This is avery interesting and provocative article on a progresive response to war and post-war.

TAP: Web Feature: Construction Paper. by Nick Penniman and Richard Just. March 21, 2003. Liberals have the skills that will be most needed in nurturing an Iraqi democracy: fostering tolerance and multiculturalism, building mixed and well-regulated economies, creating social safety nets, promoting public health and environmental cleanliness, fighting for civil liberties and beefing up education. Liberals will also be more likely than conservatives to demand that Iraqi oil be turned over to those who rightfully own it, that is, the Iraqi people. Can progressives really afford to leave these important objectives in the hands of Dick Cheney, Richard Perle and their corporate cronies?

Some progressives have contended that liberal nation building doesn't work, but this argument simply doesn't square with the experiences of the last 10 years. Yes, Haiti and Bosnia and Kosovo and Afghanistan continue to experience problems. The operative question, however, is not whether those countries are perfect -- no country, after all, is -- but whether American interventions have in the end left those countries better off than they otherwise would have been. The answer in each case is an unequivocal "yes." Rather than denigrating the concept of nation building, progressives should be trying to figure out how to make it work better so that America will be not be criticized in the future when we employ it as policy. Iraq ought to be the laboratory for proving that nation building -- a concept coined by liberals -- can offer justice to those who have suffered for so long. It is the ultimate policy of optimism and hope, and liberals should invest themselves in proving it can succeed.