MIT professor and writer Noam Chomsky makes a compelling argument against the unbridled moral imperatives of the Western elite in an essay published in the Monthly Review. In particular, Chomsky challenges the ideological rhetoric of governments or agencies who support “the responsibility to protect” and the “right to intervention”.
While referencing Jean Bricmont's book Humanitarian Imperialism, Chomsky outlines the gross human rights violations undertaken by western powers in the name of human rights. How can we, argues Chomsky, possibly impose human rights around the world when history tells us that such endeavors often lead to more crisis, more war, and more death?
Remark – Chomsky is by no means saying nothing should be done or that the world's powers should be taciturn in the face of unraveling human rights disasters. He is instead exposing the double-standards and a discourse that negates guilt while enforcing “otherness.”
War and military combat is often done under the guise of moral imperatives. Hidden agendas, at times even overt agendas, often betray the human rights argument. Dictators as well as elected officials use ideals to further a broad range of agendas, some more obvious than others while diligently ignoring their own crimes.
In her book, The Shock Doctrine, Naomi Klein takes a look into the nefarious beginnings of USAID's Albian Patterson and his dubious dealings with dictators in South America. USAID funded “los Chicago Boys” who helped shape Pinochet's “economic” policies. At the time, even the Ford Foundation funded repressive organizations within Chile.
It is against this background, barely sampled here, that the chorus of admired Western intellectuals praised themselves and their "enlightened states" for opening an inspiring new era of humanitarian intervention, guided by the "responsibility to protect," now solely dedicated to "principles and values," acting from "altruism" and "moral fervor" alone under the leadership of the "idealistic new world bent on ending inhumanity," now in a "noble phase" of its foreign policy with a "saintly glow."
Chomsky then goes on to track back from Kennedy's mired relationship to Cuba, to Regan's support of Saddam Hussein, to Bush Sr.'s National Security Strategy, and of course to his son's legacy of war in Iraq, Afghanistan and all the other nasty bits that fall at its wayside – torture, extraordinary rendition and its ilk.
Chomsky doesn't spare Clinton either. The embargoes against Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of children. But Chomsky isn't just pointing the fingers. He is also talking about our paternalism and unstated and ostensible moral superiority that is used to drive these humanitarian initiatives for the greater good – but at the end of a gun and at a convenient dismal of our own crimes.
