Consider Iraq. The split among conservatives has widened since Saddam was toppled in the spring of 2003. Traditional realists continue to put their trust in containment, and reject nation-building on the grounds that we lack both a moral obligation and the requisite knowledge of Arabic, Iraqi culture and politics, and Islam. Supporters of the war still argue that, in an age of mega-terror, planting the seeds of liberty and democracy in the Muslim Middle East is a reasonable response to the poverty, illiteracy, authoritarianism, violence and religious fanaticism that plagues the region. ~Peter Berkowitz

From these sentences, I would conclude that Mr. Berkowitz doesn’t like this latter group at all and enjoys making their position sound even more ridiculous than it is.  Somehow, I don’t think that’s the case, but he certainly makes the supporters of the war sound preposterous. 

What Mr. Berkowitz fails to mention is that when it comes to conservative magazines, think tanks and other forms of institutional conservatism, the overwhelming majority remains more or less fully committed to the war.  Except for long-time opponents of the war at The American Conservative and Chronicles, dissent in the journalist and pundit classes has come in small doses and has mostly been limited to questions of implementation and practicality.  The mainstream conservative response to Ron Paul points to a broader uniformity on foreign policy that goes beyond Iraq, and the sloganeering of the other nine presidential candidates confirm that this uniformity will not be challenged by any of the “viable” potential nominees of the Republican Party.  Indeed, I can think of no area of policy debate where the right is more conformist and uninterested in a variety of opinions than on foreign policy.  There may be some diversity on the right elsewhere, but this is often a measure of just how confused, aimless and disorganised both party and movement have become during the years of Republican rule.   

Is it just me, or does this entire op-ed have the feel of someone just going through the motions of defending the intellectual vitality of conservatism?  Oh, he hits all the usual points.  Here he talks about Burke, there about Kirk, and over there he mentions Strauss and Hayek.  There’s even the reliable complaint that too few people learn about the conservative tradition in school–not that there was ever a time when all that many people were being assigned a lot of Kirk and Hayek.  Indeed, this is an inheritance that is worth remembering, maintaining and defending, and it wouldn’t hurt if many more “conservatives” today would avail themselves of the works of these authors.  We would probably be spared many crusades for “freedom and democracy” in future were more familiar with actual conservative thought.