{"id":14042,"date":"2012-03-12T09:40:55","date_gmt":"2012-03-12T14:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14042"},"modified":"2012-03-12T09:42:07","modified_gmt":"2012-03-12T14:42:07","slug":"the-role-of-narcissism-in-calls-for-military-intervention-in-syria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/03\/12\/the-role-of-narcissism-in-calls-for-military-intervention-in-syria\/","title":{"rendered":"The role of narcissism in calls for military intervention in Syria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill<\/a> says that one of the driving factors for those demanding military action in Syria is narcissism:<\/p>\n

\n

Failed Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff recently made waves with an op-ed in the Financial Times<\/em> calling for Western intervention in Syria. Revisiting some of the themes of his 1990s writings (Ignatieff made a living championing \u2018humanitarian interventionism\u2019 before he led Canada\u2019s Liberal Party to its worst electoral defeat ever), Igantieff said the West should impose a \u2018comprehensive quarantine of Syria\u2019 in order to \u2018force [Assad] from power\u2019.<\/p>\n

Yet the most startling thing about his piece was not its extreme short-term historical amnesia, its ignorance of the disasters unleashed in Iraq and Afghanistan following Western meddling, but rather its exhibition of self-regard and self-concern, even of that most malignant form of self-love: narcissism. Ignatieff mentioned his own feelings about what is happening in Homs six times and the possible feelings of the people of Homs themselves only three times. His short op-ed mainly focused on the \u2018guilt\u2019 and \u2018shame\u2019 felt by people like Igantieff — that is, Western observers possessed of a good, caring, Sarajevo-informed \u2018international conscience\u2019 — while the \u2018fear\u2019 and \u2018desperation\u2019 of the people of Homs were given far briefer treatment.<\/p>\n

This ratio of 2:1 between Ignatieff\u2019s feelings of guilt and Syrians\u2019 feelings of desperation not only suggests that modern Western interventionists are two times more obsessed with themselves than they are with the victims of foreign conflicts they claim to care so much about — it also reveals that what is really motoring the demands for Western intervention in Syria are the emotional needs of Western observers rather than the practical needs of Syrians. This kind of narcissism is now widespread among those who desperately want the \u2018international community\u2019 to intervene in Syria. These people are so amazingly vain that they see the bombing of Syria as a kind of balm for their guilt-ridden consciences, a physical act that might help to make their own emotional turmoil that bit more bearable. Their rallying cry should be: \u2018Bomb Syria so that I can sleep at night.\u2019<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill says that one of the driving factors for those demanding military action in Syria is narcissism: Failed Canadian politician Michael Ignatieff recently made waves with an op-ed in the Financial Times calling for Western intervention in Syria. Revisiting some of the themes of his 1990s writings (Ignatieff made a living championing \u2018humanitarian interventionism\u2019 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,28,370,5,53],"tags":[218,333,296,694],"class_list":["post-14042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-media","category-middle-east","category-military","category-politics","tag-afghanistan","tag-iraq","tag-michaelignatieff","tag-syria"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3Eu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14042"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14042\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14044,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14042\/revisions\/14044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}