Susan Rice.

Editor,

This Benghazi kerfuffle being hyped and hyped in the media is smoke.

The real issue is the hypocrisy of the US foreign policy pillar known as "Humanitarian Interventionism."

Washington is keeping everybody talking about a completely irrelevant and insubstantial Benghazi "controversy" so it never occurs to anyone to discuss what is really important, namely fundamental principles of US foreign policy.

Susan Rice is a protege of Madeleine Albright, who famously averred that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children as a consequence of US sanctions was "worth" the inconvenience those sanctions caused Saddam Hussein.

I can't reconstruct the whole argument here, but Israel's treatment of Palestine and Rwanda's treatment of the Congo go unpunished by the US because that serves US interests. But others are sanctioned or bombed for "humanitarian" reasons: Syria, Libya, Kosovo.

Whether you agree or disagree with how any particular case was or is being handled, the overarching question, which is buried under a mountain of distracting nonsense is this policy.

Here is an interview with Vijay Prashad, of Trinity College, about Susan Rice and how the question of Humanitarian Interventionism relates to her nomination to be Secretary of State.

Re: "The Fight Over Susan Rice" (11/28/2012)