Humanitarian Intervention Quotes

• All these wars are similar in the way ideology is being used. It's the ideology of so-called humanitarian intervention. We don't want to do this, but we're doing this for the sake of the people who live there. This is, of course, a terrible sleight of hand because all sorts of people live there, and, by and large, they do it to help one faction and not the other.

  Tariq Ali

  War, Hands, People

  Interview with David Barsamian, www.thirdworldtraveler.com. January 2002.

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• If I were a person who was non-American, I would think humanitarian intervention is just another name for United States imperialism.

  Stanley Hauerwas

  Thinking, Names, United States

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• On humanitarian intervention in general, I guess my view is not unlike the view that was attributed to Gandhi, accurately or not, when he was supposedly asked what he thought about western civilization. He is supposed to have said that he thought it would be a good idea. Similarly, humanitarian intervention would be a good idea, in principle.

  Noam Chomsky

  Views, Civilization, Ideas

  Seminar at Bard College, New York, February 2, 2000.

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• I refer to calls for humanitarian intervention in the affairs of another state - a new idea, this - even when they are made under the pretext of defending human rights and freedoms.

  Boris Yeltsin

  Rights, Ideas, Affair

  Boris Yeltsin's speech to the summit of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) in Istanbul, news.bbc.co.uk. November 18, 1999.

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• What happened in the following years? Well, I think that among the educated classes it stayed the same. You talk about humanitarian intervention, it's like Vietnam was a humanitarian intervention. Among the public, it's quite different.

  Noam Chomsky

  Thinking, Years, Class

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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