Syrians are killing Syrians, so we need to kill Syrians to stop more Syrians from dying.

This, apparently, is the rationale behind intervention in Syria. While this seems absurd, there is a fundamental principle behind it, one that proves much more dangerous than unpopular foreign policy.

Progressives believe people can be shaped by their circumstances. This concept leads to conclusions such as this Slate piece which argues that parents should all enroll their children in public schools in order to create an environment that helps all children, not just the ones in successful private schools.

This is the principle behind progressive foreign policy as well as domestic. During the Vietnam War, the Strategic Hamlet Program attempted to create an isolated environment around peasant communities to make them sympathetic to the Diem regime. This program completely backfired.

More directly linking domestic and foreign policies based on this principle, the U.S. became involved in the Helmand and Arghandab Valley Authority program, based on FDR’s Tennessee Valley Authority, in Afghanistan in 1949. Despite the increased irrigation this provided, it is clear that this did little to change Afghan society.

With Syria, the strategy seems to be to weaken Assad’s regime and allow the rebel faction to take over, as John McCain and Lindsey Graham are pushing Obama to pledge to arm Syrian rebels as part of U.S. intervention. This echoes the Iraq strategy, in which the U.S. removed Saddam Hussein to allow a “democratic” society to unfold.

This idea that our government can improve a foreign nation through violence has terrifying implications for our own country. The logical conclusion of such a principle means there is no reason the government could not use the same violent means to correct what it sees as defects within our own society. Perhaps that sounds extreme, but when Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of The Nation, proposes “launching intervention” in states pushing for voter ID laws, it starts to sound more plausible.

Syrian intervention is a symptom of an incredibly dangerous political philosophy, and it should serve as a warning of what may come if this way of thinking continues to dominate our government unchecked.