O ur tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it," William Faulkner said in his 1950 Nobel Prize acceptance speech. "There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only one question: When will I be blown up?" Such apocalyptic gloom, he went on, made it hard for the writer to press forward on the central question of literature, the "problems of the human heart in conflict with itself." Nevertheless, Faulkner concluded, while acknowledging the realities of impending nuclear destruction, it is the writer’s duty to continue to plumb the depths of the human spirit. "It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past." I was reminded of Faulkner’s speech while preparing for a panel this past fall, jointly sponsored by Democracy and the New America Foundation, on the future of American foreign policy. Most progressives, and by now even most conservatives, agree that the invasion of Iraq has not only been a disaster, but that it has undermined our nation’s ability to project power, both soft and hard, for years to come. In doing so, it has upended previous assumptions about what we can and should do abroad–and created new divisions among progressives about what shape that course should take.

There are those, such as the New Republic’s Peter Beinart, who, while criticizing the execution of the war, argue that the goal–overthrowing a bloody dictator, establishing a democracy, and establishing a precedent for further democratic expansion–was a noble and correct one. Had America been better prepared to rebuild, had Bush done a better job of involving the international community, things would have been different, these idealists hold. That belief in turn lays the ground for a forward-looking liberal internationalism that advances, unsullied, the ideals of democracy promotion through American power. And, while they see this as a benefit to American interests, they also, and in some cases primarily, see their position in moral terms: We have power, and so we must use it for the good...