From the Washington Post:
The only conclusion one can draw is that for liberal Democrats, America’s strategic interests are not just an irrelevance, but also a deterrent to intervention. This is a perversity born of moral vanity. For liberals, foreign policy is social work. National interest–i.e., national selfishness–is a taint. The only justified interventions, therefore, are those that are morally pristine, namely, those that are uncorrupted by any suggestion of national interest.
Hence the central axiom of left-liberal foreign policy: The use of American force is always wrong, unless deployed in a region of no strategic significance to the United States….
What should be our criteria for military intervention? The answer is simple: strategic and moral necessity. Foreign policy is not social work. Acting for purely humanitarian reasons is wanton and self-indulgent. You don’t send U.S. soldiers to die to assuage troubled consciences at home. Their lives should be risked only in defense of their country. [Washington Post , July, 10, 2003]
We’re making inroads, though as is evident from the last paragraph (and the rest of his column), Krauthammer still thinks that self-interest is something entirely separate from morality.