Why I am not a Progressive

The following article What Should Be Progressive or Humanitarian Response to Suspected Chemical Attack in Syria? quotes Joe Stork, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and North Africa division, who was called upon to represent the “Progressive” voice in an MSNBC interview as saying:

MELBER: …What do you think is the right sort of proper humanitarian or progressive response to what we`re learning? [about Syria]

STORK: “Well, I think if there is a military intervention on the part of the United States there are two key things. First of all, the targeting and the means of attack and so forth have to be precisely designed to minimize, absolutely minimize civilian casualties. That includes civilians who may be living in Assad-controlled territories. And they include civilians who support Assad in fact.  Secondly, the targeting should also be aimed at protecting civilians to the extent possible. It shouldn’t just be about punishment. It should also be about protecting civilians. The 1,000 or so people killed last week are on top of 100,000 people, most of them civilians, most of them at the hands of government forces over the last two years. And that`s what really needs to be kept in mind.”

My reaction is that either this man is not a progressive or I am not, because his response has nothing in common with anything I would have answered.  If “Progressives” support bombing Syria as long as the campaign involves only “surgical” strikes, then count me out.  Don’t we have enough examples of American “humanitarian interventions” in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya in recent memory to convince ourselves that there was nothing humanitarian in these acts of naked aggression?  Isn’t the word coming out of the Obama administration that attacking Syria is meant to “send a message”?  Got to demonstrate who’s the boss once in a while, make an example, send a message!

 
Is the United States an imperialist country, in fact the foremost imperial power of our times?  Yes or no?  If so (and it’s pretty obvious to me that it is), this has consequences for how we see its activities:  the U.S. military is an instrument of imperial conquest, and all these euphemistically named interventions are military campaigns designed to open up new regions to the domination of American monopoly capital.  Maybe it is progressive to believe that the U.S. is not an imperialist country, or at least that it is only a reluctant empire saddled with “the white man’s burden” of bringing civilization to savage countries, that it has a “duty to protect”, that it needs to be “the policeman to the world”, that it is a benevolent giant who happens to be ham-fisted sometimes but always means well.  What a convenient way to justify imperial conquest as a noble enterprise!  It’s just a coincidence that all those recently bombed and invaded countries had heretofore been pretty much closed to American business, right?

Apparently our government is poised to begin bombing yet another country.  Will we say something in protest?  Or will we cheer it on and assuage our conscience by admonishing Obama to try his best to minimize collateral casualties?  Time to make a choice.