Derb – Actually my argument in the column is much narrower. Liberals in the 1990s argued – sometimes with nuance, sometimes starkly – that the bright line for intervention was genocide. There are intellectually serious arguments against the view that we have the duty to stop genocide wherever it occurs. In some hypothetical situations they’re even persuasive. But, liberals drew the line that genocide was a tripwire for intervention, either through the U.N., Nato or unilaterally. I am open to your prediction that genocide may not be in the offing if we leave Iraq. Ultimately, none of us knows. But what I find fascinating is the growing acceptance among liberals – who are often quite strident about the need to intervene in Darfur, for example – that even if our departure results in genocide, that’s not reason enough to stay. My column isn’t aimed at liberals (or conservatives) who aren’t sure there will be genocide or who believe there won’t be. It’s aimed at people who say even if there is genocide, it’s worth it for America to get out of Iraq. That is the avowed position of the New York Times and Barack Obama. For liberals to have supported Kosovo or who now agitate for intervention in Darfur on the grounds that America should put steel in the words “never again” to suddenly say that genocide largely caused by the US is irrelevant is astounding to me. And it won’t be forgotten. The next time liberals want to stop mass slaughter in country X where we have no interests, it will be pointed out to them that they abetted slaughter in Iraq when our vital national interests were involved.

As for your characterizations of my position, I think they’re mostly off target. I don’t argue for unlimited moral responsibility. But, I should say that your invocations of what the political market will bear on this front leaves me fairly cold. What the public does or doesn’t want to do is always relevant to a discussion of what’s actually possible, but not dispositive on the issue of right and wrong. You may be correct that the American public is inclined to let the Iraqis sink or swim on their own. But that doesn’t automatically settle the issue of whether the American public is right.*

* Oh and lest the asinine lefties who like to misread me try to pounce on that last bit as some sort of scary anti-democratic sentiment, do keep in mind that majorities of Americans oppose things like gay marriage and racial quotas. Indeed, majorities of Americans have been known to favor certain unfashionable wars from time to time. So spare me “the majority is always right” pabulum.