In Microscopic view, Steven Den Beste explains something that always seemed quite natural to me, but not at all clear to many people — that we can selfishly protect our own interests while deposing tyrants:
We are not, however, doing this out of altruism. We are not trying to give them a liberalized western democracy because we’re evangelistic liberal democrats (with both “liberal” and “democrat” taking historical meanings). We are bringing reform to Iraq out of narrow self interest. We have to foster reform in the Arab/Muslim world because it’s the only real way in the long run to make them stop trying to kill us.There is thus no inconsistency with the fact that we fought a war to free Iraq’s people from Saddam’s cruelty while simultaneously not seeming willing to do the same for North Korea, whose people are probably suffering even more badly. At the moment, it doesn’t appear to be in our narrow self interest to do that for the people of NK.
It is the leftists who claim to be motivated by compassion for the victimized peoples of the world; you’d think they’d not only be cheering for the war in Iraq, and also trying to advocate doing the same thing in North Korea. For them to oppose both wars is inconsistent with their pretensions.