The Fraud Of “Humanitarian Wars”

All Wars, Even The Most Unjustifiably Aggressive, Are Wrapped In The Same Pretty Rhetorical Packaging

BY GLENN GREENWALD
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2, 2012 06:34 PM EDT
Courtesy Of "Salon Magazine"


(updated below)

Last month, I spoke at the University of Chicago as part of an evententitled “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Empire: Humanitarian Intervention and Neo-Orientalism.” Sponsored by the Muslim Students Association, the event also included Oxford Professor Tariq Ramadan, law professor and U.N. war crimes expert M. Cherif Bassiouni, and University of Chicago Professor Jennifer Pitts. My talk, roughly 30 minutes long, focused on how so-called “humanitarian interventions” are manipulatively used to justify wars of aggression and self-interest, and can be heard on the player below (my talk begins at roughly 57:40: simply move the cursor to that mark, as it loads quickly). The full event, including the other three talks and the question-and-answer session – all of which was really quite excellent —  can also be viewed on the player below by starting at the beginning, or can be heard here.

UPDATE: I meant to note that much of the material I used for this speech came from the work of the always-excellent Jonathan Schwarz.