First off, the premise that "America's role in the world is a force for good" is problematic—the U.S. has played many different roles in world history. It has often been a force for good. But that in no way guarantees the next intervention won't do more harm. In Iraq, a war of choice that many supported with the best intentions, George W. Bush began with the premise that America is a force for good and unleashed carnage that killed hundreds of thousands and gave rise to ISIS.

Here are better premises to start with when weighing an intervention: War is an unpredictable enterprise that carries great risks, and all U.S. interventions have at least the potential to do great harm to ourselves or to others, so careful judgments are needed to discern which interventions would make us a force for good.

There's another error in analysis, too.

If Jeb Bush weren't so inured to the actual content of his foreign policy boilerplate, he might have noticed that his metrics for what makes America successful in the world—forcefulness, clear enemies, no distance between us and our closest allies—were all met when his brother decided to invade Iraq with the support of Israel and England (even as he gave speeches denouncing the "Axis of Evil").

And yet, despite forcefulness, clear enemies, and support from our very closest allies, George W. Bush's foreign policy was a disaster. Jeb Bush needn't be an expert in geopolitics to recognize that recent history obliterates his thoughtless heuristic.