If it’s "Wilsonian," where does “self-determination” fit in?

As reported at Unclaimed Territory, Robert Kaplan, a neo-conservative writer for The Atlantic who participated in a secret meeting with Paul Wolfowitz in 2002 on selling the Iraq War – yet continues to be treated as a bona fide journalist -- has written an op-ed in the Washington Post defending the high-minded principles of those who advocated the war back then. At the time, naturally, he sold the war in an article as a matter of strategic necessity and doing some shock-and-awe showing invincible American power to the Arab world. One might say this was a far cry from carrying the torch of democracy into the Middle East that these charlatans would like Americans to believe was their motivation.

One of the conceits that the Neo-Cons would like to keep promoting in order to fend off the ridicule and opprobrium they deserve is that their aggressive foreign policy views are "Wilsonian" – as if somehow they share the idealism of Woodrow Wilson and his “14 Points” during World War I. Preemptive war becomes justified as an exercise in carrying democracy to the rest of the world.

Let’s get this straight. The core of Wilson’s idealism was the concept of self-determination by people with a common interest. As difficult as the principle is to put into practice, we can identify situations that do not qualify. Here is an example of what is not respecting the principle of self-determination: that would be the case where George Bush invaded Iraq without any provocation, occupied it militarily for several or many years, caused the deaths of tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands of people, allowed or even encouraged interrogators to engage in the grossest imaginable violations of the religious tenets of all the people there, set up a massively-fortified American-dominated enclave, the “Green Zone,” in the heart of the capital city of the country, built and occupied a humongous headquarters within that protected zone, and then had a bunch of Federalist Society American lawyers write a constitution and create the fundamental laws for the country.

Enough of the Neo-Cons calling themselves “Wilsonian.” It’s a gigantic lie, once again relying on the belief that Americans are too simple-minded and ignorant of their history to see through it.