Nicholas Kristof should be in Prison, Not Julian Assange

For a good example of the absolutely decrepit state of mainstream opinion writing read Nicholas Kristof's embarrassing "Hungry and Desperate, but Away From a Country in Chaos."

The template remains unchanged: A nation's people are being brutalized by its leadership. So the enlightened, benign United States must intervene in that country to replace its leaders with ones of its own choosing.

What always goes unmentioned is that a majority of the citizens of the targeted country doesn't want its leaders evicted by the United States. What also goes unmentioned is that the leaders selected by the U.S. favor privatizing their country's assets.

As Kristof proudly proclaimed in the aftermath of Muammar Gaddafi's ouster in 2011:

I’m a believer in humanitarian intervention to avert genocide or mass atrocities — when the stars align, as I believe they did in Libya — so maybe I’m deluding myself to justify our bombing campaign. Yet it seems to me that the NATO military intervention prevented a massacre in Benghazi, saved countless Libyan lives and has put the country on a track of hope.

Countries like the United States, France, Britain and Qatar did something historic in supporting a military operation that was largely about preserving lives, not national interests. While plenty can still go wrong, my sense is that Libya is muddling along toward a future far better than its oppressive past.

In the years that followed, when Libya descended into civil war and chaos, Kristof changed his tune and became critical of the "humanitarian intervention," not only there but in Syria as well.

The important thing to note here is that Kristof's change of tune on Libya and Syria never translates into an aversion to making another call for a new regimen change operation.

This is also the case with Kristof's fellow columnist Thomas Friedman, who supported the invasion of Iraq, only to acknowledge later that he was wrong, but then ended up arguing for the removal of Assad in Syria.

People like Kristof and Friedman are not really independent thinkers. They are Borgs. They will always advocate for whatever war is being boosted at the moment, to fall back later, in order to maintain any credibility at all, and criticize the intervention, as Kristof does persuasively now with the war in Yemen.