It’s a pleasure to get smacked down once again. But no, I don’t agree with you about much of anything.

I don’t agree that humanitarian motives for intervention make it difficult to criticize interventions motivated by power and corruption. That’s like saying having a police force makes it impossible to criticize police brutality. It’s true that as long as one has a police force, one is going to get police brutality, but that ignores the reality of how brutal life would be without a police force.

I’m not suggesting that the US, or the UN, or NATO, needs to act as an international police force, but let’s face it, that’s going to happen at some point in the future whether you or I like it or not. The best we can hope for is a fairly benign police force which intervenes when innocent people are in trouble, not a corrupt police force which intervenes to rob and exploit people, as often happens in third world nations. In the present world, I can certainly see how one could argue that Kosovo helped make things slightly easier for Bush to invade Iraq, but in the real world, it wouldn’t have made any difference at all. Bush, after all, was one of the people who opposed Kosovo. And yet, he still managed to invade Iraq without it bothering his conscience one bit. The point is, Bush was set to invade Iraq regardless of what anyone else said. He could have given a hoot about what left-wing protestors, congress, the whole world thought, he was going to do it. So pretending that if only leftists had been pure anti-interventionists, this would have made a difference, is pure fantasy. You are still operating under the naïve assumption that people who have bad reasons for invading other countries give a damn what reasons their critics have for opposing them. Or that good people engaging in interventions for humanitarian reasons simply pave the way for bad people engaging in bad interventions. Bad people will do what they want to do regardless, unless they are forcefully stopped. The only thing that would have actually stopped Bush’s invasion of Iraq would be if, say, Russia or China threatened to align with Saddam and defend him militarily. That’s the kind of criticism he would have taken seriously. Leftist protesters? Furgettaboutit.

As for your insistence that supporting the United States’ leading role in the world is itself enabling the moral outrages of Vietnam and Iraq, etc., is just incredibly short-sighted. Yes, I’d certainly like the US to simply pull out of everything outside its borders, and just concentrate on baking apple pie and playing steroid-free baseball, but in the real world, it doesn’t work that way. In the real world, power abhors a vacuum, and the minute the US steps back, someone else is going to step in and start leading the world, and it isn’t going to be someone you like. It’s going to be Putin’s Russia, or Jing’s China, or various middle-eastern shitheads. And before long, that “new world order” is going to be doing some very nasty things, and not to our benefit. You really think an unchecked Milosevic, running rampant through the Balkans, aligned with KGB Putin and various eastern european and central asian despots, controlling all the gas pipelines to Europe, are really going to make the world a better place? Dream on, dude. The US may indeed be the worst Empire in the history of the world – except for all the others.

So, if I have Iraqi blood on my hands because I in general support a leading role for the US in the world, then you have Iraqi blood on your hands for simply living in the US and buying gasoline for your car, because that’s the reason we have interests in the middle east at all, and why Bush decided it was in our interests to invade. I at least am a virtual fanatic about the need for the US to attain energy independence, and to spend hundreds of billions of dollars at the very least towards that end rather than trying to occupy Iraq indefinitely. Still, I find it very amusing that you consider me responsible for a policy I entirely opposed, as if supporting my local police force means I am responsible for putting a plunger up some guy’s poor ass in NY city. (I’m sure you know the case from the 90′s).

Well I imagine that Conrad might reply that the humanitarian concerns were not our “real” motive for attacking Iraq. There are about a dozen problems with that argument, but let’s just hit the high points. Is Conrad so sure that the same couldn’t be said about Kosovo? I’m not. The fact is that “real” motives are inherently unknowable, or at least imperfectly knowable, and basing conclusions about the morality or legality of going to war on motivations is dicey at best.

As for legality, I’m afraid that a detailed critique of Conrad’s troubling thoughts regarding international law is beyond my current time constraints. I will simply point out that, if one accepts his criticisms of international law, it is simply impossible to characterize the Iraqi war as ilegal.

The bottom line is this: you certainly can coherently hold the positions that conrad has vis a vis international law and morality*. Those positions are IMO morally monstrous in their implications for reasons which I have tried to sketch out above, but set that aside. What one CAN’T do, coherently at least, is to hold those positions and simultaneously condemn the Iraq venture on moral and legal (as opposed to prudential) grounds.

Which is, incidentally, why so much of the left interventionist critique of the Iraq venture fell so flat. The crowd who was so thrilled to intervene with regard to Kosovo wasn’t really in a position to oppose the Iraq venture, except on narrowly prudential grounds.

And that, of course, comes back to one of my central arguments, which Conrad hasn’t even engaged, except for sputtering along the lines of ‘but but but, then what can we do about governments doing bad things tot heir people,” combined with name calling. It simply isn’t true, int he real world, that any nation can adopt a policy of humanitarian intervention and avoid having that policy misused to support horrors such as Iraq. You can’t have one without the other. And Conrad’s attempts to have his cake and eat it too – to break down a consistent pattern of U.S. foreign policy in to the “good” parts that he likes, and the “bad” parts he doesn’t like, is, to be charitable, morally vacuous.

Which brings me to a final point. It’s all well and good to make silly arguments about “cowardice” when condemning a policy of consistent non-interventionism. But put any label you want on it. You want to argue that, by taking such position I’m some how supposed to feel some level of responsibility for what might have happened in Kosovo without intervention? I could talk about the moral distinction between responsibility accruing from inaction, versus the responsibility accruing from action, but let’s accept some such responsibility for the sake of argument. I’d sleep much, much better at night, even with that on my “conscience,” than Conrad should sleep at night with the innocent blood that he has on his hands from Iraq and other interventions . And noConrad, you don’t escape responsibility for such blood because you opposed the Iraq venture. It all stems from the the consensus role of the United States role in the world, which you have made it clear you whole heartedly support.

*Well, actually that may be conceding too much. It seems to me that the logical implications of what Conrad says about the nature of individuals and states creates some uncomfortable contradictions with his rather expansive notions of how the United States should act in the international area, but that would be a suject for another, longer post.

Sadly today is going to be to busy to fully respond to your current posts, let alone continue the dialog. All that I can say is that you aren’t really getting the point – not surprisingly, as your brand of naive do goodism is virtually a national characteristic. The kind of foreign policy you prefer can’t exist in the real world. In this respect, even liberals and libertarians need to cultivate a Burkean understanding of the concept of unintended consequences and the dangers of radical violent change, even when people have the ‘right” motives.

Responding to your longer post, I’m both entertained and a bit repulsed. I was glad to see that I had graduated from being “sick and monstrous” to merely be a sap, but then I see later on I return to being “morally monstrous”. So I’m quite versatile, apparently. But I must say that I simply don’t share you view of this country, or the very concept of a “country”.

You seem to be addicted to anthropomorphizing everything, the United States in particular. As if there is actually some person called “the United States”, who is responsible for everything evil in the world over the last fifty years. As if Vietnam and Iraq were actually fought by the same people, the same leaders, the same policies, etc. Well, I’ve got new for you, our “country” is nothing more than the people in it who are alive at any given time and voting, working for, and getting themselves elected as leaders of those people. The notion that there’s a continuous “nation” from one generation to the next is merely a legal fiction, not an actual fact. So in fact those who carried out the Iran coup in 1954 are not the same people who bombed Kosovo in 1999. Nor are the people who elected them the same. It’s only the legal name of the country that stayed the same.

Now, as to the morality of those actions, I would condemn some things done, and praise others. I think virtually all nations have done good and bad things, and the notion that you can’t separate them is just as insane as the notion that there are “good people” and “bad people” rather than good acts and bad acts. Obviously you are one of those people who thinks that they are one of the “good people”, and I guess I’m one of the “bad people”. Well, this is just nutty. There are very few crazed killers among us, and as you say, even they are capable of good acts. But nations are not people, and they do not have a coherent personae. The same Germans who elected and followed Hitler into the depths of horror also elected peaceful, Democratic German leaders from the 1950′s on. It wasn’t even a new generation. So, is Germany a psychotic killer or a peaceful builder of automobiles? Well, the question is just stupid, because nations are composed of individuals, they are not individuals, and they don’t act as individuals. If even individuals have a huge range of actions and characteristics, it’s impossible to define a nation in that way, being composed of millions of individuals. But human beings are addicted to anthropomorphizing everything around them, so this illusion is widespread.

That said, I simply don’t see the United States as some kind of morally monstrous entity comparable to a serial killer who also volunteers at a homeless shelter. I think some American leaders have made great decisions, and some have made criminal decisions, and we should punish those who are criminals, and praise those who have done good. Likewise, some American leaders have done both. FDR made some great decisions, but I think he was also culpable for war crimes in sanctioning the allied bombing campaigns against German and Japanese civilians in WWII. THe same goes for Truman, who did some very good things, but also ordered the dropping of the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which I also believe were war crimes. So even WWII can be divided up into a serious of good and bad acts, and I see no problem differentiating between the two. By your logic, we should not have fought at all, because it would be naive to think we could fight that large a war and not make some very bad decisions resulting in very bad acts. I would disagree, and say that your view represents the silliest kind of utopianism.

Now, I understand that international order is important, I simply think international order should be based on the reality of individuals, not the fiction of nations. You seem to have this naive view that international security is somehow guaranteed by treaties and laws. It is not. It is guaranteed only by individuals. Likewise, it is not violated by nations, it is violated by individuals. Hitler led Germany into WWII, not vice-versa. Saddam Hussein, not Iraq, invaded Kuwait.George Bush, not the United States, invaded Iran. The notion that you can reverse these facts by “strengthening international law” is just a fantasy. It’s not the way the world works. Leaders who want to go to war will always be able to do so as long as the individuals who actualy make up their country support them, whether by popular acclaim or through fear. No treaty can stop a leader from breaking it if he can get away with it, just as laws against murder don’t stop serial killers from killing people. That you think such laws work is laughably naive. What stops serial killers is good police work, or blind luck, not laws. Likewise, what stops murderous leaders is other leaders willing to step up and stop them. I am not stopped from killing people because there are laws against killing. I am stopped first and foremost because I think killing people is bad, and secondarily because I might get caught. But the law itself is pretty much immaterial. And international law is pretty much immaterial unless there is an enforcement mechanism. The problem is, the enforcement mechanism is the very thing that you are arguing against, because it would require intervention, which you oppose. So in effect, you are simply arguing for a fantasy – expecting laws that no one will actually enforce to stop people who don’t much care about laws to begin with. Such laws will only stop people who had no intention of breaking them in the first place, and do nothing to stop those who wish to. Hitler negotiated with people like you at Munich, and when he returned to Berlin, he told his staff that they had nothing to worry about. He said, “I have met our enemies, and they are little worms”.

So, yes, maybe on tuesdays and alternate thursdays I’m a moral monster, but I’m not a little worm. Which do you think is worse?

I don’t pretend that international law doesn’t exist, even if I think some of it is both silly and murky. So while I acknowledge that the Iraq invasion probably violated international law, I don’t care as much about that as that it violated international morality. Likewise, I don’t think all of international law is silly and murky. I don’t think the Geneva Conventions are silly and murky. I don’t think that international soveriegny is sacrosanct, but I do think that violating it shouldn’t be done lightly, or dishonestly, as it was done in Iraq. ANd while I don’t think the approach of talking about a nation’s “rights” makes sense, I don’t think there are no ways to make sensible international law that applies to both nations and people. What I am pointing to is the insanity wherein international law protects “national sovereignty”, but not people. This seems entirely wrong-headed to me, and almost inherently immoral and inhuman.

So my arguments will make better sense if you understand that my priority in both morality and legality is not about protecting nations, but about protecting individuals. I’m not saying one can’t do both, but if one must make comprises, it’s the “rights” of nations that must be compromised, not the rights of individuals. All within the realm of what is possible, not what is ideal.

But, in essence, I understood your position all too well. The problem is simply this – that your position, in the real world, inevitably leads to the very kind of horrors that we are seeing now (and worse). Good intentions (and the reason I called you a naive sap in an earlier post is because the vast majority of the people in our government making the actual decisions either do not share those good intentions at all, or, at best, mix those good intentions with some decidedly not so good intentions) aren’t enough. As a secularist, I don’t literally believe the old cliche that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but that cliche contains an important truth. The fact is, the moral vanity that leads you to claim that failing to respond to what you (based upon government propaganda that was only partially true) consider to be atrocities led to the killing fields of Iraq. And precisely the same types of arguments are being used to justify war with Iran.

To put it another way – even if you want to pretend that Bush and Cheney and company represented a dramatic departure from the past – a debatable position, to say the least – any democracy is going to be governed by morally dubious people from time to time (or, more cynically, more often than not). If you have a nation with (a) the most powerful armed forces in the world, (b) a military industrial complex to support those forces, ( c) military bases throughout the world, and (d) a political consensus that we have “interests” that we have a right to “defend” throughout the world, you are going to have horrible horrible things happen when the people in control aren’t the “good guys.”

And that’s bending over backwards to assume that in “normal” times the people running things will be people of good faith, which is decidedly not the case. In my lifetime, there hasn’t been a president who I would trust with the armaments of a small town police force, let alone the strongest military in the world.

But that only scratches the surface of why your world view, is, ultimately, morally monstrous in effect if not in intent. Look up the treaty of Westphalia sometimes, and the 30 Years War that it resolved. You might start to understand some of the reasons for the international order that Cheney and Bush are dismantling with a wrecking ball. And you might be surprised at how closely some of your own arguments about the international order dovetail with the Bush administration’s justifications for doing so.

And, of course, here is where, if I had more time, I would list the hideous, horrible things done by our nation and its surrogates in the last half century or so. Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, central America, Chile, the list goes on and on and on. It’s a shameful record, it happened on every administration’s watch, and it is really, really disgusting to see it defended by morally preening hypocrites like yourself. Oh, yeah, that’s right, your only defending the GOOD things we did, not the bad things. The problem is you can’t seperate them. It’s like housing, feeding, and protecting a mass murderer for 50 years who spent one month a week working in a soup kitchen. You can’t defend yourself by saying you only supported the charitable work, and disapproved of the mass murdering.

And yes, I second the motion to add an editing feature to the comments section.

First, I’m not offended by your accusations. I understand that you are just getting a little hysterical – those kinds of things don’t mean much to me, sticks and stones and all that jazz. I’m just finding it odd that you would accuse me of having reading comprehension difficulties when you can’t seem to figure out my position with any accuracy at all.

You have a sick and monstrous view of the world because you are among those who believes that the United States has the right to use it’s military to attack sovereign nations and kill their people when ever it suits us, limited only by the prudential concerns of the of the Powell doctrine.

First, I don’t believe in abstract concepts such as “rights” in this respect. The US has a military, and it can use it wisely or unwisely, justly or unjustly, and it certainly has. It doesn’t have to justify itself by saying it has, or doesn’t have, some abstract right to use force. I favor wise and just use of the military, and I oppose unwise and unjust uses. But this is like saying I like good movies, and don’t like bad movies. Defining what is wise and just is not always so easy as you would like to think. And international law is a murky and even silly on this issue, and I think the fundamental problem is that nations, and corporations, don’t have rights at all, only individuals have rights, so it is silly to argue about what right a nation has, since it isn’t the relevant issue. Individuals have the right to form nations, but their rights are not thereby transferred to the nation, nor does the nation thus formed have any rights of its own, as if it were an individual. This is a form of “anthropomorphizing” of legal entities, which is a false and dubious proposition which leads to endless false arguments on both sides.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but your argument that the US committed war crimes in Kosovo rests on the notion that our intervention there was illegal, and thus criminal, and thus a war crime. This is a technical legal argument that is very different from saying it was unjust, unwise, immoral, or inappropriate. There’s a huge difference between this kind of “war crime”, and the vast program of ethnic cleansing engaged by the Serbs throughout the 1990′s, of which Kosovo was only a part. I suppose you could legally argue that what the Serbs did wasn’t a war crime at all, since it did not involve violating the sovereignty of any nation, and was applied only internally. I guess you could say the Holocaust wouldn’t have been a war crime if Germany hadn’t started WWII, but had just rounded up German Jews and begun exterminating them, even if the Jews had fought back. And that intervening in that situation would have been a war crime, since it would have violated German sovereignty. Well, this is the kind of legal argument I reject as monstrous and sick, and I think most people would agree. It’s one thing to argue that the costs of intervention might outweigh the benefits in such a situation, but it’s another to say one doesn’t have the right to intervene. If I have to break a law to help someone out in dire need, I’ll do it, and worry about the law later on. But I guess in your view that makes me a monster.

Your condemnation of Serbia, on the other hand, doesn’t make you a moral monster. However, combined with your acceptance and approval (explicit, in the case of our war crimes against Serbia; implicit, in your apparent belief that the only problem with our Iraqi venture was that is was an unwise, as opposed to immoral and illegal, use of force*) of similar, and worse, actions taken by the United States**, makes you a pathetic morally preening hypocrite.

There’s a word for what hiding behind legal rationales as an excuse for turning a blind eye to ethnic cleansing is: cowardice. If my views seem like hypocrisy to you, I can live with that. I just couldn’t live with being a coward, whereas that seems to suit you just fine.

As for accusing the United States of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, that wasn’t what I was referring to (I was referring to the ethnic cleansing byour clients in Iraq, which, in terms of the numbers involved dwarfs even the highest estimates of what happened in Kosovo), but it is a documented fact that our clients in Kosovo did engage in ethnic cleansing of the Serbs after the war. I suppose that you think that that’s justified by what the Serbs did there, or it’s okay when “our side” does it. Either way, it demonstrates a moral depravity on your part far greater than anything that you have (falsely) accused Daniel of.

I fully acknowledged that Kosovars did engage in ethnic cleansing of Serbs, both before and after the NATO intervention. I do condemn that, but I don’t pretend it was anything other than predictable retaliation for a program of ethnic cleansing initiated by Serbia and carried on by them for almost a decade. It’s not really all that hard to imagine that if you practice the kind of systematic ethnic cleansing that Serbs did throughout the 90′s, that some of those chickens are going to come home to roost somewhere down the line. NATO tried to lessen that, but it didn’t have the power to stop it entirely. But you should also acknowledge that the Serbs continued to practice ethnic cleansing, to the degree they could get away with it, after the intervention as well. It’s just that they were stopped from doing it with the overwhelming force they had prior to the intervention.

But here’s the silliness of your “outrage”: first you imagine that I think Kosovar war crimes are justified, when I never said anything of the kind, and then you express outrage at my “moral depravity” for justifying war crimes. How desperate is that line of argument? I condemn Russian war crimes against Nazis, that doesn’t mean I think that the real problem with WWII was Russian war crimes. The real problem with WWII was Nazi aggression and Nazi war crimes. Their plan, if carried out, was to exterminate ALL Slavs, throughout ALL of Europe, not just Serbs. Yes, the Russians did commit war crimes in fighting back against that approach, and while I condemn it, I don’t see the Germans as innocent victims (as a nation at least) in that they supported Hitler and his wars so long as they seemed to be going well. The Germans were responsible for creating the situation in which Russians would undoubtedly seek retribution, and thus they even bear sizable responsibility for the inevitable retaliation they later suffered. I think the Germans figured this out over time. The question is, why can’t you figure this out in relation to the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia? Yes, it’s terrible that their own terrorist methods were turned back upon them by the very people they terrorized, but honestly, what would you expect if you attack people like that?

The real weirdness of your argument is that you would blame NATO for this situation, as if NATO had created it, rather than the Serbs. Yes, I guess you could say that NATO’s intervention weakened the Serbs, thus making it harder for the Serbs to engage in ethnic cleansing, and thus easier for the KLA to do some dirty work of their own, but this is looking at with only the pure self-interest of the Serbs in mind, rather than seeing that, overall, the potential for war crimes was reduced by the operation.

* Your reasons for opposing the invasion of Iraq were not the same as mine. An invasion of Iraq, even if far less bloody and costly to the United States, would have still been a war crime – aggressive warfare – you know, one of the three categories of war crime for which people were hanged by the neck until dead after WWII.

Both legally and morally, I think the invasion of Iraq probably could be considered a war crime, in that not only was Saddam not a credible threat to the US, he wasn’t enough of a credible threat to either his neighbors or even his own people to justify an invasion. I think there’s no doubt that Saddam himself was a war criminal and all-around murderous shithead, and while arresting and replacing his government and putting him on trial was thoroughly justified, I don’t think it was at all wise. And in my view, war has to be both justified and wise. I have no problem with the idea of putting Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and their legal staffs and admininstrators on trial for war crimes. I can’t believe it hasn’t happened already.

** You don’t need to intentionally kill civilians to commit a war crime. Targeting civilian infrastructure (in Serbia) is a war crime, even if no civilian is killed (and some were). Also, indiscriminate bombing that kills civilians is a war crime even if there was no intent to kill the civilians (plenty of that in Iraq). And torture.

First, targeting a nation’s capacity to wage war by taking out its infrastructure is not a war crime. Second, there was no indiscriminate bombing in Serbia. There was inaccurate bombing, to be sure, and tragically civilians did die, but nothing in any way approaching indiscriminate bombing. You are just making things up.

And if, indeed, the days of the war criminals and ethnic cleansers, and their enablers, were indeed numbered, then the United States and some of it’s closest allies would have a lot to fear. Sadly, that does not appear to be the case.

Yes, I would long for that day too. I would hope that our leaders do indeed fear just that kind of future. But I don’t think that would apply to the situation in Kosovo. Iraq, yes.

I hope Daniel doesn’t mind my mild rudeness to you, but you fail at reading comprehension. You have a sick and monstrous view of the world because you are among those who believes that the United States has the right to use it’s military to attack sovereign nations and kill their people when ever it suits us, limited only by the prudential concerns of the of the Powell doctrine.

Your condemnation of Serbia, on the other hand, doesn’t make you a moral monster. However, combined with your acceptance and approval (explicit, in the case of our war crimes against Serbia; implicit, in your apparent belief that the only problem with our Iraqi venture was that is was an unwise, as opposed to immoral and illegal, use of force*) of similar, and worse, actions taken by the United States**, makes you a pathetic morally preening hypocrite.

As for accusing the United States of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, that wasn’t what I was referring to (I was referring to the ethnic cleansing byour clients in Iraq, which, in terms of the numbers involved dwarfs even the highest estimates of what happened in Kosovo), but it is a documented fact that our clients in Kosovo did engage in ethnic cleansing of the Serbs after the war. I suppose that you think that that’s justified by what the Serbs did there, or it’s okay when “our side” does it. Either way, it demonstrates a moral depravity on your part far greater than anything that you have (falsely) accused Daniel of. (Parenthetically, I think that Daniel is a tad easier on the Serbs than I would be, but his version of the historical facts is far closer to truth than your version. But really that is neither here nor there, for the reasons set forth above and in prior comments.)

* Your reasons for opposing the invasion of Iraq were not the same as mine. An invasion of Iraq, even if far less bloody and costly to the United States, would have still been a war crime – aggressive warfare – you know, one of the three categories of war crime for which people were hanged by the neck until dead after WWII.

** You don’t need to intentionally kill civilians to commit a war crime. Targeting civilian infrastructure (in Serbia) is a war crime, even if no civilian is killed (and some were). Also, indiscriminate bombing that kills civilians is a war crime even if there was no intent to kill the civilians (plenty of that in Iraq). And torture.

And if, indeed, the days of the war criminals and ethnic cleansers, and their enablers, were indeed numbered, then the United States and some of it’s closest allies would have a lot to fear. Sadly, that does not appear to be the case.

As for the Iraq situation, what on earth are you talking about? I opposed the invasion for precisely the reasons you mention. I did some research before the war, and saw that yes, Saddam was a monster, but he was a monster contained, who was murdering maybe 1,000 people a year (by Amnesty International’s count), whereas an invasion would be hugely more destructive, and unlikely to actually acheive anything remotely like a peaceful Iraq, and of course tie us to the country indefinitely by the principle of “you broke it, it’s yours.”

Kosovo was quite a different story, however. In that case, we could stop the monstrous Serbian ethnic cleansing operation by a relatively small investment of force, manpower, and treasure. It wouldn’t solve all the problems, but would at least contain them. In Iraq, we already had containment, which I thought was the best strategy, as it was in the Cold War. I think it’s sad that many civilian Serbs died in our bombing campaign, but I don’t consider those death deliberate war crimes, simply because they were not. We were not there to kill Serbian civilians, but to stop Serbian aggression, and we accomplished that goal, at least in the larger picture.

Now, that you accuse the US of “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo, rather than the Serbs, tells me just where you stand in this battle. I’ve met sick dudes like you before, and really, there’s not much to say to someone who takes the side of ethnic cleansing, except to say, your days are numbered. And this cheap rhetorical gambit of accusing your enemies of the crimes your side is guilty of just doesn’t work.

We have killed far more innocent Iraqis than Serbia killed innocent residents of Kosovo. By at least one and probably two orders of magnitude. But you apparently don’t have a problem with that – you are just opposed to the Iraqi madness on prudential grounds.

But really I digress. I’m sure you have 4 or 5 comforting little rationalizations for our many war crimes. What appalls me about your pathetic moralizing (and I don’t speak for Daniel, but I expect he feels the same way) is the disconnect between being just fine with killing of innocents and ethnic cleansing when done by the United States or its surrogates, yet being appalled by such actions when it’s being done by other nations.

Oh, and Daniel, this supports a point I have been making about many of Obama’s supporters, Far from being appalled by Obama’s real foreign policy views, they share those views. I’m sure if conradg thought that bombing Iran was the only way to stop them from getting the bomb, and if he could be convinced that it would make sense on prudential grounds, he would be all for it. Just like Mr. Obama.

I compare the Serbs to the Nazis because of the ends they pursued and the tactics they employed. The Serbs, of course, did not match the Nazis in firepower, but that does not mean they were no threat to NATO security, of which we are a member. The kind of grotesque ethnic cleansing operations they employed for over a decade in the middle of Europe did, indeed threaten the stability of the region. And, of course, it threatened the lives of all minorities living in the former Yugoslav republic. The notion that “national sovereignty” protects a country from practicing genocidal ethnic cleansing within its borders is a thing of the past, thankfully. And yes, that kind of activity is indeed a threat to its neighbors, even if one simply looks at the refugee situation.

As for Daniel’s pretense that the moral and legal situation in Kosovo was somehow ambiguous, because there were “abuses on all sides’, well, of course that’s a relevant argument intended to weaken the case for intervention directed at the Serbs (rather than equally directed at the Kosovars), as if we should keep out of some kind of family feud, you know, Hatfield and McCoys. As I’ve said, it’s fine to argue that we shouldn’t bother getting involved in their little exercise in genocidal ethnic cleansing, but let’s not pretend it’s something other than that. I know it makes it easy to argue against intervention if we keep up that pretense, and that’s exactly why I don’t think it should be allowed. Daniel is threatening to ban me from this site because he seems to desperately need to keep that pretense up, and I have to wonder why that pretense is so important to his arguments. If he really believes in the principle of non-intervention regardless of the circumstances, why should it matter what the circumstances were? I think it’s rather clear he does think the circumstances matter, and so he wants to obfuscate them with this phony claim of moral ambiguity, when there really is none – no more so than there was when fighting the Nazis. The fact that the allies did engage in some war crimes of their own in no way made the war itself morally ambiguous, or our “intervention” any less a good and positive act.

And as for waging war against an enemy who had never done our people any harm, let me remind you that the Nazis never did our people any harm either. They did not attack us at Pearl Harbor, and their declaration of war was merely a formality due to their treaty with Japan. They did not attack us, and I’m sure would have been more than happy never to have fought us. It is we who mounted an attack against them by joining in the war on the side of the British and Russians.Nevertheless, I think we decided that fighting the Germans was in our national interest.

Yes, the effective use of force is proportional. For us to use the force we did was effective precisely because of who we used it against – a small country with limited defenses facing a giant force such as NATO. This is standard “Powell Doctrine” – only engage in wars in which we have an overwhelming force advantage. To me, that’s one of the requirements of any intervention, and why I opposed the Iraq war – the force and effort required to win and sustain a victory was just too great, and there were too many things that could go wrong. Whereas in Kosovo the logistics greatly favored our success with minimal costs. We suffered no combat fatalities at all, and our combat activities lasted only a few short months. As you say, the Serbs undoubtedly didn’t see it that way – which is exactly the point, and why it was effective.

I don’t see how you can justly interpret Daniel as using that claim – the one about atrocities having been committed on both sides, I mean – in a positive argument against military action in Yugoslavia. It was brought in as a relevant fact (which it is), and one which has very often been overlooked in this discussion (which it has been). Perhaps you could properly interpret him as having drawn on that claim in attempting to rebut a very common sort of argument in favor of military action, but the core of Daniel’s own argument against it seems to me to be contained in a sentence which makes no mention at all of whether both sides were committing atrocities:

Our government waged war against a people that had never done ours [emphasis mine] any harm …

The fact that your only response to this line of argument is to compare the Serbs to the Nazis – who posed, of course, the kind of threat to the U.S. that Milosevic never could – seems to me to reveal quite nicely the weakness of your position.