The Limits Of Non-Interventionism

Dave Schuler, who has opposed most US wars in the last quarter century, still worries about a humbler foreign policy:

There are perfectly good reasons to argue against our present willingness to intervene militarily in the absence of a specific threat to our own security. The reasons include moral ones, national sovereignty, and the expense but I don't think we should kid ourselves into believing that we'll make friends by not intervening. We won't.

But we may not make as many enemies. I've found myself seriously re-visiting my own inclination to support US intervention, as I have, unlike Schuler, for much of the last quarter century (the exceptions being Somalia, Darfur and Haiti). The issue seems to me to be the kind of intervention and the type of enemy we face. Islamism is not easily overcome by occupying Muslim countries. If we haven't learned that from Iraq, we're dreaming. Even Rumsfeld came to see that flypaper has its limits if it also generates more flies.