Pain isn’t a feel-good policy. It doesn’t have the glamor of liberating Iraq or ending the oppression of Afghan girls. But it’s achievable. Its unintended consequences, like its ambitions, are relatively modest. And it’s essential to civilization. If your neighborhood doesn’t have armed police who are willing to kill, thugs will take over.

Why should the U.S. be the world’s policeman? It shouldn’t. The United Nations should do it. But as Kerry pointed out, the U.N. doesn’t work: “Because of the guaranteed Russian obstructionism of any action through the U.N. Security Council, the U.N. cannot galvanize the world to act.” The U.N. is a lazy, gutless, corrupt cop that eats doughnuts instead of patrolling the neighborhood. If the Security Council had any backbone, it would have punished Saddam Hussein a decade ago for thwarting U.N. weapons inspectors. Instead, George W. Bush took over the job, turning what should have been a punitive strike into a war of liberation.

Nobody wants another Iraq. Iraq is why we don’t trust our intelligence agencies when they tell us Assad used chemical weapons. Iraq is why we dread another invasion. But our mistakes in Iraq also conceal the perils of the road not taken. What would have happened if Saddam’s defiance of the U.N. inspectors had gone unpunished?