The Bush administration, especially, but we all need to take note when Tim Burke says this and Jacob Levy says that. See also: the discussion at Crooked Timber. We have utterly squandered the empathy of the world after 9/11 and, given what we know about the history of occupying powers, it is foolish to think that we might have, with overwhelming power, marched our troops into Babylon, occupied its torture chambers, and not have become ourselves the torturers.