Echoing John Hawkins, Charles Krauthammer is curious as to why many Democrats oppose wars that promote US national security but love to intervene in failed states:
There are the usual suspects, Jesse Jackson and the New York Times, but the most unapologetic proponent of the no-Iraq/yes-Liberia school is Howard Dean, Democratic flavor of the month. “I opposed the war in Iraq because it was the wrong war at the wrong time,” says Dean, but “military intervention in Liberia represents an appropriate use of American power.”
Why? In terms of brutality, systematic repression, number of killings, relish for torture and sum total of human misery caused, Charles Taylor is a piker next to Saddam Hussein. That is not to say that Taylor is a better man. It is only to say that in his tiny corner of the world with no oil resources and no scientific infrastructure for developing instruments of mass murder, Taylor has neither the reach nor the power to wreak Hussein-class havoc. What is it that makes liberals such as Dean, preening their humanitarianism, so antiwar in Iraq and so pro-intervention in Liberia?
Krauthammer’s answer is essentially Hawkins’ as well:
The only conclusion one can draw is that for liberal Democrats, America’s strategic interests are not just an irrelevance, but also a deterrent to intervention. This is a perversity born of moral vanity. For liberals, foreign policy is social work. National interest — i.e., national selfishness — is a taint. The only justified interventions, therefore, are those that are morally pristine, namely, those that are uncorrupted by any suggestion of national interest.
Once again, the paid pundits are behind the blogosphere. I guess posting only twice a week has its price.
