The question is inspired by
this post at Democracy Arsenal (My emphases below. See original for links to cites within):
The Sins of Liberal Interventionism?
Posted by Shadi Hamid
Ezra Klein's usually on-target, but he has me really, really confused here. In responding to an article by Timothy Garton-Ash, Ezra asserts that "liberal interventionism's great sin was to give us Iraq." Huh? Last time I checked, not one of the architects of the Iraq war was a "liberal interventionist" (i.e. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith). If you happen to think that liberal interventionists and neo-cons are the same thing - and I'm pretty sure Ezra doesn't - then I would refer you this post, where I explain the differences.
I will say this, however, and maybe this is what Ezra is getting at: although I was against the war since day one, I can't say that I necessarily opposed the idea of the war, or, more accurately, the idea of a war. If I try hard enough, I can envision a set of circumstances where I would have reluctantly supported an Iraq intervention of some sort, although it would've had to have been done very differently. To be sure, as a student of the Middle East, I'm keenly aware of America and Britain's unfortunate history of meddling in the region (1953 stands out as particularly egregious), so I understand why liberals are often suspicious of anything tasting of moral adventure abroad. But one can hope, as so many of us did. As I've written previously, early 2005 was something of a turning point for me. January 30, 2005 encompassed everything I had hoped for in a region that knew little but the pain of dissapointment. So, when I saw the pictures of Iraqis braving terrorist threats to vote for the first time in their lives, I saw the promise of what could have been and, what I believed then, was still possible - the building of a model democracy in Iraq that could inspire the rest of the region, and break the seemingly permanent grip of Arab autocracy. Yes, I was wrong to think that the Bush administration could have done it right. Yet, it is certainly conceivable that another administration (i.e. a Democratic one) could have. And if history had taken that very different course, then maybe the Middle East would've been the better for it.
With that said, let me pose a question to Ezra and others: under what principle or set of principles do you think the Iraq war was necessarily, and for all times, wrong? And if you're going to answer that question, you have to be able to separate between Bush's war and the abstract war, let's call it, that could have been fought if we knew how to fight it. I don't believe that sovereignty is sacrosanct, particularly if we're talking about governments which are unelected and illegitimate. Should America reserve the "right to intervene," even in the case of non-imminent threats? Yes, i.e. Bosnia, Kosovo, Darfur. I can't imagine Ezra thinks that we shouldn't have stopped Slobodan Milosevic from his campaign of ethnic cleansing. The issue then, I suppose, is what meets the threshold that necessitates intervention.
My response: There is no circumstance I can imagine that would have necessitated intervening in Iraq, given what was known (even weighed against what was not known) at the time all this came to a head in late 2002, early 2003. What argued most strenuously against intervening in Iraq was the much thought about consequences of unleashing Shiites and Kurds with the Sunni suddenly vulnerable to retaliation for years of Saddam's sectarian and ethnically motivated sins. Of course this could open one up to charges of being tolerant of the status quo at the expense of the ojects of Saddam's persecutions. But I am not arguing against diplomatic or political attempts at solving those problems, just against the idea that military intervention was the best course. Clearly it was not. Doubtful anyone else could have done any better given the circumstances of 2003.
I'll need to ponder a bit whether military intervention is ever really "necessary." Perhaps to stop genocide and violence by a government against civilians. But it should never be done the way the Bushists handled the run-up to Iraq, by steam-rolling over and ignoring all opposition, domestic and foreign.
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