Found this and thought it speaks pretty clearly. The whole essay gets pretty complicated and talks of history and Marx and others, but the basic idea that we can't force our ideals on others is one one that I strongly agree with.

Arthur Silber on Oct 20, 2003 http://coldfury.com/reason/comments.php?id=1128_0_1_0_C

The attacks of 9/11 were a profound cultural shock, and a genuinely traumatic event for all of us. I remember, as if it were yesterday, sitting virtually motionless in front of my television for almost three days, watching the events unfold -- and watching those replays of the Twin Towers crumbling an endless number of times. I think it is safe to say that for many people, including me, cogent, analytical thought was simply not possible in those first few weeks, and perhaps even for the first few months after 9/11. I believed then, and I still believe today, that everyone responsible for the terrible and evil acts of that day should be brought to justice -- or, preferably in my view, simply killed.

What many people felt in those first awful days was simply: We have to do something. We have to get those bastards. Indeed we do -- and that is a feeling I fully share, and continue to experience. However, many people seem to have become frozen in the intellectual paralysis of those initial weeks and months. ... But at a certain point, much more rigorous analysis is necessary, in order to determine the best and most efficient way to achieve that end -- a way which does not feed the growth of domestic and international corporatism and statism, as I have documented it in earlier parts of this essay.

By its nature, life entails risk, and the possibility of death (and in time, the certainty of death). Utopians of every kind and of every variety have always promised a world without fear, without danger, without threat -- but all they have ever achieved, and all they will ever achieve, is a world without freedom, without choice, and ultimately without personal meaning. Yet many of us, including our political leadership at the moment, have succumbed to the utopian delusion yet again.It is time to set such delusions aside, to confront the world as it is, including the dangers that will not ever be eliminated completely no matter what we do, and to set about restoring freedom here at home, in the United States, before we lose it altogether. And let the restoration of freedom here serve as a beacon to the rest of the world -- so that we may return to the model urged by John Quincy Adams. And please note that, as I have indicated, if monsters come here or demonstrably threaten to come here, then we must certainly destroy them. But that does not necessitate remaking the world in our own image by the projection of military force, an effort which will not and cannot succeed, and which will only destroy us in the process. As Adams said: “Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”