In an odd twist for a publication whose ideas about a “debate” over Iraq tends to be between those who think the war was a really good idea vs. those who think it was a pretty good idea, but that it was poorly executed, The New Republic online is hosting two people with opposing viewpoints: AEI’s Reuel Marc Gerecht vs. Larry Korb of the Center for American Progress.

Alas, the first round has just concluded, with Gerecht essentially lumping Korb with the “nefarious forces” of “bigoted isolationism.” So much for a genuine debate.

I have had the pleasure of debating Larry Korb on several different occasions, and in truth we agree far more often than we disagree. He is, without exception, thoughtful and articulate, but also polite and respectful, even when his interlocutors are not. I will understand if, this time around, Larry loses his cool.

An attack on Gerecht’s shattered credibility is doubly warranted given the sheer difficulty in trying to deconstruct Gerecht’s arguments. (Indeed, I’m reluctant to use the term, as what Gerecht is really engaged in is more wishful thinking and unsubstantiated assertions flavored with a healthy dose of ad hominem attack against any who question him).

If there is some philosophy underlying Gerecht’s case for the surge, I presume it is found in the following passage:

I can understand–though not appreciate–Americans who don’t want to see Americans dying in Iraq because they value American lives more highly than they do Iraqi ones. This sentiment, more common on the right than on the left, inevitably leads to a bigoted isolationism that allows nefarious forces to run amok. Dressed up by a higher education, it usually depicts most foreigners as too culturally retrograde to sustain liberal and democratic values–and therefore not worth the loss of American life…. Saving people from slaughter, even genocide, isn’t worth the effort for this school of thought, since such calamities are, in part, condign punishment for having retrograde political cultures. Foreigners would have to be real innocents being butchered by easily defeated bad guys before these folks would be compelled to dispatch American soldiers to stop a slaughter. Even if the United States were in part responsible for provoking a humanitarian catastrophe, this group doesn’t feel guilt long, at least not sufficiently to stop the mess, especially if we have to spill much blood and treasure for natives deficient in reasonableness and gratitude.

I’ve taken issue here with the promiscuous use of the term “isolationist” to describe people who prefer to interact in a voluntary, peaceful, non-coercive, way with individuals who happen to have been born/live outside of the United States. But I’m not the only one. (See here and here.)

Still, there inevitably will be some people who believe me to be an “isolationist” because I question the wisdom and the morality of invading and occupying a country that posed no credible threat to U.S. security, and not much of one to U.S. interests. (My continued strong support for the military mission in Afghanistan, and for the use of military assets, where appropriate, in the ongoing campaign against al Qaeda apparently counts for little.)

It turns out that there is a core, and in all likelihood irreconcilable, philosophical difference between me and these Bush Doctrine dead-enders. It has to do with measuring costs and benefits, and specifically with the value one attaches to human life.

Gerecht implies that we ought not to “value American lives more highly than Iraqi ones.”  So, then, is the Constitution to be enforced the world over?  Doesn’t this inevitably lead to the presumption of anything more than a one-to-one death exchange as a moral imperative for U.S. intervention, in all likelihood military intervention? If it costs, say, 500,000 American lives to save 550,000 Darfurians, we must do it, then? 

If my skepticism toward this calculus renders me an isolationist, then so be it.

For what its worth, I still prefer the term “realist” — as in, I care about the lives of others, as well as my own family and friends, and I have a realistic appreciation for human beings’ limited ability to predict the future, and to engineer ideal outcomes. I further believe that military force is a particularly inappropriate tool for shaping such outcomes, and therefore I support war only as a last resort, and only when American security is at stake.

It is a sad commentary on the state of political discourse when I am even required to make such arguments publicly, because they are not assumed to be understood at the outset.