Daniel Greenfield writes The Imaginary Non-Interventionist in his excellent blog, The Sultan Knish

The non-interventionist, like the pacifist, is a mythical woodland creature who appears in the fables of many cultures. He isn’t however to be found in the vicinity of Washington D.C.

Break down the arguments of the non-interventionist and you will find a set of conspiracy theories explaining why every previous intervention was motivated by bad faith, secret agendas and racism. The non-interventionist doesn’t reject intervention; instead he contends that every previous intervention failed because it was carried out at the behest of the banks, the military-industrial complex, the CIA, the Jews, American arrogance and the oil industry.

But the non-interventionist who makes it into the White House is free to intervene as much as he likes because his motives are pure. He isn’t trying to secretly build oil pipelines or put money into Haliburton. He won’t be a unilateral cowboy launching new crusades for no good reason. And so he becomes the non-interventionist interventionist, the multilateral unilateralist, the good invader.

The fake interventionist is a lot more dangerous than the real interventionist because he thinks that he has learned all the lessons from history when all he has done is filled his head with idiotic conspiracy theories. By assigning evil underhanded motives to all his predecessors, he passes up the opportunity to actually learn from their example and instead operates under an unrealistic sense of self-confidence in his own judgement. Because he is certain that they were evil and he isn’t, he believes that he can do no wrong.  A true non-interventionist would reject intervention wholesale. Our fake non-interventionists turn up their noses at it when their political opponents do it. But once they have the power, they intervene out of entirely pure motives such as helping the Muslim Brotherhood take over entire countries.

Obama is a non-interventionist because he spends a lot of time hesitating and apologizing for each intervention. He doesn’t however bother getting permission from Congress or even UN approval. Why should he? His motives are pure. Process is a way of slowing down men with impure motives such as George W. Bush. But pacifist saints can bomb as many countries as they want without the requirements of process getting in the way.

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