THE PECULIAR THING ABOUT HIS BRAND OF "HUMANITARIAN"...:

Worse Than Bush? (Ted Galen Carpenter, 11.07.2008, The National Interest)

It is on the issue of humanitarian intervention, though, that Obama’s attitude—and that of some of his likely foreign policy appointees—is most worrisome. His article, “Renewing American Leadership,” in the July/August 2007 issue of Foreign Affairs included a dubious and troubling assumption. He insisted that “the security and well-being of each and every American depend on the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders. The mission of the United States is to provide global leadership grounded in the understanding that the world shares a common security and a common humanity.” That assumption about the alleged indivisibility of destinies is not materially different from the sentiments that President Bush expressed in his second inaugural address: “The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands.”

But that assumption is both erroneous and dangerous. Taken to its logical conclusion, it means that America can never be safe or prosperous unless the dozens of chronically misgoverned countries are (somehow) transformed into free, democratic states. That is a blueprint for endless nation-building missions and perpetual war. Given the strains created by the recent debacle in America’s financial system, it is also an ambitious mission that American taxpayers can ill-afford.

Although it is hard to imagine, Obama’s foreign policy could prove even worse than that of the Bush administration. He flirts with the notion that the guiding principal of U.S. foreign policy should be to promote, defend and enforce respect for “human dignity” in the world. As an operational concept, such a standard would have to improve several notches just to reach vacuous. At best, it would entail Washington becoming the nag of the planet, constantly hectoring other governments to improve their behavior. At worst, it could become an excuse for lavish foreign-aid expenditures and military interventions to protect the downtrodden in failed states or even in functioning countries with repressive regimes. Yet most of the probable arenas for such interventions entail little or no connection to America’s tangible interests. Instead, this country would embark on expensive and potentially dangerous humanitarian crusades that would bleed America’s armed forces and drain the treasury.

...is that they're fine with dictators but tend to want to intervene where there is no sovereign. What's odd is that in the former we can pretty easily force a change of government towards democracy while in the latter there's almost no chance we can establish an enduring central government.

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 10, 2008 9:23 PM