To say that the criticism of Campbell is an example of hawks purging one of their own is akin to arguing that skeptical pro-lifers were purging one of their own when they criticized Mitt Romney. ~Jim Antle

That’s not a bad point, but there are a few important differences that this obscures. Campbell hasn’t radically changed his views virtually overnight for the specific purpose of making himself electable on a national level. There were several things made Romney’s “conversion” extremely hard to take seriously. The first was the explanation of how an intelligent, middle-aged man had just pondered the ethical implications of abortion for practically the first time, and still more incredibly how a technical discussion of ESCR had made all of this clear to him. Then there was the timing of the move, which happened almost exactly when Romney began testing the waters for his presidential run. In addition, there was the arrogant presumption to lecture every other candidate on his pro-life credentials when every one of them (except Giuliani!) had a better record. This was combined with a number of other “evolutions” of position that gave the impression that there was nothing Romney would not say for votes. All of these things grated on the sensibilities of many pro-lifers, because they are accustomed to politicians who learn to say the right things and then fail to do anything.

National security hawks don’t really have the same problem with opportunists. In fact, when opportunists realize that hawkishness is their path to promotion within the GOP they are strongly encouraged in that path. Just consider the career of John McCain. McCain went from being a critic of the Lebanon deployment, wary supporter of the Gulf War and skeptic of Bosnian intervention to the most aggressive, most reliable Republican hawk there is. I would have thought that the whole point of enforcing a party line is to make any high-profile candidate toe that line, which Campbell has been doing long before this campaign.

As far as I can tell, Campbell has moved toward the hawks in the last decade, and he had been doing this many years before this current campaign was even on the horizon. His change may have been ultimately opportunistic, as many such changes are, but it has been neither dramatic nor radical. It has not been so obviously tied to the promotion of his political fortunes. The criticism of Romney was rooted more than anything in a lack of trust inspired by his sudden, total, and unconvincing reinvention. It’s not as if Campbell was once a fierce non-interventionist and critic of Israeli military actions. Campbell went from being a fairly standard-issue national security hawk with some qualms about the efficacy of Iraq sanctions and war powers to being an even-more conventional national security hawk who supports Iran sanctions and who has opposed exactly one military campaign in his career.

Then there is the matter of Campbell’s other supposed deviations in the past. The real trouble seems to be that he advocated for a two-state solution before it was the Washington consensus view, and he also supported the reduction of non-military aid economic aid to Israel. The first is a view that is now pretty widely held in both parties, and the second is the kind of argument one might expect from a Republican with an aversion to subsidizing relatively wealthy nations. This is extremely weak stuff. The attempt to use the tenuous link to Al-Arian to try to portray him as somehow sympathetic to Palestinian radicalism or jihadism is outrageously dishonest. Considering how much ground they have been losing in recent years, I would have thought that Republican “pro-Israel” hawks would want as many allies as they could get. Instead, some of them seem to be looking for reasons to run candidates off.

Jim mentions that Campbell is rather like Chuck Hagel, and I think that is a fairly good comparison. Except for his criticism of the “surge,” which earned him his party’s contempt, Hagel was a reliable vote and advocate for every military intervention while he was in office. Republican hawks’ demonization of Hagel always seemed deeply irrational to me. In some ways, he was a much more infuriating hawk than his more aggressive colleagues, because he could usually see all of the pitfalls and dangers of intervention and still supported the action no matter what it was. Hagel was not an ideologue, but he still made all the same mistakes that the ideologues did. When Republican hawks finally did make him persona non grata in the GOP, Hagel had at least disagreed with them in a contemporary debate on war policy. Campbell is being attacked for very modest differences to the extent that any differences exist. The campaign against Campbell is even more irrational than the one directed against Hagel in 2007-08.

Unfortunately, my guess is that Campbell could be counted on to give the hawks what they want just as they counted on Hagel for over a decade.

P.S. Here is a New Ledger interview with Campbell. Non-interventionists and civil libertarians will find it quite discouraging, especially when he pivots from his past opposition to the use of secret evidence on civil liberties grounds and then argues that this is why Guantanamo must remain open for indefinite detention of suspected terrorists. There is nothing in this interview that I or any other non-interventionist would find encouraging.