Liberal Interventionism

Following up on our convo this week and last about the ethics of humanitarianism and intervention, Matt gives us the following:

...when skeptics of far-flung war-fighting hear that someone or other wants to do more to prevent mass killings of civilians abroad, they shouldn't just assume that what the person has in mind is starting a lot of new wars. That is what Robert Kagan and Max Boot have in mind. And it's what some Democrats have in mind, too. But other people -- usually the people with a real interest in humanitarian issues and the crisis-afflicted regions, rather then generic Very Serious People -- are talking about actually finding ways to prevent people from being killed, not finding new pretexts for killing people.

I think this is a valuable point. We shouldn't confuse people who throw on the cloak of "humanitarianism" because they like the idea of remaking the world via air-power, with people who are actually heartbroken by shit like Darfur. There certainly are right-wing evangelicals who are really concerned about, say, the effects of war in Africa. I just never got the feeling that Bill Kristol was one of those guys.