Reply #46: Look I understand where you're coming from, but [View All]

[Vikingking66]

I think there's a problem with U.S isolationism.
While it has been true that the military has been
used to oppress third world nations, especially
the Phillipines and the Mexicans, there is a legitimate
liberal need for American military intervention
abroad, and here it is:

The U.S created the very idea of international law
through collective security, through Wilson but most
fully in FDR. In doing so, it established the principle
that force should be brought to bear if necessary to enforce
the U.N Charter on human rights and the U.N Convention
on Genocide.

In situations like Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo in which
one nation or ethnic group attempts to physically
destroy another, military force is the only way to
prevent the slaughter of innocents. In such a situation,
to not act would be a betrayal of human rights and
an abandonment of the principle established at
Nuremberg that genocide will not be permitted.
The U.S' inaction in the first two instances was in
my mind the greatest failure of the Clinton presidencu.

In other occasions, such as civil wars in the Congo
or widescale domestic oppression such as in Chile and
Cambodia, international military intervention is the
only means for a people being attacked by its own government
to be saved from widespread murder. While I agree that
often it is U.S-backed dictatorships that have been
responsible for these actions, I maintain that that
does not mean that the U.S shouldn't have done anything.

I see no contradiction between liberal humanitarianism
and interventionism as long as the intervention is
a multilateral one backed by a U.N resolution.