I voted for Al Gore in 2000 at least in part because of his foreign-policy platform. Among the three major tickets, his seemed to stand most clearly for a program of American forward engagement in world affairs. Both Gore and his running mate, Joe Lieberman, had enthusiastically supported every American military action since the end of the Cold War. And both men seemed genuinely committed to a belief that American power could serve the cause of American principle -- in situations of obvious national interest as well as in situations of obvious moral imperative.
The two other major candidates seemed to be, by contrast, isolationists, though very different kinds. George W. Bush's main critique during the 2000 campaign of the Clinton-Gore foreign policy was that it was too forward, too ambitious and -- strangest of all, in retrospect -- too dependent on American military power. The guiding light of Bush's foreign-policy agenda appeared to be Colin Powell, a man who had at least initially opposed every major American military action since the end of the Cold War. (Why liberals have, during the last year, inexplicably turned Powell's virtual isolationism into something worth celebrating -- as if there is anything "progressive" about a worldview that warns against the danger of using all available tools to promote liberal values -- is perplexing to say the least. But that is another matter for another time.)
To Bush and Republican congressmen of the late 1990s, Bill Clinton's repeated deployment of American troops and American airpower in faraway places stunk of overambitious moralism in the same way that his health-care program stunk of overambitious concern for the disadvantaged. The Republican alternative to this nascent liberal hawkishness on foreign affairs was, in fact, quite puny in moral scope and defeatist in moral spirit. We will only make things worse, conservatives warned repeatedly throughout the 1990s; better for us to leave Europe and Africa and Latin America to their "tribal conflicts" and "civil wars" -- and stay home.
Ralph Nader, the third presidential option in 2000, also stood for isolationism -- but his was an anti-imperialist isolationism of the left rather than an anti-moralist isolationism of the right. Nader and Bush may have started from very different theoretical places on foreign policy. But from where I stood, the likely practical result of their platforms looked awfully similar: an America perpetually on the sidelines of world affairs, too selfish to help (Bush) or too timid to lead (Nader).
September 11, of course, changed this political calculus dramatically; by now everyone knows how and why. Neoconservatives seized their chance to wrench the soul of Republican foreign policy away from the Powell realists, and liberals dutifully re-cloaked themselves in the awkward discomfort with American power that they had worn almost without interruption (and not always without justification) from the beginning of the Cold War through Clinton's deployment of troops to Haiti in 1994.
I do not know if this reversal is a bad thing for America. (There is, to be sure, inherent democratic value in genuine ideological opposition, even when that opposition is wrong.) But it is almost certainly a bad thing for liberalism. We now find ourselves about to go to war with Iraq, and most liberals have lined up against such an invasion. Their main argument rests on the thesis that Saddam Hussein can be deterred. This argument is bad for liberalism for three reasons: because its veracity is highly suspect, because it is woefully inadequate as a statement of policy and because it is not, in fact, a "liberal" argument at all.
The argument's accuracy is suspect because to make the case for deterrence, liberals have played selectively with the historical record. No anti-war liberal has effectively responded to the levelheaded arguments of Kenneth Pollack, who has supplied considerable evidence that Hussein cannot be deterred. Was the Iraqi dictator's attempt to assassinate Bush Senior the act of a man who can be deterred? Or was it the act of a man who evaluates policy options more like a terrorist than a head of state? As former Prospect writer Jonathan Chait pointed out last month in The New Republic -- in a well-argued exhortation to liberals to support an invasion of Iraq -- the consequences of successfully assassinating a former U.S. president would likely have meant the obliteration of Hussein's regime. Hussein either knew as much (in which case he behaved irrationally) or based his decision on a perceived softness of American military resolve (in which case the only way to correct his misperception is for America to take strong military action against him). It does not matter which version is closer to the truth -- both possibilities suggest that mere containment cannot work.
The liberal case for deterrence is woefully inadequate because, even if it were true, it is only an argument against invasion, not a prescription for dealing with Hussein or strengthening democracy in the Middle East. Even if Hussein can be deterred from using nuclear weapons, once he has them (and there can be little doubt that, inspections or no inspections, Iraq will find a way to get nuclear weapons eventually) he will also be able to deter us -- not to mention Israel and Turkey, our key democratic allies in the region. What happens when a nuclear Iraq rolls once again into Kuwait? How many countries would we allow Hussein to invade before we risk the first war between nuclear powers? Once Iraq has nuclear weapons, our calculations will change forever. And our ability to defend those who need American protection will diminish significantly. There is nothing good -- or "progressive" -- about a situation that prevents us from shielding ethnic minorities from their tormentors or shielding democracies from their foes.
Anti-war liberals have derided the prospect of a liberated Iraq serving as a model for Arab democracy -- and starting a domino effect that could liberate the Muslim world from the grips of petty despots and theocratic lunatics -- as fanciful. But for all their talk about the "root causes" of terrorism, my fellow liberals have spoken very little about how they plan to remedy the situation. Deterrence is not going to address the "root causes" of terror. It will likely make them worse. At best it will leave a madman in check and leave much of the Muslim world in an ongoing mood of simmering disdain for America. At worst it will empower a madman to bide his time in manipulating the Muslim world's ongoing disdain for America. It is not a policy of hope; it is a policy of little imagination and puny moral spirit.
These arguments are almost all well-trodden territory at this advanced stage in the debate. But it is this last point -- the sudden puniness of the liberal worldview as embodied by its prescription for Iraq -- that saddens me most, and that liberals have grappled with least. Think of the major policy advances of the last century. The New Deal, the Great Society, the civil-rights movement -- all were fueled by a moralistic ambition and a faith in the power of humans to repair their world through action and ideas. There have never been any great liberal strains in American life that were fueled by a desire to just let things be. Think of the domestic causes championed by liberals at this magazine and elsewhere: public financing of campaigns, measures to conserve the environment, universal health care -- they are all ambitious in the great progressive tradition. No one at this magazine would ever say that corporate funding of campaigns is probably a detriment to American politics, but perhaps the best solution is to leave the system as is -- by meddling, we only risk making it worse. What's more, the American left has a rich tradition of ambition in the international arena. It was a liberal president who proposed the League of Nations and thus created an entire school of foreign-policy thought. It was a liberal president who stared down conservative isolationists and began preparing America -- years before Pearl Harbor -- to help rescue the Jews of Europe from genocide and the world from the greatest evil it had ever seen. It was a liberal president who invoked the lesson of that war to argue for intervention in countless conflicts during the 1990s. And it is liberals who have, over and over again, called attention to human-rights abuses, injustices, killings and torture throughout the world for decades upon decades -- and urged their government to do something, anything about them.
But here we are, on the brink of an attempt to remove one of recent history's most odious men from the world scene, and liberals have surveyed the situation and asked, "How can we find any rationale not to get involved?" They have noted that Saddam Hussein may be evil but that there are plenty of other evil people in the world. Or that conservatives are in it for the oil. Or that there are risks involved. Or that containment could prevent the dictator from ever using nuclear weapons.
All those arguments may well be true.
But not one of those arguments will lead to the liberation of a frighteningly Orwellian society based on fear and torture. Not one of them will protect the citizens of the Middle East's democratic nations against future attacks with weapons of mass destruction. Not one of them could lead to a beachhead -- however small -- of democracy in the Arab world. Not one of them will help resolve the Israeli-Palestinian standoff. Not one of them will allow America to take initial steps toward addressing the "root causes" of terror. Not one of them is worthy of the deeply moral traditions of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. And not one of them will lead to progress in the Middle East -- yet these objections are apparently all most "progressives" have to offer.
I support an invasion of Iraq -- but I do so reluctantly. I realize that a war against Iraq carries the risk of significant casualties. And I do not think supporters of this war can glibly dismiss the so-called "chicken-hawk" argument. I am not a soldier; nor do I have a single friend or relative who will risk his life in this conflict. So many of those currently arguing for war are from an intellectual establishment that has, over the last two generations, almost entirely insulated itself from the perils of military service. Who are we to argue for war?
In the end, however, policy choices in a democracy are not made exclusively by those who serve. They are made by everyone. And while America will be responsible for the casualties we cause during this war, we will also be responsible for the consequences of not fighting. Whether they are tallied in the millions of Iraqis who will go on living under a cloud of torture and fear; or the inevitable casualties of Hussein's future belligerence; or the future American victims of terrorists who convince themselves that America is a weak sleeping giant with no commitment to defending its interests or values; or the millions upon millions of Arabs who will go on living under repressive regimes because we opted for a policy of just leaving things be -- those consequences will be severe indeed. And liberals who oppose this war must be willing to live with them.
Al Gore was right in 2000 when he promised to continue using American power to defend liberal democracy around the world. And George W. Bush was wrong when he proposed a foreign policy based solely on narrow national interests. That the two have since reversed themselves is certainly interesting. But it doesn't change what made Gore's original foreign policy progressive during the 2000 campaign and what makes his new stance -- and the stance of most liberals -- woefully inadequate now.
We liberals have much to do in the world. We must encourage America to fight wars on poverty and hunger and disease and pollution. Such is the burden of a worldview that compels us to repair the earth on which we live. And so long as dictators and terrorists stride the global stage -- torturing their own, menacing others -- there is no reason that we should exempt them from this worldview. They too must be fought.
Richard Just is the editor of The American Prospect Online.
