Over the last two decades, the United States has intervened militarily in several countries to protect human rights. Now, writes historian Mark Mazower in World Affairs, “the concept of humanitarian intervention is dying if not dead.” And a good thing, too, he concludes.

On the first point, Mazower seems factually correct. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, liberals appalled by violations of human rights called for intervention in Somalia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Kosovo. They preferred to operate through international institutions, regarding the United States as morally suspect — but it became clear that we were, as Madeleine Albright said, “the indispensable nation.”

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Intervention fizzled in Somalia when the U.S. withdrew in 1993. And Bill Clinton, to his later regret, stayed out of Rwanda. The feckless European intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo succeeded only after the United States took charge in 1995. Liberals supported military action in Afghanistan under the NATO banner almost unanimously, and many backed military action in Iraq in 2003, as well.

The Iraq War was justified under the terms of U.N. resolutions 678, 687, and 1441. Unfortunately