As a matter of determining someone’s foreign policy competence, the wars he has supported in the past may be useful for highlighting his blindspots and his tendencies to believe government propaganda.  It is an even better test of good judgement about which wars were necessary to fight, since his definition of what was necessary in the past may have some bearing on what he believes is necessary in the here and now.  So Kevin Drum asks:

So: which wars did you support? Any of them? None of them? Some of them? 

Ross Douthat has given his answers.  My list now will be a bit shorter than Ross’ and shorter than it used to be.  Growing up, I was instilled with all of the good progressive nationalist myths about the endless string of “good” wars that led on ineluctably to the current fight (which was, at that time, the Cold War).  Today, having learned a bit more about all those “good” wars, I am hard-pressed to think of a war since the burning of the Philadelphia in Tripoli harbour that I could say that I wholeheartedly endorse or would have supported had I then been alive (presuming that we are speaking strictly of U.S. wars).  In spite of my appreciation for what the Loyalists represented, I can say I still support the War for Independence, though I agree with Ross that their cause for war was pretty shaky.  WWI, the Mexican War and War of 1812 all have the quaint feature of being constitutionally declared wars, which puts them way ahead of some of their successors, but none of them can really be justified–though at least the Mexican War could be amorally defended as being in the rank self-interest of an expanding nation (however, it was not in the true self-interest of the Republic to be rapidly expanding in size, since this precipitated internal strife and the rise of internal empire).  Of wars that have taken place in my lifetime, I cannot think of any I could now endorse except for the retaliatory strike into Afghanistan, and of these I only supported the Gulf War and Afghanistan at the time.  Looking back over the last century, I can at least understand the Korean War’s rationale and accept that it had to be fought once Truman’s administration blundered into it, and I acknowledge that the U.S., once attacked, was obliged to retaliate against Japan, but I am not going to start rah-rahing the “Good War” anytime soon given the nature of FDR’s provocations and schemes that got us into that final Republic-destroying war.  If I had my druthers, we would have steered clear of the whole mess.  Vietnam?  Er, no.  Panama?  An absurd crime.  Grenada?  A sad diversion.  In truth, I did support the Gulf War when it happened (of course, I was 12 at the time and knew nothing) and continued to utter excuses for it long after I should have known better.  Unequivocally, I denounce the interventions in Yugoslavia as crimes of aggression, pure and simple.  They were less morally justified than the Boer War (which was entirely unjustifiable) and twice as stupid (which makes them very, very stupid).  The only time when I waver on intervention in Kosovo is when I consider the possibility of intervening on the side of the Serbs against the KLA, but I have to rule that out as also being none of our business.  I would have rejected every petty intervention in Central America and the Caribbean had I been around back then.  The Spanish-American War and its aftermath are among the great blots on our national history, even if it was on a small scale, and William Randolph Hearst will someday have to answer for the deaths of all those killed in the war he helped cook up.  That all makes a good deal of sense to me, but I’m sure someone will be able to explain why the Tripolitanian War was also unnecessary.