The upshot would be that the Iraq invasion was not in our "national interest," at least narrowly conceived, and that we thus fought the war exclusively for humanitarian reasons. This was Bush's third rationale for the war, and it has proven impregnable. The Left has had no success in casting doubt on the monstrousness of Hussein's rule. Every day our soldiers uncover new evidence of mass graves, and journalists find new victims of Hussein's torture chambers, who, now free, are willing to tell their horrific stories of limbs amputated and wives raped. On a scale of ghastly horror Hussein's regime ranked high, and the humanitarian imperative was clear.
So, one can't help but wonder why the Democrats are complaining. Why do they not say, as Prime Minister Blair recently did, that "if we are wrong [about Hussein's weapons of mass destruction], we will have destroyed a threat that at its least is responsible for inhuman carnage and suffering. That is something I am confident history will forgive"?
But the Democrats' campaign to undermine the justifications for the Iraq war is stranger yet. In the 1990s, liberal Democrats joined the international Left in support of the idea of "humanitarian war." Having watched international organizations and the liberal democracies stand idly by as genocide was wrought in Rwanda and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, liberals rallied behind the notion of using the armed forces of nation-states not to further the national interests of particular states — the classical understanding of the uses of state power — but for humanitarian, altruistic ends.
The paradigmatic case to emerge in the 1990s was Kosovo. The Left rallied behind Clinton's use of force to turn back Milosevic on the grounds that our motives were pure; that our military intervention was not tainted by "narrow" reasons of state. Said the New York Times approvingly at the time: "This was the first military conflict since the end of the cold war fought primarily for humanitarian purposes. . . . The immediate hazard in Kosovo was a demonic assault on the principles of a civilized society."
Now, one might argue over whether the fate of Kosovo truly had no bearing on our national interest. But there can be little doubt that that's how the Left saw the matter. As far as they were concerned what made the war legitimate — even something to be celebrated — was its pure humanitarianism. Indeed, that's why many Democrats who today raise questions about the Iraq war are in favor of sending American troops to Liberia. No obvious national interest there.
What, then, makes the case of Iraq different from Kosovo? Or from Liberia? Clearly, the former was waged not for humanitarian reasons alone but also in defense of the United States. The Iraq war was understood to be both a strategic necessity and a humanitarian endeavor. But Democrats today complain that the strategic element was overblown. Well, where does that line of reasoning take us? One would have to conclude that we accomplished no more, and no less, in Iraq than we did in Kosovo — the humanitarian rescue of broken bodies and broken lives from a sadistic dictator.
MAny of you would not do anything....ever....if it involved a Republican...I see no one bitched every time Clinton lobbed a Monica timed missile, or Kosovo, etc....different watch, eh?? |
