The second problem is one of hyper-rationalism: all people everywhere are equally deserving of our care and concern. No. I care more about my family and my countrymen than Europeans. And I care more about these folks, my cousins and civilizational fellow-travellers than strange-looking people from the Third World with whom I have little in common.

Does this not scream out for a comparison with circumcision?

Gerson asserts that “most people in all places, even the poor and oppressed, are capable of controlling their own affairs and determining their own rulers.”

And when these recently oppressed people start “controlling their own affairs,” but do so in a manner of which Gerson, or the president, or a coalition of private citizens, disapproves, what then?

Well, there are a great many degrees of response between absolute indifference and military assault. We need to be a little bit more grown up about our own inevitably morally-compromised status, and everybody else’s inevitably morally-compromised status, and the need to approach human shortcomings, and even horrors, with a mixture of compassion, clear-sightedness, and humility.

We seem not to learn much from our own failures, but, if nothing else, Iraq does serve as an ongoing example of the moral and physical dangers inherent in attempting to liberate other societies by imposing upon them our notions of how they should “control their own affairs.” Which of course means controlling their affairs in a manner consistent with whatever our leaders perceive our long-term interests to be.

We have a long history of dressing up our acts of agression and intimidation in morally crusading terms, but then again, so do most other powerful nations. This may not do much to win over the recipients of our ethical largesse, but it does help us feel better about ourselves once the blood starts flowing and the doubts emerge.