Honor: Only a Feeling?

Go at once to The American Scene where Noah Millman has written an important, brilliant, and necessary response to my claim there earlier that Huckabee's 'sense of honor' approach to Iraq is part of a larger problem that includes rejecting or accepting things not on the basis of what they are (right, wrong) but how they make us feel (good, bad). It's a great post and it deserves a reply in kind but that ain't happening today -- or even maybe tomorrow -- but ponder it and hopefully wait to hear what I've got to say in consequence.

Until then: keep meme alive.

PS read this for a sense of where this all might be heading.

Comments

[John Savage]

As a foreign-policy realist, I wonder, too, if Noah isn't making the mistake of applying principles of individual morality to foreign affairs, where they may not make sense. For example, the concept of the balance of power may require us to turn against a former ally because it's become an aspiring hegemon, whereas before a different power was on track to be the hegemon. By usual standards of honor, that's disloyal and dishonorable, but the balance of power only works if we behave that way, does it not?

I may try to write up a full post considering some examples that demonstrate the difficulties of applying the same standards of morality to national vs. individual action. Great discussion, though.

[John Savage]

Just to make my position clear, I tend to believe that if there are any valid reasons to stay in Iraq, "honor" is not one of them.