Centuries ago, when an army turned on a camp of refugees, or villages were burned, or people captured, killed, raped, mutilated and enslaved, most people never saw the images. Those who did remained comfortable in their right to commit such acts. Now, atrocity is living room theater. Common people in much of the world have reached a level of freedom and comfort unimagined by our ancestors, and we don't like to be reminded that that experience is not universal. When we allow them to catch our attention, strongmen offend us.
Old song meets new world.
We, the United States and our close allies, have the need, the power, and at times the will to stop the kind of cruelties that anonymously littered the earth for most of history. We are capable of re-ordering the world. That's the problem. We've tumbled out of the cold war into the new world without a compass. But our uncertainty over what to do with that impulse causes us to be wildly inconsistent.