None of this means that America should act militarily in Libya. But it is frustrating that everyone on the political spectrum from Pat Buchanan to Brent Scowcroft only begin to throw up their arms and curse American foreign policy when it involves engagements for which a humanitarian case can at least be made. ~Isaac Chotiner

Right, because “everyone” from Buchanan to Scowcroft only criticize American foreign policy commitments that have a humanitarian dimension. When he put those names down, was Chotiner trying to sabotage his own argument? Scowcroft was the most well-known and senior member of the first Bush administration to oppose the Iraq war. I hope Chotiner isn’t going to claim that a real humanitarian case could still be made for the Iraq war at this point.

There are few on the right, or anywhere in American foreign policy debate, who have consistently criticized U.S. foreign policy since the end of the Cold War more than Buchanan. This has been especially true in the last 10-12 years. Back in 1999-2000, I can remember that Buchanan was already inveighing against the immorality and futility of Iraq sanctions, and he had been warning about the dangers of blowback from the U.S. presence in the Near East for years before 9/11. Buchanan opposed bombing Serbia in 1999, which might be what Chotiner is referring to here, but he also opposed NATO expansion that preceded and followed it, and he objected to provoking Russia with continued proposals for expansion in the last decade. During the Bush years, there was hardly anything in U.S. foreign policy that Buchanan didn’t criticize.

A lot of Cold War Republicans may or may not still endorse a lot of the dubious alliances the U.S. had during the Cold War, but since the end of the Cold War some of them have become much more skeptical of the value of such alliances. Part of this is a result of reconsidering these alliances and their consequences, and part of it comes from no longer believing that U.S. interests require the extensive alliance and base structure that the U.S. built up during the Cold War.

Obviously, mainstream conservatives and Republicans have generally been anything but critical of U.S. foreign policy, unless it is by way of saying that it has ceased being aggressive and confrontational enough over the last two years. If these are the people Chotiner is talking about, he needn’t be quite so frustrated, since most of them seem to be disproportionately supportive of taking some sort of military action in Libya. Unlike Ross, who has been somewhat chastened by the results of the Iraq war, a great many of these people on the right continue to believe that the Iraq war was not only right, but that it was also largely successful and has contributed to the uprisings we are seeing today. These views are ludicrous, but they have nothing to do with being critical of U.S. military engagement abroad. I would have thought that signs that some Iraq war supporters have learned something and are now less inclined to start wars would be welcome, rather than a cause of frustration.