WASHINGTON -- It appears to be the season for second thoughts about American intervention in Iraq. Periodic public-relations offensives after endless "turning points" have failed to halt the Bush administration's long-term slide in popular support. The misbegotten war in Iraq does more than discredit Washington's Mideast policy. It effectively destroys the case for humanitarian intervention and nation-building. The Bush administration might be uniquely inept and foolish, but the basic problem is the policy, not the implementation.

Long among the most avid advocates of humanitarian war-making, writer David Rieff, author of "At the Point of a Gun: Democratic Dreams and Armed Intervention" (Simon & Schuster), has been clobbered by reality. Every additional day the U.S. stays in Iraq reinforces the truth of his reformed views.

"At the time of the Kosovo war, I had written that, if I had to make the choice, I would choose imperialism over barbarism," he explains. "In retrospect, though, I did not realize the extent to which imperialism is, or at least can always become, barbarism."