Isaac Chotiner responds to Ross Douthat:
Douthat is surely right that no one thinks we have equal responsibility in the cases he cites above, and in that sense his point is well taken. It is worth pointing out however, that in the episodes Douthat mentions, America does have some responsibility--even by his standards. Take the biggest India-Pakistan war, in 1971, when the United States backed and armed a Pakistani military that did far more harm to civilians than America has done in Iraq. As for Congo, and even if one leaves aside the way the CIA and the other Western powers undermined any sort of democracy, and dealt with Patrice Lumumba, you are still left with a legacy of aiding and apologizing for Mobutu, which America did for decades.
None of this means that America should act militarily in Libya. But it is frustrating that everyone on the political spectrum from Pat Buchanan to Brent Scowcroft only begin to throw up their arms and curse American foreign policy when it involves engagements for which a humanitarian case can at least be made.
Setting aside the rather narrow ideological field Chotiner has pointed out here, can anyone point to an American military intervention in the past 20 years, from Kosovo to Iraq to Afghanistan, where a humanitarian case was not made? It seems to be a pretty rote element of the arguments in favor, even when it's merely a gloss for other motivations.
Also, responsibility does not in and of itself justify intervention, especially if intervention would compound the problem caused by the original intervention. In those cases, the responsible thing is not to make things worse.
