I really can't believe some of what I've been reading here today.

[Igel]

89. Wasn't aware that pacificism was an integral part of progressivism.

Progressives are people. They have a lot of political tools and they redeploy them as necessary, usually without thinking much about them.

For many, intervention was appropriate in Libya, in Syria, in Bosnia, in Kosovo. They regret not intervening in Rwanda.

Telling South Africa where to get off was just fine. Iranian sanctions in the Bush II years were bad; under Obama they were good. It's not "what" but "who does it help?" and "who's doing it?" that often matters. Some wanted the Iraq war, for Bush II to fail; and they were eager to say that all (R) really want the US to crash because it'll make Obama look bad. They don't know they're doing it.

Some kinds of intervention are okay. If the right person is doing it--it's all ad hominem, sort of phallusy worship.

Go back to the '30s and you see the same kind of angst among Communists. The partition of Poland, Stalin's purges. Even the Alger Hiss mess. A lot of people had trouble coming to grips with some of those. Even in the early '80s anything anti-Soviet was just propaganda. The assumption was there was a false dichotomy: It was either/or. If the USSR was bad, then the US had to be good, and the US wasn't good. If the US was bad, then the USSR was good--and let's face it, many may have said that "Soviet =/= Russian" but in practice they meant the same thing.