National Review on Rwanda
I was looking through the various posts on NRO's Corner this afternoon and noticed
Rich Lowry's screed on Clinton's refusal to intervene in Rwanda in 1994. According to Lowry, "[t]he Clinton administration's conduct during the Rwandan genocide was one of the more shameful episodes in recent American history." How so, Rich? I hate to defend Bill Clinton against National Review, but if the administration -- whether it knew of the genocide or not -- determined a Rwandan intervention was not in the national interests of the United States, then its refusal to intervene should be celebrated rather than condemned in apocalyptic language. Even if one disagrees with the substance of that conclusion, it seems to me that the process of wieghing an intervention in terms of our country's national interests is the appropriate one, and Clinton deserves credit for engaging in it.
Of course, several of the neocons at National Review prefer global crusades to narrowly-focused interventions. God forbid American foreign policy should reflect American interests. No, instead, a foreign policy geared toward such a standard must be defined as a "shameful episode." It's this sort of logic that makes it difficult for those of us who support the Iraq War out of a sense of strategic purpose -- and not out of a desire to "transform the Middle East" or go on some sort of quixotic global democratic crusade -- to get our point across to the liberals and the Buchananite right. We're hampered by the silly arguments of the neocons.
Of course, all this probably makes me an anti-Semite or something like that, so what do I know?