Brian4Liberty
09-02-2014, 03:12 PM
Neoconservatives and liberal interventionists are reunited...and it feels so good.
Hillary Clinton is the new Scoop Jackson, and the neoconservative contingent couldn't be happier. Bill Kristol, John McCain and Lindsey Graham may have to return to the Democrat Party.
On ISIS, neocons and liberal hawks have a 'boy who cried wolf' problem
For decades, they've argued in favor of almost every politically possible war. And America is sick of it.
By W. James Antle III
If you're wondering why America's political leaders seem so hesitant to devise a response to the frightening rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, let me tell you a story. It's about the neocons and liberal hawks who cried wolf.
Once upon a time, some foreign-policy hands warned that unless the United States invaded Iraq, Islamic radicals — the kind who murdered thousands of Americans on 9/11 — would obtain weapons of mass destruction.
During the hunt for Osama bin Laden, they warned against losing sight of the danger of a possibly nuclear-armed Iraq. "[T]he larger campaign must also go after Saddam Hussein," Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly wrote in the Weekly Standard after 9/11. "He might well be implicated in [the 9/11] attacks … or he might not. But as with bin Laden, we have long known that Saddam is our enemy, and that he would strike us as hard as he could."
Invading Iraq would not only prevent these weapons from falling into the terrorists' hands, the war hawks claimed. It would also result in the creation of a democracy whose people would greet us as liberators and whose government would become a reliable ally in the war on terror.
The Iraq War would drain the swamp of terrorists. It would light a fire in the minds of men. It would create a democratic domino effect throughout the region.
Obviously, most of this fairy tale proved to be utterly false. It now seems plain that the results of the Iraq War were almost precisely the opposite of what its most ardent supporters promised.
In a frightened country searching for ways to prevent more terrorist attacks on American soil, many people who weren't neoconservatives initially supported the Iraq War. This includes the vast majority of generic Republicans. And liberal hawks were with the neocons almost every step of the way. President Clinton signed legislation essentially endorsing the goal of regime change in Iraq way back in 1998. But no movement issued more dire warnings about Iraq's capabilities or had more expansive goals for what a war would achieve than the neoconservatives.
...
Polls show little appetite for American involvement in Iraq beyond limited airstrikes. Much of this has to do with the mistakes of the past. Yet the Iraq hawks of old still barely acknowledge the role their disastrous war played in unleashing old religious and ethnic hatreds, preferring to put the blame solely on President Obama's withdrawal of U.S. combat troops.
And there is the bluster of the present. Many seem hell-bent on using an ISIS intervention as an opportunity to fight Syria or Iran, in some cases making that a greater priority than containing or crushing ISIS.
...
More:
http://theweek.com/article/index/267241/on-isis-neocons-and-liberal-hawks-have-a-boy-who-cried-wolf-problem
So nostalgic. Time for some party music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26J0uDIGErM
Hillary Clinton is the new Scoop Jackson, and the neoconservative contingent couldn't be happier. Bill Kristol, John McCain and Lindsey Graham may have to return to the Democrat Party.
On ISIS, neocons and liberal hawks have a 'boy who cried wolf' problem
For decades, they've argued in favor of almost every politically possible war. And America is sick of it.
By W. James Antle III
If you're wondering why America's political leaders seem so hesitant to devise a response to the frightening rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, let me tell you a story. It's about the neocons and liberal hawks who cried wolf.
Once upon a time, some foreign-policy hands warned that unless the United States invaded Iraq, Islamic radicals — the kind who murdered thousands of Americans on 9/11 — would obtain weapons of mass destruction.
During the hunt for Osama bin Laden, they warned against losing sight of the danger of a possibly nuclear-armed Iraq. "[T]he larger campaign must also go after Saddam Hussein," Gary Schmitt and Tom Donnelly wrote in the Weekly Standard after 9/11. "He might well be implicated in [the 9/11] attacks … or he might not. But as with bin Laden, we have long known that Saddam is our enemy, and that he would strike us as hard as he could."
Invading Iraq would not only prevent these weapons from falling into the terrorists' hands, the war hawks claimed. It would also result in the creation of a democracy whose people would greet us as liberators and whose government would become a reliable ally in the war on terror.
The Iraq War would drain the swamp of terrorists. It would light a fire in the minds of men. It would create a democratic domino effect throughout the region.
Obviously, most of this fairy tale proved to be utterly false. It now seems plain that the results of the Iraq War were almost precisely the opposite of what its most ardent supporters promised.
In a frightened country searching for ways to prevent more terrorist attacks on American soil, many people who weren't neoconservatives initially supported the Iraq War. This includes the vast majority of generic Republicans. And liberal hawks were with the neocons almost every step of the way. President Clinton signed legislation essentially endorsing the goal of regime change in Iraq way back in 1998. But no movement issued more dire warnings about Iraq's capabilities or had more expansive goals for what a war would achieve than the neoconservatives.
...
Polls show little appetite for American involvement in Iraq beyond limited airstrikes. Much of this has to do with the mistakes of the past. Yet the Iraq hawks of old still barely acknowledge the role their disastrous war played in unleashing old religious and ethnic hatreds, preferring to put the blame solely on President Obama's withdrawal of U.S. combat troops.
And there is the bluster of the present. Many seem hell-bent on using an ISIS intervention as an opportunity to fight Syria or Iran, in some cases making that a greater priority than containing or crushing ISIS.
...
More:
http://theweek.com/article/index/267241/on-isis-neocons-and-liberal-hawks-have-a-boy-who-cried-wolf-problem
So nostalgic. Time for some party music:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26J0uDIGErM