Obligatory anti-war plug
A further ingredient in the hostile reception the plan to attack Iraq has met in the European-to a lesser extent also liberal American-intelligentsia is the justified fear that it could strip away the humanitarian veil covering Balkan and Afghan operations, to reveal too nakedly the imperial realities behind the new militarism. This layer has invested a great deal in human-rights rhetoric, and feels uncomfortably exposed by the bluntness of the thrust now under way.
The entire New Left Review article, "Force and Consent" by Perry Anderson, in HTML or .pdf format. (Also reprinted in the January 2003 issue of Harper's Magazine.)