Quixote or Pilate? Framing moral debates on military interventionism (Part 1)

This will be a short post that hopefully will lead to a more comprehensive idea as time goes on. Recently, I could not help but see two morality arguments that tend to develop regarding military interventionism: one resembling Don Quixote (in that it is possible to take military action without consequences) and one that resembles Pontius Pilate's statement about "clean" hands (a connection that certainly was made when thinking of the lack of Western intervention in the Syrian conflict in which the death total is reportedly in the six figures). Using the 2003 invasion of Iraq as an example, we saw the Quixoterios of the Bush administration (who took actions under the guise of spreading a morally-based liberal democracy across the globe) under criticism from moralistic Pilaterians (quick aside: I'm using that term as simply adding an "s" to the end of Pilate's name implied that I was talking about some sort of ethical yoga....I'll bookmark that thought for the future, however) who saw the US intervention to blame for civilian deaths that occurred as a result of insurgent attacks. What was crucial to the Pilaterian position, however, was the consistent implication that the continued existence of Saddam Hussein's regime (the only plausible alternative to the invasion) would have provided a greater outlet for moral absolution than the invasion: that is, allowing a brutal regime to exist nonetheless maintained the "clean hands" provision. The wrinkle in all of this is that a third argument exists when approaching possible intervention: one that opposes intervention for non-moral reasons. We thus see that the Quixoterios and Pilaterians aren't polar opposites, but also don't come from the same set of assumptions.