The GOP will not be able to run with 'strong-on-defense' for maybe a generation, I've asserted, largely based on the terrible GOP track-record with the Iraq war.
But there is a growing and possibly more significant body of evidence that Conservatives are just not constitutionally fit to run things in times of crisis, perhaps even acutely so with the 21st century circumstances and challenges.
Bill Clinton had phrased his own similar critique in terms of the conservative inability to 'stop digging' when it's clear things are not working. Looking around at what is going on, one can make a case that the need of the GOP/Conservative psyche to impose order on the world, at almost any cost, lest there be 'humiliation' or 'defeat' or 'moral disorder' is astonishing in the amplitude and extremes to which it will reach.
Just a broad, quick sampling:
- VDH, in the heat of it, suggests that we must not risk not risking our "Napoleonic fleet"
- Dick "Baghdad Bob" Cheney apparently believes that the only move is continuous, military offense.
- Andrew McCarthy gets drawn into writing, "If you reward barbarity by treating terrorist operatives as if they were honorable combatants, you are guaranteeing more barbarity."
- AS, perhaps forgetting that he so rightfully took notice of the US's "invasion" of Iran when her Iraqi embassy was overrun, paradoxically finds only "humiliation" when the shoe is on the other foot.
- And when you want to find something really ugly, turn to John Derbyshire, who is willing to spew vitriol at hostages for bringing humiliation on ... on, who exactly? On John Derbyshire's Conservative-world-order, I'd say (keep a bag handy, this will make you spit up):
Once again, it's me and Ralph Peters on the same wavelength, deploring the cowardice of the British sailors and marines kidnapped by Iran. When it happened, I said I hoped the ones who'd shamed their country would be court-martialed on return to Blighty, and given dishonorable discharges after a couple years breaking rocks in the Outer Hebrides (which, believe me—I've been there—have a LOT of rocks). Now, I confess, I wouldn't shed a tear if some worse fate befell them.
The only coherent response I get to these sentiments is: "How do you know what they've been through? How would YOU stand up?" To which the obvious reply is the one Dr. Johnson gave in some similar case: "I may criticize a carpenter who makes me a bad table, though I cannot make a table myself. It is not my job to make tables." It is the job of a Royal Marine to fight, and if necessary suffer and die, for his country. ...
And in any case, there was no evidence of torture or mistreatment in any of the filmed cases I have seen. They look just fine. You can't fake that. [!!!]
That's just a list from what I've been reading. I'm sure there is more out there.
