Jonah Goldberg partly redeems himself…
How valid, from a moral standpoint is the “we broke it, we have the moral duty (responsibility) to fix it” argument, when it comes to Iraq? Here’s Jonah Goldberg in the pages of the National Review Online:
Barack Obama says preventing genocide isn’t a good enough reason to stay in Iraq.
“By that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife — which we haven’t done,” he told the Associated Press. “We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done. Those of us who care about Darfur don’t think it would be a good idea.”
It’s worth pointing out a key difference between the potential genocide in Iraq and the heart-wrenching slaughters in Congo and Sudan: The latter aren’t our fault. But if genocide unfolds in Iraq after American troops depart, it would be hard to argue that we weren’t at least partly to blame.
Goldberg’s NRO colleague, John Derbyshire, chimes in:
And the argument that moral responsibility for whatever happens rests on us is not clear to me. Where were our intentions not honorable? At which point during the last four and a half years were we trying to incite Iraqis to kill Iraqis? At which point were we doing anything other than try to help them—however clumsily and sometimes wrong-headedly—to get their act together as a nation? How long do we have to struggle with such efforts before our moral responsibility can fairly be considered to have been discharged?
Do answers to Derbyshire’s questions move us in the direction of a consensus regarding the moral responsibility of the US remaining in Iraq? Would you have asked the same questions to ascertain the morality of remaining militarily involved in that country?
Read other responses to Goldberg’s column here
