No, this is really just do-goodery, pure and simple.

And for that reason, the only serious argument against the deployment is that our troops are spread too thin to be distracted by charity work. It’s a fair argument, and one that will rightly come up again when Democrats lobby for debilitating defense cuts.

Still, assuming the military can handle the load and the strategy’s been properly vetted, the only reasons for the White House to be embarrassed have to do with its own convoluted rationales, precedents and political constituencies.

Under President George W. Bush, critics might have called this sort of thing an instance of “cowboy foreign policy.” I never understood why the term was an insult. Cowboys do good when they can and where they can. They may not go looking for trouble, but they don’t hide from it either. Yes, in movies and books, cowboys usually only shoot when somebody else has shot at them first. But every now and then a villain comes along who is so vile, so repugnant, so contrary to decency that the cowboy does what he has to do on the grounds that some men just need killing.