Humanitarian Intervention
Kill the Man Who Questions Lyrics


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We talk of law and order and demand it on our streets, while halfway around the world, we're bombing neighborhoods to hell. Then You attack youth as violent in all your news magazines. Self-serving interests covered up, to question why is to blaspheme. Good intentions, our interventions are sacred, bloodless and pristine. The liberated cheer the victors (at least in text book history). While wide-eyed, battered, bombed out children "wonder why the westerners are there."* You won't care who gets knocked down. Until the day they fucking rise.




Overall Meaning

In "Humanitarian Intervention," Kill the Man Who Questions is drawing attention to the hypocrisy and contradictions of Western nations' foreign policies. Despite claiming to value law and order in our own communities, we are quick to resort to violence and military intervention in other parts of the world. The lyrics point out how our media often demonize youth in our own country as violent, yet overlook the countless innocent civilians who are killed in our foreign wars. The song suggests that our interventions are often motivated by self-interest and justified through idealistic rhetoric.


Line by Line Meaning

We talk of law and order and demand it on our streets, while halfway around the world, we're bombing neighborhoods to hell.
We are hypocritical when we demand law and order on our streets while we are willing to bomb and destroy neighborhoods in other parts of the world.


Then You attack youth as violent in all your news magazines.
The media portrays youth as violent, which distracts from the violent actions of those in power.


Self-serving interests covered up, to question why is to blaspheme.
Those in power hide their own self-serving interests and criticizing them is seen as a violation of sacred beliefs.


Good intentions, our interventions are sacred, bloodless and pristine.
Our interventions are seen as pure and noble, but this image ignores the violence and bloodshed that results.


The liberated cheer the victors (at least in text book history).
After a war, the winners are celebrated, but the reality of the war is often obscured or forgotten.


While wide-eyed, battered, bombed out children 'wonder why the westerners are there.'
Children in war zones are confused and hurt by the presence of foreign forces, and may question why they are there.


You won't care who gets knocked down. Until the day they fucking rise.
People in power are indifferent to the harm they cause until their victims fight back and challenge their authority.




Contributed by Nathaniel T. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
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Most interesting comment from YouTube:

AboveAllNations

I'm a supporter of humanitarian intervention, and I'm disappointed with Mr. Kouchner's responses. Here are some important points he failed to raise:

1) Without NATO intervention, Libya would be far WORSE than it is today, probably worse than Syria. In Libya, there have only been a few thousand casualties in the aftermath of the NATO intervention, and rivaling factions just announced the formation of a national unity government. In Syria, where the United States failed to intervene for three years (until Sept. 2014), around 300,000 people have died, with millions more displaced. Libya isn't perfect, but that wasn't a nation-building project. The question is whether it would have been better if Gaddafi had fulfilled his promise to wipe out Benghazi (600,000 people) and turned Libya into what Syria is today.

2)  If the Libyan intervention was as an exercise in Western imperialism or motivated by oil, there would have been an occupying army. There wasn't, because the intervention was merely about saving lives and ensuring that Libya didn't destabilize all of North Africa like Syria has for the Middle East.


3) The Libyan people remain overwhelmingly supportive of NATO's intervention to prevent genocide (75 percent of Libyans supported intervention according to a Gallup survey in 2012: http://www.gallup.com/poll/156539/opinion-briefing-libyans-eye-new-relations-west.aspx

4) ISIS didn't really have any power in Syria until after Assad killed hundreds of innocent women and children with chemical weapons in 2013 and the international community didn't do anything about it. The West's failure to enforce its "red line" against war crimes and WMDs undermined the legitimacy of the West and motivated radicalized Muslims to join ISIS, which only started taking territory in mid-2014.



All comments from YouTube:

yoleven11

Mehdi, terrific job on the show. You have restored my faith in journalism.
My issue with this debate is that you don't raise specifics about what prerequisites should be met and also the importance for clear impartial evidence. You could probably find a massive group of people in the majority of countries in the world that are unsatisfied with their governments and if given the chance would like to overthrow them. Not clearly defining exactly what and how abuses are happening leads to people like your guest making emotional pleas for war with scant contextualized evidence. TV can be very misleading.

We need clear evidence from an unbiased source that can be quantified and easy to see for everybody as a prerequisite. Anecdotal evidence can be misleading. Clear evidence can lead to clear solutions and better dialogue for a diplomatic solution. Imperialist countries that are pursuing geopolitical goals who are intellectually inconsistent and downright hypocritical don't deserve to make emotional pleas. I view this more in the sense as an argument for them because I just don't trust that they are at all sincere in their humanitarian concern. To me they are downright warmongers and war profiteers. They pick and choose where they want regime change based on what suits them. Interesting they aren't concerned with Saudi Arabia. Really the UN should be the only body making the case with a sufficient burden of proof. Keep up the great work.

Mohammad Eqbal Popal

i am from Afghanistan and all my life passed in war. which is only for US and west benefit without any definition .

Jaree K

@Ishan Bhusal017 they forget. Americans and the west will always forget. But he Afghans the Iraqis the vietnamese will never forget

Ishan Bhusal017

@ElAnill0 it was US who funded talibans in the first place

زيد Zaid

@ElAnill0 the beginning of the Afghanistan war was that the Taliban housed Terrorists?

Pro Z0

@ElAnill0 that why you guys killed 1.3 Millon people of afganistan and destroy whole country.if your politician want peace in middle - east just give them education not guns.

ElAnill0

I was a soldier and I went to afghanistan. And i can tell you that the west had no benefit from that war, it started because the taliban were housing terrorist and then when we went there all we found was a country full of corrupt officials, poverty to the roof, and extremists

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Byabang AD

Haha that moment just before the break- “This is a difficult subject, Mehdi; don’t’ be bapa papa pah” 😂

Rajadhiraj Maharaj

@m.a. k. haha.. this righteous Frenchy thinks he is Nepolion

m.a. k.

Typical french non sense

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