Ian Williams argues that progressives should not allow Bush's misappropriation of humanitarian intervention to force them to abandon a principle that is both moral and urgently required. John R. MacArthur counters that liberals have long been lobbying for interventions that would override international law." />
Humanitarian Intervention: Two Views
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Editor's note: In this two part series, Ian Williams argues that progressives should not allow Bush's misappropriation of humanitarian intervention to force them to abandon a principle that is both moral and urgently required. John R. MacArthur counters that liberals have long been lobbying for interventions that would override international law.
Military intervention for human protection purposes is an exceptional and extraordinary measure. To be warranted, there must be serious and irreparable harm occurring to human beings, or imminently likely to occur … large scale loss of life, [or] ethnic cleansing.In the recent Iraq war, by contrast, one of the worst misdeeds that George W. Bush committed, in collaboration with Tony Blair, was to bring humanitarian intervention into disrepute. By invoking Saddam Hussein's tyranny as a pretext for attacking Iraq, as he did in his speech to the United Nations last September, the President reached fairly spectacular depths of hypocrisy, since it was his country, his party and indeed his father who had supported Saddam when he was perpetrating these crimes.
There were indeed grounds for such intervention in Iraq in the '80s, but at that time the United States and United Kingdom were supporting the Iraqi regime.
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