I dunno if Kevin Drum’s just being grumpy here, but if you can’t see any daylight between Samantha Power’s views and those of the dread Very Serious People, I think you’re probably not looking very hard. I don’t think this (in The New Republic, no less; PDF) was the standard VSP view of things in March 2003:

The exceptionalist impulses behind Bush’s choices have been with us for a long time. What distinguished this round was that by 2002 the checks that could usually be counted on to rein in a president’s militant moralism had vanished. On Capitol Hill, the House International Relations Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee had gone out of fashion; Banking and Appropriations were in, and the globetrotting internationalists of yore had been replaced by a younger, untraveled, uncurious lot. They wouldn’t challenge a wartime president’s worldview. Congress nodded or whimpered. It did not meaningfully dissent, a devastating abdication for the branch responsible for investigation, legislation, and financial control. The media withered as well, becoming the home for Bob Woodward-style stenography rather than Woodward and Bernstein-style scrutiny. And the American people remained relatively insulated from the vitriolic anti-Americanism bubbling abroad.[...]

In this assessment, intentions, because they are unknowable and untrustworthy, are irrelevant. Abroad, they judge what they can see: means and results; and our policy choices in other arenas have harsh ripple effects on perceptions of our Iraq policy. The multidimensional picture is less persuasive than the single-issue picture: The U.S. foreign policy has to be rethought. It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United
States.[...]

But, in using hard power, it is essential for the long struggle that the United States win international support and demonstrate its legitimacy. This requires giving before we demand. Doubling foreign aid is progress; proposing $15 billion for AIDS is extraordinary–but none of these gestures gets at the contradictions at the heart of U.S. foreign policy. [...]

Embedding U.S. power in an international system and demonstrating humility would be painful, unnatural steps for any empire, never mind the most potent empire in the history of mankind. But more pain now will mean far less pain later.

And, recall, again, this was before the Great Disillusionment with Bush and with the Iraq War. It’s true, as Kevin says, that Power’s not an isolationist or a pacifist and believes the United States should play a large role on the world stage. But it’s silly and counterproductive for those of us — people like me and people like Kevin — to agree with the VSPs that pacifism or withdrawal from the world are the only viable alternatives to knee-jerk militarism and foreign policy by clich©.

Josh Marshall on the recent unpleasantness regarding Pakistan:

The unspoken truth here, I suspect, is that Obama has struck on the central folly of our post-9/11 counter-terrorism defense policy — strike hard where they aren’t and go easy where they are. I think everyone can see this. But Obama got there first. So they need to attack him for saying it.

It’s not, though, just that he got there first. As I’ve said before, it’s that it’s much easier for him to get there. It’s one thing for Hillary Clinton to concede error in her estimation of George W. Bush and gesture at faulty intelligence, but it’d be another thing for her to pivot around and say the whole thing was just a really blunt, crude, and obvious error. What happens then to the experience argument? But Josh is right: That’s what this is about on some level.

Brian Beutler observes that the administration seems to be doing its best to ensure that a certain number of exonerated people don’t manage to get out of military custody at Gitmo or elsewhere. Could the reason be that “the administration is hampering the process so that some of these don’t someday describe the torture techniques used against them to a lawyer or a judge or the media”? That’s the kind of irresponsible speculation you’ll only find on a blog, but it’s much needed speculation, considering the circumstances.

I enjoyed Glenn Greenwald’s take on the “foreign policy community”. Let me observe, however, that he left one crucial trope off the list. One is not supposed to question the motives of members of the foreign policy community. If Barack Obama says we need to be willing to make surgical strikes in Pakistan even if the government in Islamabad isn’t willing to act, it’s perfectly okay to say he’s doing this, in part, to emphasize a hawkish side to his views. If union leaders are reluctant to endorse John Edwards despite his union-friendly views, it’s sperfectly okay to say they’re reluctant because they don’t want to alienate the eventually winner and they don’t think that winner will be Edwards. If Chuck Schumer wants to preserve special tax breaks for hedge fund managers it’s okay to point out that this has something to do with the fact that many of his constituents work in the financial services industry and generously support his career with campaign contributions.

But insinuate that leading foreign policy analysts are driven in part by careerism and not just determined pursuit of the truth, and people get the vapors.

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Nicholas Kristof says it does:

Smallpox was a great success but not a fluke. Among other historical foreign aid successes are immunizations, oral rehydration therapy and the green revolution.

More broadly, when we pay a few hundred dollars for fistula surgery so that a teenage girl no longer will leak urine or feces for the rest of her life, that operation may not stimulate economic growth. But no one who sees such a girl€™s happiness after surgery can doubt that such aid is effective, for it truly saves a human being.

The “more broadly” here really needs to be emphasized. Economic growth is a crucial thing, especially for desperately poor countries, but it is what it is and there are other things on the table as well. To get growth, you need good policies. India, having adopted better policies, has enjoyed a good deal of economic growth over the past 10-15 in a way that no aid program could possibly deliver. On the other hand, India is still a desperately poor country and it’s the kind of place where a lot of kids die of measles for lack of vaccines. Over time, if India keeps growing economically, one imagines the government will get a universal vaccination program (or something close to it) up and running, but the rich world could easily afford to step in here and help out.

The growth impact of something like that is going to get swamped by the much larger issues in play and ultimately India’s success is going to be determined by Indian policymakers (and whether or not the country gets into a nuclear war with Pakistan) rather than foreign aid officials, but that doesn’t mean that a well-designed program to save some lives can’t, in fact, save lives.