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13 Apr 2008 02:12 pm

Douthat vs Kagan

A point worth making:

If America is by its very nature prone to foreign misadventures - and I think [Bob] Kagan somewhat overstates this case, but for the sake of argument let's concede the point - then surely the task of policymakers and intellectuals, in the wake of one such misadventure, is to draw lessons from What Went Wrong that might be profitably applied to future debates and crises, and that might strengthen the (weak) hand of the anti-interventionist camp the next time war fever grips the nation.

I find the idea that non-interventionism has a permanently weak hand in American politics an odd one. Until the second Iraq war, my entire adult lifetime in America was defined in part by the "Vietnam Syndrome." And you can't understand American foreign policy since 1974 without seeing the "Powell Doctrine" front and center. America, moreover, has not attempted an actual, permanent empire in the Arab Middle East until now. If any region can cure a great power of the imperial temptation, it is Arabia.

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