Jon Chait can be a pretty smart columnist, except for when he gets too clever…and also when he gets extremely literal. Here he is, taking me to task for saying–at the close of this week’s column–that we should only go to war when we have been attacked or are under direct threat.
Well. First of all, perhaps I should have made clear that which was implicit: I meant that we should never go to war unilaterally unless we’ve been attacked or are under imminent threat. The Gulf and Korean Wars were undertaken under UN auspices. If a situation is so clear-cut that the even the UN favors military action, I think it’s a fairly safe bet that the action is justified. If Chait had done a bit of research–always a good thing–he would have learned that I favored the Gulf War after the UN voted to proceed. I’d also include formal alliances, like Nato, where we are obligated to defend allies if they are attacked (which is why I’ve always been skeptical about NATO expansion, especially to countries like Georgia and Ukraine).
Chait also mistakenly lists World War I as one in which we weren’t attacked: Jon, google Lusitania–yes, it was a British ship but there were hundreds of Americans on board and the Germans knew exactly what they were doing when they sank it. There were also German u-boat attacks against the U.S. in the days immediately after Pearl Harbor. I’d say the threat from Germany in both cases was pretty squarely in the “immediate” category.
The unnecessary wars we’ve fought have included Vietnam and Iraq, most prominently; also the Spanish-American war and numerous South American interventions (most recently, support for the Contras in the 1980s). Afghanistan was a justified response to the 9/11 attacks–and could have been settled amenably in the winter of 2001-2, when Mullah Omar was willing to negotiate a deal with Hamid Karzai. (Donald Rumsfeld vetoed it.)
But really, Jon: do you really think that pushing back against the almost constant warmongering from the right since the end of the Cold War–Iran is the current target–is a bad thing? I would say that over-learning the lesson of Iraq is far better than under-learning it. Meanwhile, cool it, Jon–you’re too smart to be too-clever by half.