Liberal Internationalism

An absolutely fantastic post by "Go on and Bleed" defends the votes of Michael Ignatieff and Scott Brison, and condemns the anti-war leanings of the other nine candidates.

The money quote:

"A Liberal government sent Canadian forces to Afghanistan. These forces helped remove the Taliban – described rightly as one of the “foulest regimes on earth.” Canadians and Liberals could be proud of this achievement. With one vote all that success was ceded to Stephan Harper."

I myself am personally skeptical of the international liberalism espoused by Ignatieff, though it is useful in demonstrating that Ignatieff's ideology is liberal internationalism, which is completely different from the neo-conservatism he is so often lumped in with. Liberal internationalism has as its goal the spreading of liberal values throughout the world, the liberation of people from oppressive regimes, and the propagation of human rights for everyone regardless of national borders. That's a far cry from neo-conservatism, which preaches many of these things, but really cares far more about military dominance and imperialism. When neo-conservatives like David Frum and Dick Cheney talk about "spreading freedom," what they really mean is "spreading American dominance," which is hardly the same thing. A liberal internationalist is someone in the vein as John F. Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, who truly believed in liberal nations using military force for the sake of liberal values.

As I mentioned, I'm skeptical of this ideology, especially with regard to the Muslims. It is based on the flawed assumption that since the Germans and the Japanese took to liberal democracy so well, other conquered nations will do so as well. I used to be a proponent of this theory, that since the natural state of man was freedom, man would naturally gravitate towards it; that if given the choice of oppression or liberty, any rational human being would take liberty. I made the mistake of thinking everybody valued freedom; to be more precise, I made the mistake of believing that the majority of people are rational. I have since become far more cynical about the state of human beings, and now hold some very classically conservative views about the ability of liberal nations to share liberalism with nations that don't want it. To put it bluntly, the Middle Eastern Muslims en masse and writ large do not want to be free, and while I admire both Michael Ignatieff and Scott Brison's determination to continue with the mission of liberating the Afgani people from the Taliban, the fact of the matter is, they don't want to be free - the fact that they were a hair's breadth away from executing a man for converting to Christianity just a few months ago shows how far they have to go.

But - perhaps the skeptic could think of it this way. With the Taliban in place, that man WOULD have been executed for converting to Christianity, and probably tortured first. The desired change can't possibly happen all at once. The odds of the Afghani people, say, democratically legalizing gay unions, or granting women complete equality within the next decade are absolutely nil. But within the next five decades? Who knows. There will be people living there, though, in five decades who will either damn us for the blood we spilled, or praising the names of our soldiers in gratitude for granting them the free society in which they live. Given that a lot of them currently damn us, along with the rest of the west anyway, is that a gamble worth taking?

Brison and Ignatieff both seem to think so, and it's completely unfair to vilify them as co-conspirators in a global neo-conservative plan because of it.