{"id":11402,"date":"2011-04-11T12:00:34","date_gmt":"2011-04-11T11:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=11402"},"modified":"2011-04-06T18:09:58","modified_gmt":"2011-04-06T17:09:58","slug":"liberal-imperialism-the-history-of-humanitarian-intervention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2011\/04\/liberal-imperialism-the-history-of-humanitarian-intervention\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberal Imperialism: The History of &#8216;Humanitarian Intervention&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Even if one&#8217;s instincts are to help those fighting Gadaffi, it is no longer enough just to see it as a struggle of goodies against baddies. For it is precisely that simplification that has led to unreal fantasies about who we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. <\/em><\/p>\n<p>The idea of &#8220;humanitarian intervention&#8221; which is behind the decision to attack in Libya is one of the central beliefs of our age.<\/p>\n<p>It divides people. Some see it as a noble, disinterested use of Western power. Others see it as a smokescreen for a latter-day liberal imperialism.<\/p>\n<p>I want to tell the story of how this idea originated and how it has grown up to possess the minds of a generation of liberal men and women in Europe and America.<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/blogs\/adamcurtis\/2011\/03\/goodies_and_baddies.html\" > <\/a><\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/blogs\/adamcurtis\/2011\/03\/goodies_and_baddies.html\" >READ IN THE ORIGINAL \u2013 bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Even if one&#8217;s instincts are to help those fighting Gadaffi, it is no longer enough just to see it as a struggle of goodies against baddies. For it is precisely that simplification that has led to unreal fantasies about who we are fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-focus"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11402\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}