Obviously, I agree with Sebastian Mallaby that I wish Democrats had been a bit more vigorous in their opposition to the torture bill. That said, let’s get real. Does anyone seriously believe that if the Democrats had done that Mallaby would have written a column saying “Democrats are great, the GOP sucks, go out and put Pelosi in the Speaker’s office?” Mark me down as a “no,” on that one. Instead, we would have had a column about how Democrats are right about torture, but somehow “soft” on terrorism nonetheless. Or else he would have made something else up to complain about.\

A certain number of our elite pundits — Mallaby high among them — are just constitutionally incapable of being nice to the Democratic Party or to American liberals. As the right’s rule proves itself to be worse and worse, they’ll become increasingly critical of Bush. But that merely forces them to devise ever-more complaints about the opposition. And one of the Democrats’ very worst instincts is a tendecy to care about what these kind of people think.

Further thoughts on Eric Posner’s broader argument against humanitarian intervention, which I said I mostly disagreed with earlier. Basically, I do agree that Iraq should make people (like me) who were humanitarian intervention enthusiasts in, say, 1999 somewhat more cautious. But there is a baby/bathwater issue here and I think it’s hard to say anything super-general about the matter. Circumstances vary, and there’s a lot of “it depends” factors here. But what does it depend on? Some scattered bullet-points below:

Read more

Eric Posner throws down in The Washington Post demolishing the “humanitarian” case for the Iraq War:

Saddam Hussein was an especially bad tyrant, and Iraqi civilian casualties attributable to the U.S. intervention do not yet equal what he was able to accomplish, albeit over a longer period. The Kurds and many Shiites are better off. And many Iraqis continue to think that the war was worth it, according to polls.

But polls do not reveal the opinions of dead Iraqis. The humanitarian effect of the war has been at best ambiguous against the baseline of the containment period that preceded it, and if current trends continue, the overall effect will be that of a humanitarian disaster.

Many people blame the humanitarian costs of the war in Iraq on the Bush administration’s execution of it. This view is a psychological crutch that allows defenders of humanitarian intervention to keep the ideal alive for the next, presumably competent, administration of a President Hillary Clinton or John McCain. But complaints about this war are not noticeably different from complaints about earlier wars, where small mistakes (identifiable as such with the benefit of hindsight) resulted in enormous harm.

Posner goes on to make a broader argument I don’t really agree with (though I do agree with part of it) so this gets to be a rare case where I say read the excerpt, not the whole thing!.