if he'd support a UN effort to protect Palestinians from Israeli violence. For this, he had to endure taunts from a few audience members for being European (no kidding) and for being indifferent to Israel's safety. Walzer, of course, rejected the idea of such a UN force, citing the UN's dismal record (he always pointed to the worst of the UN, in an implied contrast with a humanely interventionist possible US, a purely phantasmic construction) and the fact that both sides want to destroy each other. That only one side has the capacity to destroy the other didn't enter into Walzer's fantasy. I'd say that's not only stupid, it's dishonest, and an apology for imperialism.
Doug