Lucille
04-17-2012, 09:07 AM
Republican Hawks Want the GOP To Be the War Party (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/2012/04/17/republican-hawks-want-the-gop-to-be-the-war-party/)
Last week, Peggy Noonan noticed the foreign policy aggressiveness of most Republican presidential candidates:
There was no room for discretion, prudence, nuance, to use unjustly maligned terms. There was no room for an expressed bias toward not-fighting. But grown-ups really do have a bias toward not-fighting.
They are allowing the GOP to be painted as the war party. They are ceding all non-war ground to the president, who can come forward as the sober, constrained, non-bellicose contender. Do they want that? Are they under the impression America is hungry for another war? Really? After the past 11 years?
Noonan is right that reflexive hawkishness is both foolish and politically radioactive after more than ten years of continuous warfare. What she misses is that these candidates are not allowing the GOP to be “painted” as the war party. They are declaring and affirming that the GOP is and should always be the war party. No matter how many times Republican hawks reject the label “pro-war,” they don’t seem to mind presenting themselves as the more aggressive and bellicose party. If someone is always agitating for armed conflict, we should assume that this is what he actually wants.
Yes, really, Peggy. Because let's face it; the military and waging war is the only "greatness (http://www.fredoneverything.net/TeaParty.shtml)" America has left.
If I were to speechify to a conclave of Tea Partyers, “America is the free-est...the most democratic...the best educated and most dynamic country the world has ever known, an example to all mankind,” the assembled would hoot and hooroar and applaud in dizzy exaltation. Here is the soul of the American approach to existence, bottomless self-admiration devoid of knowledge or curiosity, wrapped like a psychic burrito in the patriotism of overwrought middle-schoolers. And there are many, many of them.
[...]
Worse—maybe worse—America bumbles about the world like a blind man, and doesn't know it. Its contempt for everywhere else, its inability to conceive that maybe other peoples and places don't want to be like America, leads to disaster after disaster. Washington was going to invade Iraq, which with gratitude would go all democratic and be like Massachusetts, and the other Arab nations would follow suit, and so we would remake the Arab world according to Fox News.
[...] Here we have another example of delusional Reader's Digestery, the endlessly repeated assertion that the US has the Greatest Military Ever. Gonna whup up on them Messicans.
Uh, yeah. In ten years the Pentagon can't beat a few tens of thousands of peasants armed with AKs. Nobody else's army could do it either. Thing is, everybody else has figured out that such wars don't work too well. Not us.
Oh wait...
Last week, Peggy Noonan noticed the foreign policy aggressiveness of most Republican presidential candidates:
There was no room for discretion, prudence, nuance, to use unjustly maligned terms. There was no room for an expressed bias toward not-fighting. But grown-ups really do have a bias toward not-fighting.
They are allowing the GOP to be painted as the war party. They are ceding all non-war ground to the president, who can come forward as the sober, constrained, non-bellicose contender. Do they want that? Are they under the impression America is hungry for another war? Really? After the past 11 years?
Noonan is right that reflexive hawkishness is both foolish and politically radioactive after more than ten years of continuous warfare. What she misses is that these candidates are not allowing the GOP to be “painted” as the war party. They are declaring and affirming that the GOP is and should always be the war party. No matter how many times Republican hawks reject the label “pro-war,” they don’t seem to mind presenting themselves as the more aggressive and bellicose party. If someone is always agitating for armed conflict, we should assume that this is what he actually wants.
Yes, really, Peggy. Because let's face it; the military and waging war is the only "greatness (http://www.fredoneverything.net/TeaParty.shtml)" America has left.
If I were to speechify to a conclave of Tea Partyers, “America is the free-est...the most democratic...the best educated and most dynamic country the world has ever known, an example to all mankind,” the assembled would hoot and hooroar and applaud in dizzy exaltation. Here is the soul of the American approach to existence, bottomless self-admiration devoid of knowledge or curiosity, wrapped like a psychic burrito in the patriotism of overwrought middle-schoolers. And there are many, many of them.
[...]
Worse—maybe worse—America bumbles about the world like a blind man, and doesn't know it. Its contempt for everywhere else, its inability to conceive that maybe other peoples and places don't want to be like America, leads to disaster after disaster. Washington was going to invade Iraq, which with gratitude would go all democratic and be like Massachusetts, and the other Arab nations would follow suit, and so we would remake the Arab world according to Fox News.
[...] Here we have another example of delusional Reader's Digestery, the endlessly repeated assertion that the US has the Greatest Military Ever. Gonna whup up on them Messicans.
Uh, yeah. In ten years the Pentagon can't beat a few tens of thousands of peasants armed with AKs. Nobody else's army could do it either. Thing is, everybody else has figured out that such wars don't work too well. Not us.
Oh wait...