Think beyond Iraq

Dr. Stanley Carlson-Thies, Director of Social Policy Studies at the Center for Public Justice, writes that the difficulties of bringing just governance to Iraq are not peculiar to that country alone and are not entirely to be blamed on Bush administration miscues. The author sums up his argument:

States that support terror, and other states so weak that they cannot put terrorists down, demand a response. Notwithstanding theories of sovereignty, nations should not idly stand by when evil doers controlling other governments systematically brutalize and kill their own citizens. Nor, for all the virtues of international cooperation, will the United Nations and international law deserve deference unless they become reliable and effective promoters of justice and security.

Treating the difficulties of Iraq merely as mud to sling at the administration misinterprets the unavoidable dilemmas of that unhappy place. Worse, regarding Iraq in this crabbed way keeps us from the essential task of reconceiving how justice and security can be promoted in a world increasingly characterized by terror, globalization, massively destructive weapons, and divergent visions of life.