You’d think it would be a great time to be a small-L liberal: human freedom is on the march in such unlikely places as Iraq, Afghanistan, and even among the Palestinians. The president of the United States can’t seem to go five minutes without praising the virtues of liberty, and realpolitikers have been banished to the policy wilderness. Liberal principles have never before been so proudly proclaimed in framing U.S. foreign and security policy.

The only problem for liberals, of course, is that the architect of all this is named George W. Bush, and this poses a considerable conundrum. It’s been instructive to watch the shifts of opinion at The New Republic, long the flagship of responsible foreign policy liberalism in the Democratic party. Originally strongly supportive of the invasion of Iraq, the magazine’s writers have become increasingly disenchanted as the interest-based arguments for the war–Iraq’s presumed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction–have collapsed.