19. "Humanitarian aggression," "globaloney."

"Humanitarian aggression" is a most unusual political expression. Rather than giving pain to the left or right, as most political expressions do, it gives pain in both directions. When we bombed Belgrade there it was, paining the humane left with the word "aggression" and paining the hawk right with the word "humanitarian." Democrats, trying to help the poor Kosovars, found themselves in a class with Nazi invaders; Republicans found themselves motivated to bold force by a bleeding heart.

So it's a centrist's word. And, to some extent, a wit's word, showing in its cleverness the bit of malice that is supposed to energize him.

Be that as it may, whatever was working for it continues now in its extension to "humanitarian imperialism," a Noam Chomsky expression applied recently to President Obama's action in Libya by George Will (Washington Post, 4-6-11). It obviously means "continued successful humanitarian aggression." We all can feel the President's pain. And now (ha, ha) Sarkozy's.

Among the people in politics and foreign affairs cudgeling their wits to give others pain there are so many clever ones that some of their products are bound to delight us. Calling Sweden a "moral superpower," for example, was a smash. Spiritual superiority mapped onto the world's power hierarchy, bullies and all! Picture the next Swede trying to point out America's faults.

Apolitical analysts may be amused, but there's no denying that in the Libya case very serious forces are at work, as witness the struggle in the United Nations the last several decades to resolve the claims of state sovereignty and humanitarian justice. In the beginning the world body had to honor the first to bring states in and keep them together. Now it may have to honor the second so that they can keep their values (or the values of the most powerful states) together.

We can see that sometimes the statists ("Stay out! Stay out!") need putting down and sometimes the humanitarians ("Go in! Go in!") need putting down. They're looking more and more like the old interventionists and isolationists I remember, inventing stronger and stronger put-downs for each other.

One of these is worth mentioning, "globaloney," Claire Booth Luce's word for what internationalist thinkers were coming up with. It helps us understand what makes a put-down superior. "Humanitarian aggression" is superior because the pained person is going to have such a hard time denying it. The bombing of Belgrade did fit the definition of aggression; it was done for a humane purpose. The reference was specific and fixed. "Globaloney" is unspecific and wild. It's a nyah-nyah word, easily denied.

Did Mayor LaGuardia do any better responding with his word for what the isolationists were coming up with, "isolhash"? Not in the judgment of the clever word people of that day. Nobody picked it up.