Incoherent Preemption.

“As Paul Wolfowitz has all but admitted, the ‘bureaucratic’ reason for war — weapons of mass destruction — was not the main one. The real reason was to rebuild the pillars of American influence in the Middle East. Americans may have figured this out for themselves, but it was certainly not what they were told. Nor were they told that building this new pillar might take years and years. What they were told — misleadingly and simplistically — was that force was justified to fight ‘terrorism’ and to destroy arsenals of mass destruction targeted at America and at Israel.” In a wide-ranging article for the NYT Magazine, Michael Ignatieff offers an historical critique of our currently muddled intervention policy, and outlines his own best-case-scenario proposal for US-led UN reform. “Putting the United States at the head of a revitalized United Nations is a huge task. For the United States is as disillusioned with the United Nations as the world is disillusioned with the United States. Yet…Pax Americana must be multilateral, as Franklin Roosevelt realized, or it will not survive.