Hitchens makes fun of his opponents by invoking what he calls the Bishop Berkeley principle, which is the argument that if something isn't caused by the US, it isn't our responsibility.

But the truth is, since the US isn't the world's government, the Bishop Berkeley principle is actually correct. Substitute any other country for the US in that formulation: if something isn't caused by France, or China, or India, or Suriname, is it that country's responsibility? So what Hitchens must be arguing is that we are a world government, and everyone else must bow to our will.

In fact, Hitchens has no appreciation for the limitations on American power: America can't be everywhere and do everything-- we don't have unlimited resources, our armed forces aren't unlimited, and interventions don't always work and are counterproductive.

Hitchens wants to point to Saddam's terror, or Darfur, or Rawanda, or wherever bad things are happening, and scream "do something!". Then when the "something" turns out to be a disaster (as it did in Iraq), he bears no responsibility, because after all, "we had to do something".

No. Enough American exceptionalism. We aren't any different from any other nation-state. We have our own problems, and we can't solve all the world's. The best we can do is intervene selectively when the benefits clearly exceed the costs. And when our reach exceeds our grasp, the people who called for us to stick our arms out (like Hitchens) certainly are responsible. No, Chris, we didn't have to do anything. In fact, we shouldn't have.

It's not even a matter of whether it's our responsibility or not. The fundamental question is one of legality. We are nation of laws. If we cannot find a basis in law to justify our intervention, we must eitheither not do the action or change the law by proper means first. You can't live under the abiding principle of rule of law and then act discard it when it suits some transient purpose. To do so is to fundamentally undermine the core basis of American power and principle. It's like shooting the baby instead of emptying the bath water.

Saddam was flagrantly violating international law (oil for food scandal and prohibiting weapons inspectors from having free access to the country). The condition, by which we didn't remove Saddam from power in 1991, by international treaty, was that he be in compliance with those laws.

From a legal point of view, those laws had to be enforced or they were meaningless. We were doing exactly what we would have done in 1991 if Saddam had sold us at the end of the Gulf War, "Screw you, I'm not going to give your weapons inspector free access and I'm going to sell some of my oil secretly to buy weapons, and I'm going to give money to the families of Palestinians who blow themselves up in Israel," and there would have been nothing wrong with that.

Hitchens here spouts and sputters empty arguments with a uniquely huffy superiority, as per usual. He clings to the slimmest reed of historical reasoning to protest our ignorance of what is his special understanding, and connects dots that strain credulity in any sane, reasonable person. It only serves to show again, despite the contrarian and often delightful intellect he possesses, what a hooker for the neocons he has remained, and how sad it has all turned out.

With respect, I disagree. Would should have intervened in Korea, we should have intervened in Bosnia and we should have intervened in both WWI and WWII earlier than we did. We should have intervened in Afghanistan in the 80's (like we did covertly) and in 2002 (like we did overtly) I would even argue that we should have invaded Vietnam if a majority of South Vietnamese had been with us. The Bishop Berkeley theory is not always right. Boiling international politics to something so simple just doesn’t work.

A better analogy is this: What do you do if you see a neighbor beating his wife badly. Do you intervene personally? Do you call the cops? What if the cops won't respond? Do you talk to wife and try to convince her to leave him or to you confront the husband directly? What if you know the husband carries a loaded gun in his pocket, do you still confront him directly if the police won't respond and the wife won't leave? The nuances of situation preclude any cut and dry solution. Short answer: IT DEPENDS. Elect intelligent leaders who won't be guided by an overly simple ideology. It is what kept us out of WWII for two long and what prompted us into Vietnam without the backing of its own people.

I would argue, however, that if you know your intervention is likely to cause more harm than good to the other person (regardless of the good it does you) you don't intervene.

No, we didn't need to do anything. We could have just closed the drapes and quietly hoped that someone calls 911. If my wife or daughter is being attacked in the street by the local gang leader, I hope an American of the type sacrificing life and treasure in Iraq lives nearby. She would not need someone who carefully weighs what other will say and if they may be disadvantaged or disliked. She needs someone who stands up and does something. Peace loving people in Iraq are like her, as are those in Africa and many others places. I hope we will continue to do something in all these places, because it is now clear nobody else will. All the drapes are closed. Are yours?

BTW there is no better proof of American Exceptionalism than Iraq. We are there in a way that no one else can or would be. It may be arrogance and folly or for me the very rare willingness to follow moral imperative and responsibility. Either way it is exceptional in a world of the evil, the innocent, the cowardly and the selfish.

Sorry Dilan, you logic is whacked (but you might be right anyway).

Hitchens not only argues from American Exceptionalism, but also argues that, historically, American Policy uniquely intertwined with the barbarism that was Saddam Hussien's reign of terror. This is because the US funded, supported and sheltered Hussien until he bacame too big of a pain in the in the ass (analogous to the US relationship with the Taliban).

So, it seems to me, that Hitchens is also arguing that there should be more post-colonial responsibility for superpowers when their puppets go sour. Because the atrocities that result are a product of post colonial superpowers' making.

Therfore the Berkelean analogy holds, just as Berkeley's fallacy was ultimately vacuous (as it was), isolationism as post Empire (or Cold War) policy is equally vacuous.

It seems to me that you have utterly missed Hitchens' point.

Loader:

You assume that the only way to enforce international law is war. That is not remotely true. To the extent that the terms of the Gulf War cease fire (which, by the way, went far beyond the rules of the treaties re: WMD) were worth enforcing, they were being enforced, with sanctions. Indeed, the sanctions worked-- Saddam didn't have WMD.

In any event, rules on WMD are not, in fact, enforced consistently. Israel, of course, is an obvious example. I don't particularly mind that they have a nuclear arsenal, but they certainly haven't faced a serious sanction for having one. Neither has India or Pakistan (though there have been some mild and inconsistent sanctions). And if war is your only acceptable sanction, we aren't going to war with North Korea. So saying we "had" to enforce international law with war against Iraq begs the question of why Iraq was different from all these other places where we didn't and won't go to war.

With respect to your laundry list of interventions, we didn't get into World War II or Korea to overthrow a dictator (and indeed, we left 2 dictatorships, including one of the worst dictatorships in history, in power at the end of Korea) or with any humanitarian purpose. Korea was about checking communism, and WW2 was a response to a direct attack against US territory and attacks on our closest allies. Bosnia was a low-cost humanitarian mission-- as I noted in my post, intervention can be justified when we actually can accomplish something at low cost (though even the Balkans are more fouled up than one might think).

As for your remaining examples, they prove my point. US involvement in World War I didn't solve anything and paved the way for the Nazis. Vietnam was an absolute disaster in which 58,000 Americans and 1,000,000 Vietnamese died to accomplish nothing. Afghanistan in the 1980's built the infrastructure for Al Qaeda and 9/11. "Doing nothing" was better than "doing something" in each of those cases, even if we assume some humanitarian premise for the interventions (and, of course, we were hardly fighting on the side of the angels in any of those conflicts).

What your domestic example misses is whether the neighbor, by intervening, will cause unintended and worse consequences by doing so, and whether the neighbor has enough resources to intervene. If such consequences may occur and may take more lives, of if the neighbor doesn't have the resources to intervene, the calculus is very different.

bagoh:

What if the gang will respond to any attempt at intervention by killing everyone in the town? Does that change your argument as to whether someone should intervene?

As for Iraq, you are begging the question. Whether or not we are improving things in Iraq is not a closed question. We caused a lot of problems, killed a lot of people, and opened up sectarian conflicts that had been bottled up. We also opened up our own torture chambers. And we've made a mess that probably can't be repaired for 50 years. Plus, 4,000 brave Americans have been taken from their families and loved ones due to the decision to go to war.

So singing the praises of humanitarianism and American exceptionalism is unjustified if it is done without reference to the realities on the ground. The Iraq War certainly wasn't planned as an humanitarian intervention, and it wasn't executed as one. One shouldn't pretend any different.

richard noggin:

Look, Hitchens is right that we made Saddam who he was. But that argument proves too much, because the logical conclusion is that since we have intervened too much and in too many places and with too lousy a result in the past, that justifies and compels us to intervene way too much and in way too many places in the future.

Instead, we have to stop the cycle. And a major part of this is to stop assuming that we are the world's policeman and we must intervene any time bad things are happening around the world.

And no, I have not missed Hitchens' point. Hitchens, despite mentioning the prior US support of the Baath Party, is, in invoking Berkeley, trashing those who argue for anything other than maximal US military action by saying that they are callous and don't care about the suffering in the world. He is saying that ultimately, we have a responsibility to intervene when bad things are happening whether or not we caused it, because anyone who says that we shouldn't be responsible for such things is being inhumane.

Well, I said your logic was whacked and you missed his point, but you may be right.

Your logic remains whacked but you get part of his point...I think you fail to acknowledge the more significant issue that the problem is (like al Quaida) a product of US intervention.

You seem to be advocating a strong isolationism. How do you feel about NAFTA?

So all that just to say: "Yes, I would close the drapes and explain my inaction as thoughtfulness. Some time in the future your descendants will ask why didn't you prevent our enslavement when you could, even if it was hard, expensive and cost lives. Thoughtfulness leads one to realize that there are things worse than death. Your assumption that not acting would have somehow lead to a better outcome in all your examples is an all too common fallacy of logic. Yet you accept it in all the cases you site despite the complexity of such guesswork.

Yes ,you are exactly right.

www.oral8.net

<i>You assume that the only way to enforce international law is war. That is not remotely true. </i>

It does if you get flack and resistence to it. Either it has teeth--or it does not. Those are the choices.

We can't have all ways--more so than "both ways."

Hitchens merely points out the painfully obvious here. If Darfor is horrid, and Hussein is horrid (even allowing for the myth that "we" created him, but that issue was disembowled on the "sales of chem weapons by Michael Fumento when it came to "Iraq Gate"--to which the media now says....."Ummm, I hear my mommy calling" when asked for specifics on how we created Hussein), and ten thousand other places on the planet are horrible and in violation of human rights--how then to decide IF to intervene and where and why?

Of course the simple answer on all intervention for whatever horror is NO. But....

Why is Darfor fashionable for "doing X", but the persecution of Christians the planet over (and south of Darfor) not so? Was Hussein's threat of WMD (and while the duelfer report said he didn't have them at the time, FactCheck along with the Report certainly agreed there was reason to think so and that he wanted them again--and had used them in the past) but using troops to solve issues is not an option? Just having UN troops stand around kicking sand? That's worked SO well before. As Mark Steyn said, is the US this hyperpower with trillions in weaponry to be whipped so easily by ragheaded warrriors with homemade bombs? Hmmm.. really now...

Not trusting that. IT is a political and emotional issue of Moms Against Things Baddy Bad Going On, that makes this difficult--not US military prowess. Unless perhaps we are to think that nothing at all can be done or that hand to hand combat is the only methodology that can work or should work so as not to make people unhappy.

Either intervene in the world, or do NOT. PERIOD. Unless the bombs cross the borders and thousands of Americans die in one fell swoop. Apparently only then can we stanch the bleeding and are not allowed to take preemptive measures as with any other issue. Right?

>> It does if you get flack and resistence to it. Either it has teeth--or it does not. Those are the choices.

Just because you assert this does not make it so. We wanted to keep Saddam from making WMD. He gave us flack and resistance. So we imposed sanctions... and the sanctions worked.

You can dispute whether the sanctions were morally preferable to war, but the fact that they worked at all invalidates your point. There are options other than "war" and "do nothing."

"the sanctions worked"

Quote the UNMOVIC determination that Iraq had verifiably disarmed in compliance with the terms of the conditional cease-fire ending the Gulf War. Cite your source.