War

Via Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Chait is confused about Joe Klein’s newfound anti-war stance:

It would rule out not just the intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo, but also the Gulf War, the Korean War, and going to war against Germany in World War II, not to mention obviously Vietnam and World War I. Probably the only wars such a standard would permit would be fighting Japan in World War II and, arguably, the War of 1812.

So, that’s it? If we follow Klein’s dictates, we miss out on a Balkans war Europe had little or no interest in dealing with, a war that didn’t accomplish much besides liberating an oil monarch without addressing the underlying issues, an ongoing quagmire that’s been a humanitarian running sore since the ‘50s, the byword for military disasters of the highest order and a war that we were in for little over a year at the very end of the war and were far from a decisive factor? And, as it happened, Germany declared war on the US, not the other way ‘round. Does Chait really think that we couldn't have survived without this catalog of blunders, mistakes and outright disasters? I guess some people just really like war.