Back in the Spring and Summer of 2011, the humanitarian interventionists inside the Obama Administration were riding high. President Obama put American military force behind the overthrow of Qaddafi in Libya, on the grounds of preventing a humanitarian disaster in Benghazi. When Congress balked at the idea that he had brought the nation to war without even seeking tacit Congressional approval, President Obama issued an executive order creating an Atrocities Prevention Board inside the White House. Under the guise of preventing potential future atrocities, the President asserted the authority to wage preventive war. Several months later,he used a visit to the Holocaust Museum to announce the appointment of Samantha Power, a former protege of hedge-fund billionaire George Soros who never met a regime that she did not wish to change on "humanitarian" grounds as the head of the APB.
Since those halceon days, things have gone rapidly downhill for the Obama gang promoting R2P ("Responsibility to Protect"). The Benghazi "victims" of Qaddafi's alleged atrocities turned out to be a nasty bunch of Al Qaeda afficionados or outright members. The massive stockpiles of arms accumulated by Qaddafi during his decades in power went flying off in every direction, fueling murderous jihadist insurgencies throughout Africa; and no small quantity of those weapons wound up in the hands of the Syrian rebels--who themselves are riddled with Al Qaeda factions (the Nusra Front recently announced a marriage with Al Qaeda in Iraq).
It is now becoming more and more clear that the humanitarian interventions are to the liberal left what the neoconservatives are to the conservative right: faith-based interventionists who believe that the United States has a "moral" obligation to change regimes all over the globe if they don't neatly fit into the Western democratic camp. In an earlier time, during the heyday of the British Empire, such messianic interventionism was called for what it was: "The White Man's Burden." In today's politically correct world, the use of such direct language is out of the question. But the essence of the policy is identical, whether coming from the mouth of a humanitarian interventionist or a neocon.
Last Sunday, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates appeared on the blab shows and made some very pointed observations. He called for a complete re-assessment of the so-called "Arab Spring," preferring instead to call it the "Arab Revolution." In the last 250 years, he observed, the only revolution that genuinely succeeded was the American Revolution. The idea that the United States can step into the middle of a revolutionary process and set a fixed outcome is a big mistake, Gates warned. For the first time, Gates essentially acknowledged that he quit the Obama Administration because he was strongly opposed to the Libyan operation. A no-fly zone, he explained, is an act of war, and once a war starts, it does not stop. He warned in equally strong language against a no-fly zone in Syria.
Gates was speaking for a growing chorus of "realists" at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in the Intelligence Community and the diplomatic corps, who thoroughly reject the axioms of humanitarian interventionism. The military will be paying the price of two simultaneous long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq for years to come, and the prospect of yet another war in yet another Muslim country, Syria, has provoked a fire-storm of opposition.
The good news in all of this is that the humanitarian interventionist mafia inside the Obama Administration has been significantly pushed back. There is nothing at all humanitarian about turning Libya into a failed state, held hostage by Al Qaeda-friendly forces. The death of Ambassador Chris Stevens at the hands of Ansar al-Sharia, a spin-off of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Magreb on September 11, 2012, was a body blow to the R2P crowd, from which I hope they never recover. And now, Ambassador Susan Rice, one of the leading humanitarian interventionists in the current administration, is under fierce attack for her talking points delivery days after the 9/11/12 attack.
For his part, President Obama and his inner circle still insist that Susan Rice is in line to be the next National Security Advisor when Thomas Donilon steps down later this year. That appointment should be nixed by the next round of Benghazi whistle-blowers and document leaks.
Purging the R2P advocates would be a good first step. Discrediting the whole concept of humanitarian interventionism is even more vital.
When the Atrocities Prevention Board was first announced by President Obama, it was also revealed that White House staffers in the R2P camp had already prepared a preliminary list of countries in which it was likely that regimes would carry out future atrocities against their people. The list at that time already was more than 80 countries. It would appear that, on behalf of protecting humanity, these zealots would have us enter a century of permanent war and permanent revolution.
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