Doomed

I'm afraid that my efforts in the previous post have been for nought. Focus, people. I'm not arguing about the good or the right, in the abstract. We hardly have that luxury. Nor am I arguing that the good and the right have some kind of political impact.

In the best world, political leaders would always act in conformity with principles of the good and the right. (I think we can all agree that we don't live in that world.) In the second best world, political leaders would not always act in conformity with principles of the good and the right, but democratic publics would check political leaders when they deviate (significantly) from those principles. In the third best world, political leaders would not always act in confromity with the principles of the good and the right, and democratic publics would not always check those leaders; however, the principles of the good and the right would be espoused by an effective political opposition that would, in the long run, hold those leaders accountable.

We live in, at best, the fourth best world, in which principled arguments about the good and the right enter into political discourse and sometimes work to check abuses by political leaders, when advanced by a somewhat effective (and thus somewhat ineffective) political opposition. But at that same time, arguments ostensibly based on the good and the right enter into the political dialogue, mouthed by political leaders seeking to advance their own ends, far removed from the good and the right. In other words, and in short, we live in a world where the availability of "moral sounding" arguments is itself a significant moral danger. Because, let's face it, the moral principles that you so boldly espouse can easily be turned around on you, when supporters of the War point to so-called "democratic" advances made in the "progress" of the conflict. In the moral and political world in which we live, in short, your moral principles sometimes (often?) serve to short-circuit your own criticisms of the War, and of government policy.

Sure, as TMcD points out, the Iraq War was not based, at the outset, on humanitarian grounds; some pundits mentioned those values, but the main weight of the case for war was "the grave and gathering danger" of Iraqi WMDs. The point must be, however, that your good-faith arguments re: humanitarian interventions were at hand, after the fact, to serve the ends of those who started the War. Sure, you may take solace in the fact that those were not the actual reasons; but can you take solace in the fact that those same rationalizations are offered, today, as the justification?

Maybe in the best world, you could. But in this world, it seems to me, one must work exceptionally hard not to be complicit in the evil that our leaders do. Having pure, good intentions is not nearly enough.

I remember how Michael Walzer wrote that weak, on-the-one-hand, on-the other-hand piece before the Iraq War. Isn't that how all the "responsible" liberals and Democrats ended up? Here's the line (maybe you've said this): "Even if the Iraq War was justified, its execution demonstrates a kind of technical incompetence that belies the seriousness of the effort."

OK, does that mean that you support the War, or that you don't?

Maybe you don't. But by offering some kind of (even tepid) support for the now-offered justifications of the War, you undermine your case in the at-best fourth-best world, where unsophisticated democratic publics have to make more-nuanced-than-they-really-can-make judgments about the morality of international politics . . . so where are you, exactly?

I'm against this War, and any war that purports to be about saving people from their own leaders. And you? How many paternalistic wars do you favor? How far are you willing to go? How much of a Guardian of the World role for the U.S. will you support? And what if bad leaders, in the future, mouth your arguments? Are you confident that democratic publics will be able to tell the difference between Michael Walzer and Michael Ledeen?

For my part, I think that it's important to worry about this. Because this is not the best of all possible worlds.