ACCIDENTAL TRUTHS

Humanitarian Intervention: Two Views: 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. (John R. MacArthur and Ian Williams, August 1, 2003, In These Times)

Intervene with Caution By Ian Williams

In the recent Iraq war... 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.

Hey, wait a second, wasn't it just about the uranium? If President Bush justified the war on humanitarian grounds last September then the found mass graves matter as much as the missing WMD, no? Posted by Orrin Judd at August 4, 2003 9:35 PM