More Words From Matt

[Kay]

Today Campus Progress has an interview up with Matt about Heads in the Sand. Here's a brief highlight where Matt talks about humanitarian militarism and why it's, well, overrated:

We need to stop making foolish proclamations like, “Well, if we invaded this country, we can solve all its problems.” The truth of the matter is that it’s really hard to solve problems by invading other countries. There’s a certain mindset—a kind of false machismo that comes around where some people get interested in humanitarianism and in helping foreigners only when killing some other foreigners is the method at hand. There’s a desire to cherry-pick situations where allegedly sending in the Marines and dropping bombs will help people, which I think reflects an attitude of militarism more than it reflects a concern with humanitarianism or human rights.

As they say, read the whole thing.

Comments

I heard Mathew on the Dennis Prager Show. Boy is
Mathew naive. Islam is a BIG PROBLEM. It is not just a small group of terrorists.
Read America Alone by Mark Steyn. Mark is a Canadian and has studied what is happening around the world.
Islam as a whole is very dangerous and for America to survive we must deport all Muslims who have been here less than 25 years. Before we have the same problems as Europe has. Islam is very dangeous and we must fight to get rid of it before they kill us.
Wake up Mathew, you are very ignorant of the Islamic threat around the world

Posted by Steve Wayne | May 29, 2008 1:01 PM

Mark is a Canadian and has studied what is happening around the world.

And it keeps getting funnier and funnier.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | May 29, 2008 1:05 PM

We need to stop making foolish proclamations like, “Well, if we invaded this country, we can solve all its problems.”

Jeebus, Matthew, whereever do you get all that straw? I mean, is there a run on the straw market for all the straw you are using to create the gigantic straw man?

Posted by Al | May 29, 2008 1:05 PM

What kills me is that, with respect to domestic policy, it's conservative dogma--particularly neoconservative dogma--that it's really, really hard for the government to fix societal problems. That's why they write off urban policy. Why it's supposed to be easier over there, under a hailstorm of bullets, remains unclear.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | May 29, 2008 1:07 PM

Without America being strong and fighting the bad guys, the world would be taken over by tyrants.
The liberals make the world less safe. It is just the opposite. The Democrats have their head in the sand.
Only Republicans realize that the United Nations is
corrupt and worthless organization.
Only America stands between a free and modern society and going back to the dark ages.
Look at all the things the liberals have wanted for the past 20 years, and you realize that you liberals are wrong on almost everything.

Posted by Steve Wayne | May 29, 2008 1:08 PM

Where do these drooling idiot trolls come from? Is someone breeding them in vats?

Posted by signSansSignified | May 29, 2008 1:16 PM

Why it's supposed to be easier over there, under a hailstorm of bullets, remains unclear.

It has to do with a slight difference in the ruling class's attitudes toward their own brown people and those in other countries. In the colonialist mindset, the "natives" are easily-manipulated children who will do whatever we want as long as we don't appear "weak." In the conservative mindset, "urban dwellers" are lazy, spoiled children who need to stop being "coddled."

Posted by James Gary | May 29, 2008 1:21 PM

Wake up Mathew, you are very ignorant of the Islamic threat around the world

Well by all means, join the Crusade, Mr. Templar.

Lemme see, if the stakes are as truly high as you say, then war against Islam would be the only logical course of action. (Or have you designed a special Islamic force shield.) And of course, war against Islam, direct or indirect, would be FAR less dangerous and provocative than the threat in its current, latent yet dire form, right? In other words, we've got to invade them before they invade us, yada yada.

Does cost benefit analysis mean anything to you?

Posted by Bill | May 29, 2008 1:30 PM

I agree that some on the Right side of the humanitarian intervention coalition get interested in interevntion because they get to shoot stuff & people. But when he gets back, I wonder if he would talk about whether he has noticed a tendency on the Left side of the coalition to become interested in military intervention, or even just getting interested in difficult questions of when and for what we should be using our military might in the world, only when what they see as humanitarian (read: "good" or "warm and fuzzy") ends are the motivating cause.

I do agree that military humanitarian intervention is overrated in pro-interventionist circles (both the "Right and "Left" sides of them). That is for both for the reason Matt gives (Why go in and just kill MORE people? There is always a better way than that...How does it really help at all?), but also because it really does cause the discussion to elide the reality that U.S. military exists primarily to protect the United States, its people, and its vital interests, and we've had a hard enough time identifying what that alone amounts to in recent years, without dividing our focus by throwing in calculations about the effects on the welfare of the people implicated in all the U.S. intervention actions AND inactions that are proposed on the behalf of various peoples all over the world every single year.

I would love to hear Matt on this.

Posted by Mike | May 29, 2008 4:52 PM

I tried to think of how my pithy, salt of the earth grandpa would react to the idea of bombing another country into democracy (note: any resemblance to my actual grandpa is purely fictional), and I came up with:

"You can't build a house with dynamite."

Posted by MikeT | May 29, 2008 5:23 PM

Your right Bill,
We must kill muslim terrorists around the world before they kill us.

In fact, foreingers do not deserve the constitutional rights native born americans have, so kill terrorists where they sleep.
I am not a nut, just somne one that has studied WW2,
we must stop mulim terrorists before they get even more powerfull. If the free world would have stopped Hitlar years ealier, thousands may be millions of lives would have been saved
STOP RADICAL ISLAM NOW
YOU LIBS SHUT UP, YOU DO NOT KNOW WHAT YOUR TALKING ABOUT

Posted by steve wayne | May 29, 2008 8:34 PM

"Where do these drooling idiot trolls come from? Is someone breeding them in vats?"

Thirty percent of the US population, homes. Where did you think they came from? Plenty of "breeding vats" there.

Meanwhile, still waiting on Matt to explicitly state what he'd do about Iran, as he pontificates all around the subject of "proliferation" (read: code word for "liberal hawk".)

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | May 29, 2008 10:37 PM

Yglesias, like his new bff at the Atlantic, was still wrong about the war. Maybe he and Feith can do joint book tours about how they were right but someone else screwed up the war.

Posted by agnostic | May 29, 2008 11:26 PM