Get real.(The Week)

REALISM is making a comeback these days. Liberals in particular are embracing an approach to foreign policy that they could once be counted on to denounce righteously. The new realism has even infected the New York Times, whose editors now call for withdrawal from Iraq while conceding that this will likely bring regional instability and "further ethnic cleansing, even genocide." The Times periodically beats itself up for largely ignoring the Holocaust, and it even gets a bit defensive about the lies it reported during the Soviet forced famines of the 1930s. So it's intriguing to see the Gray Lady insist that America pave the path to genocide, all in the name of realism.

Meanwhile, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, one of the chief foreign-policy resume-wavers among the Democratic presidential contenders, calls for a "New Realist vision" (the capitalization is his). This seems to mean that we should do only smart things in foreign policy, i.e., use diplomacy where it will work, military force where it's necessary, and economics everywhere else.

Here we see a major weakness of "realism" as a political buzzword. Who doesn't think he's realistic? Who says he's forthrightly opposed to dealing with reality? Even Woodrow Wilson, the most unrealistic president of the 20th century, firmly believed he knew the facts better than anybody else. Nobody claims that we can defeat our enemies by, say, tickling them mercilessly. In practice, a realist ...