> This is the difference between pragmatists and others, maybe: the topic
> arose in a particualr context, outrs, where the invasion of Iraq is on the
> table.
I'm not sure about that. It seems pragmatic (common as opposed to philosophical usage) to weigh the specific merits and demerits of each given intervention on its own terms. This doesn't really seem possible if one actually believes unequivocally that the US ought to remain out of everywhere, because, even if he were forced to grant that the positives of a particular intervention outweigh its negatives, he'd go on to argue that his concession doesn't matter because "the US out of everywhere" is still a good rule of thumb. Or something like that.
> What the hell else were we talking about? And what good reasons could
there
> be for the US, as it is now constituted, under present circumtsnces, to
> invade a country that is now and for some time doing no one else harm and
> threatening no one else?
I doubt you actually believe that the Iraqi government is doing no one any harm. And whether or not it's a threat to anyone outside of its borders is more controversial than you let on, I think.
> What does, then? Every day for almost two years the IDF has been shooting
> Palestinian children, rocketing Palestinian leaders, levelling houses,
etc.
Guess it's just a matter of scale. If Israel killed a few thousand Palestinians within a calendar year and drove out hundreds of thousands more, I think that would qualify (yep, I'm drawing an analogy with Kosovo).
>> (nor, I hasten to add, do the actions of
> >the suicide bombers). Not invading is probably more reasonable, but not
by
> >way of your "preserving a nonexistent peace" rationale.
> ??
Just another reiteration of my assertion that "preserving the peace" isn't a good rationale for non-intervention in places where many, many thousands of people enjoy no peace whatsoever.
> No, I'm not kidding.
It seemed like you were trying to get some sort of rise out of me by implying that I might actually be objecting not to the "Bush doctrine stooge" tag but rather the "leftist" label. Perhaps your confusion was genuine. It certainly appeared disengenuous, but then I guess I ought to take your word for it.
> I don't see how advocay of US intervention abroad is a
> left position.
I don't see how a priori advocacy or opposition to US intervention is a left position.
> Oh, I see. It would be OK if, counterfactually, a great power would ignore
> its own interests and act purely benevolently. I'm with W on this, that's
> cloud-cookoo-land stuff.
Well, I was only proceeding from where you left off:
"What exactly is your problem with the Bush doctrine, since you think the US has the right and maybe the responsibility to invade anywhere where there is no peace"
As I said, the disgusting foreign policy "realism" that grounds the Bush doctrine is quite distinct from the idealistic stance you sketch above. I don't really agree with it either, mostly because it (the above) employs "rights talk" (which I find generally unproductive) and because it says nothing about what conditions must hold to produce an obligation to intervene. Of course, specifying those conditions isn't very hard for a consequentialist, but finding out when they do in fact hold can be damn near impossible.
BTW, thinking that a state, like a person, might occasionally act in part out of benevolence is far from whacky, and it doesn't fall under Wojtek's category of "enlightened self-interest," either.
> Which means the abstract discussion is perfectly useless if untethered to
> concrete analysis of the concrete situation.
What "concrete analysis of the concrete situation" do you think should be added?
-- Luke
> jks
>