Commenting on the weird internecine fighting between fiscal and social conservatives that leaves the neocons unscathed, Ross said:

It’s true: As in the Cold War, foreign-policy hawkishness has become the glue holding the fragile GOP coalition together, even as Iraq has made foreign policy a general-election liability for the Right, instead of the asset it was in the Reagan years.

One of the reasons why hawkishness held together the coalition during the Cold War was in part a shared belief in anticommunism, which animated all parts of the coalition for different reasons, but the coalition was also held together by the related fear of appearing “weak” towards the Soviets.  It was also an asset because the form of that “hawkishness” was significantly different from the hawkishness of today.  Then hawkish rhetoric served some rational purpose in helping to provide the leverage for the negotiation of bilateral disarmament agreements and the gradual de-escalation of the Cold War.  Today advocates of hawkishness are devoted very simply to riling up the country to start wars, rather than providing for a strong defense for the sake of deterrence and preventing the outbreak of conflicts.  Such are the things done in the name of a “neo-Reaganite foreign policy,” as some interventionists dub their monstrosity.  

No more do you hear of peace through strength, and instead you hear a great deal about “Strength Through Willpower” or “Showing Our Resolve” and other morally dubious, vitalist phrases.  It isn’t just because Iraq went badly that hawkishness has become a political liability, but that the militarism the new hawkishness has created is fundamentally unwise and dangerous.  Key parts of this problem for the GOP are the exaggeration of the threat and the general hysteria about the extent of the threat, which has induced a kind of panic-stricken bunker mentality among many conservatives, which in turn gives off a disquieting air of desperation and anxiety.  Where a foreign policy of containment and strong defense seemed both eminently feasible and reasonable, expressing steady, sober confidence in America’s endurance and success, and the threat seemed sufficiently great to most to justify the costs of the policy, the modern equivalent of rollback-through-perpetual-war seems crazy and unsustainable, and seems all the more bizarre given that the jihadi threat is nowhere near as dangerous as the Soviets actually were.     

Today, there is also more or less a shared belief in anti-jihadism, but the embrace of hawkishness has become a mechanism for policing the coalition as much as it is an actual stance on policy.  Your fitness to belong to the coalition is called into question if you do not jump through the requisite hoops of declaring your abiding support for the warfare state–even Mike Huckabee, who never misses a chance to mention suicide bombers when he talks about the culture of death, has been branded as being potentially too “soft” and “weak” on foreign policy (perhaps because he shows signs of having a brain).  Hence the increasingly common fashion among Republican leaders, including Huckabee, to bow before the stupid idol of the term “Islamofascism” and the use of rhetoric about an “existential threat.”  These are not things that you say when you wish to describe the enemy and his capabilities accurately, but when you wish to build yourself up as clear-eyed, anti-fascist saviours, instill fear of ideological deviation among your peers and breed loathing of the “unpatriotic” ones who oppose you.  Even more than during the Cold War, when it was still at least remotely possible to carry on an intelligent conversation about foreign policy, today hawkishness is part of a statement of political identity even more than it is an approach to policy.

According to Iraq’s Ministry of the Interior, violence in Iraq as a whole since the end of June has declined 70%.  (One might point out that the media that allegedly never report “the good news from Iraq” have been…reporting some good news when there has been some to report.)  If correct, that’s good news for Iraqis, though it only returns the situation to its 2005-level misery.  Had someone said to you, “In late 2007, we will just be getting back to the awful situation we had in late 2005,” would that have inspired confidence in you to be willing to remain in Iraq?  It has taken two years to go nowhere, and this is now being described as “progress.”   

The problem with the jingoes isn’t that they want America to succeed, since that is actually what all of us want (for most of us, the sooner the better so that we can bring our people home), but that they are so chronically optimistic that they are also still expecting Sisyphus to get his boulder to the top of the incline and keep it there.  Perhaps when the boulder rolls back down the hill, they will find a way to blame it on the “MSM” and the antiwar movement. 

In other words, they always believe that there is progress and good news, and would believe it no matter what.  (This is why I consider optimism to be a species of mental illness.)  Once in a great while, there actually is a little good news (it was bound to happen sooner or later), and from their braying about it you’d think these people possessed oracular powers.    

A large part of the decline seems to be the changed situation in Anbar, where “violent deaths” declined 82%.  Assuming that all of these figures are basically accurate (that’s a big assumption), that means that much of the “progress” (a.k.a., getting back to where we already were) being touted derived from the Awakening in Anbar, which, as we have had to say over and over, was incidental to and not part of the “surge.”  Good news?  Certainly.  A vindication of the “surge”?  Not nearly so much as crowing jingoes would have you think.  The “surge” has had some modest and perforce temporary success, but it has yielded no political results and cannot conjure up a professional Iraqi police force or independently effective Iraqi Army by sheer willpower. 

As we know, the police force is a shambles, and the army remains still largely inadequate to the task of providing security on its own.  The elements needed for long-term stability and victory, such as it is, are not present, and there is little that has happened in the last ten months has made them more likely in the coming year.  The “surge” was intended to “buy time,” and so it has bought a little–only in this very narrow sense can it be declared successful.  As most of us already know, and all of us should know, that time bought with American lives will be frittered away to no good purpose by the different factions.  Of course, if Turkey invades Kurdistan, all bets are off anyway.  

The part of the story that doesn’t seem to be getting nearly as much attention is this:

However, in the northern province of Nineveh, where many al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab militants fled to escape the crackdown in Baghdad and surrounding region, there had been a 129 percent rise in car bombings and a corresponding 114 percent increase in the number of people killed in violence.

While the figures confirm U.S. data showing a positive trend in combating al Qaeda bombers, there is growing instability in southern Iraq, where rival Shi’ite factions are fighting for political dominance. 

This really is not an exercise in being a naysayer.  This is to keep in mind that every time we have been told that there has been progress in Iraq, some other part of Iraq has soon enough started going to hell after one part had seen a modicum of order restored.  This is not a coincidence, and we have seen the same pattern since the first battle of Fallujah: success in one place simply pushes insurgents and bombers to some other part of the country, where they begin their attacks anew.  As Nineveh province goes to pieces, we are being told about success in Anbar and Baghdad.  As soon as forces are shifted to face the problem in Nineveh, where they will be at least moderately successful, Baghdad or Diyala or somewhere else will probably start deteriorating again.  This is the very definition of running around in the circles, and there is a large part of the population that sees this abuse of our military as a policy that treats them with respect and honour.  Excuse me if I don’t buy it. 

The fundamental flaws of the “surge” that have been criticised since the beginning have always been: 1) insufficient numbers of soldiers to accomplish the counterinsurgency task assigned to them, and 2) a hopeless local political mess that shows no real sign of resolving itself.  The deeply compromised and sectarian nature of the “Iraqi government” has always been at the heart of the latter problem.  The “surge” will at some point come to an end, as has always been the case, which means that the old evils that the “surge” was meant to combat will return once the “surge” has ended.  As Prof. Bacevich pointed out a couple weeks ago, ending the one thing that might have been doing some good on the security front makes no sense by the standards of the supporters of the “surge”–yet this is what Gen. Petraeus has recommended. 

It is the manipulative propaganda of the administration and the hopelessly confused nature of the strategic planning of this war that make it unsustainable and indefensible.  No doubt, our military can execute very smart, effective tactical plans until the end of time (I believe that is the unofficial target date for ending the war at this rate), but if it is in the service of no larger, coherent, feasible plan it is a waste of lives, money and resources.  The strategic goals have remained unchanged for the duration of the occupation (the frequent talk of the “surge” as a “new strategy” has revealed just how few understand what strategy is), and they remain just about as far-fetched and distant as they have ever been.  It is high time to end the war.

Cross-posted at Antiwar.com Blog

Having been to the CLC, I disagree with Leon’s assumption that these Paul supporters are all or mostly cryptoliberals. Plenty of libertarian-leaning Republicans exist in the party, along with the former Buchananites and isolationists of the GOP. Instead of cutting these people off, it might be better for Redstate to keep engaging them. After all, Paul will not be in the race all that much longer, and we need those voters to stay in the GOP when Paul disappears. There are worse impulses than libertarianism. ~Ed Morrissey

First of all, I accept that the people running RedState are within their rights to bar anyone they like, but it is still frankly bizarre that they are taking this position.  After all, we have the spectacle of a site for online political commentary and activism…banning enthusiastic political activists from commenting on their preferred candidate.  It would be like Daily Kos, c. 2003, telling all of the Deaniacs to shut up and go away.  (And, yes, I realise that Dean was polling a lot better in October of ’03 than Paul is now, but the principle is the same.)

The presumption behind the ban that most Paul boosters are liberals is embarrassing to RedState.  Sadly, it says a lot more about what passes for conservatism at RedState than it does about the Paul supporters.  Rather than reaching some reasonable middle ground, punishing posters who abuse their privileges, their solution is a ban against new members saying anything about Paul.  The symbolism of this move is terrible for RedState.  It says to all those enthusiastic Paul backers that there is no point trying to talk to most Republicans, and after this I would be hard pressed to contradict such a view.  It also puts the lie to the oft-repeated myth that the conservative coalition is brimming with intellectual diversity and thrives off of energetic and spirited debate, when it has been clear for some time that a great many Republicans have wanted Paul himself gone from the debates.  Were I tempted to participate in a RedState forum, this move would cure me of that temptation very quickly.  This is a move that represents a stagnating movement that is shedding supporters and gradually breaking to pieces on account of its own ideological rigidity and brittleness.         

Unfortunately, this latest is just a symptom of the broader conformism on the “mainstream” right, particularly on matters of foreign policy, and represents the mentality of a movement that has been losing its ability to maintain and grow its political coalition.  Paul’s campaign has thrived on the message that conservatism and Republicanism can and should still mean respect for the Constitution, liberty and a sane foreign policy–the very kind of rejuvenating and reforming message that the GOP needs if it is to retain the loyalty of millions of disaffected small-government conservatives and libertarians–and where Paul is making converts the folks at RedState, to adapt a phrase, are interested in finding heretics.  It is a great irony this year that it is the purists who are actually swelling Republican ranks, while the pragmatists and big-tent folks are doing their best to empty that tent.  Republicans will object that new Paul supporters will not support the GOP once Paul’s campaign is finished, and they may be right.  RedState has just given Paul supporters one more reason to stay home or vote third party.

Rather than translating the energy and excitement that Paul generates into an advantage for the GOP and the movement, the response is to recoil in horror and send Paul’s people packing.  Morrissey is making the sensible, pragmatic case for accommodation, but it seems to me that the impulse to ban newly arrived Paul supporters is much more representative of the state of the movement and the GOP these days.

I’ve been shocked, really, at the fact that it seems to — there seems to be a place in our culture for, gosh, saying that Mormonism is not a real religion. ~Lynne Cheney

Relatively few people are claiming that it’s “not a real religion.”  For its critics, it is only too real, and the thing some of them might find most shocking is that it does, in fact, exist and people believe it.  The real argument, however, is not incredulity at the Mormon creed, so to speak, as it is anxiety about the relationship between Mormonism and Christianity.  There may be the occasional secular person, a Damon Linker, say, who sees dire threats emanating from Salt Lake City, but the real problem is not so much that Romney’s religion isn’t “real” (it may be one of the very few things about him that isn’t fake!) as it is that his religion seems alien and bizarre to many of the people whose votes he needs to win the nomination. 

If Christian conservatives respond favourably to “one of their own” (as the recent Huckamania suggests they do), they are similarly unenthusiastic about those with whom they cannot relate and identify in terms of shared religious experience.  Even acknowledging Brownback’s less-than-charismatic persona and keeping in mind his ties to evangelicals as qualifications, the fate of Brownback may be telling for how this kind of identity politics works.  It probably did not help him with many of these voters that he had become Catholic.  He could still speak in their idiom and understand their perspective, but there were limits to his ability to claim to be “one of them.” 

Romney hardly helps himself by treating discussion of the subject as a source of embarrassment or lame humour, encouraging critics to regard his religion as something of which he is ashamed.  As a voter’s stupid question about “how many First Ladies can we expect” shows, modern Mormonism is not well understood or very familiar.  Anyone from a relatively poorly understood minority religion is going to carry the political burden of trying to relate his religious experience to that of the voters he’s addressing, especially if he wants to talk up his faith and his life as a “person of faith” in his campaign.

Heads were turned, for instance, when Giuliani suggested expanding NATO membership to Singapore and Israel. Unfortunately for the mayor, heads were turned because British Tories were thinking, “Is he mad?” not “What a capital idea.” ~Alex Massie

I suppose it’s some comfort that the people calling for Ron Paul’s ouster from the GOP nominating contest are painfully ignorant:

Thomas Jefferson in 1801 launched a preemptive war – without the approval of Congress – against the Barbary States because their actions ran counter to our national security interests.

Where to begin?  Jefferson did order a retaliatory strike against Tripoli in response to the ongoing depredations of Barbary pirates against American shipping, for which he subsequently sought and received Congress’ approval.  That’s what some call self-defense.  Pre-emption implies that a threat was building, and Jefferson acted to eliminate it before it materialised, which is exactly what did not happen.  Our consulate in Tripoli was attacked, and our flag chopped down, which was the quaint local way of declaring war.  The Tripolitanian War was about as “pre-emptive” as the European campaign in WWII.

Even when confronted with how wrong he was, Schoenfeld presses on undeterred with still more dishonest descriptions of James Fallows’ position:

But I am still wondering: why does he arrogate to himself and to his faction the right to determine what American interests are? And why does he cast aspersions of disloyalty on those with whom he disagrees about what constitutes those interests, saying of an American Jewish organization, for instance, that in pressing for a “military showdown” with Iran, “it is advancing its own causes at the expense of larger American interests”?

It could be that it is pretty obvious that war with Iran is not in the interest of the United States and those who think that it is are badly mistaken, but let’s step back a bit.  Fallows at no point cast aspersions on the loyalty of anyone.  He made no claims that anyone was being disloyal; he has made the far more powerful charge that these lobbies are mistaken and wrong in the things for which they advocate.  Neither, for that matter, have Mearsheimer and Walt questioned anyone’s loyalty.  They also go out of their way to distinguish sharply between pro-Israel activists and the American Jewish community.  The two authors object to certain policies and criticise the influence of the people who argue in favour of those policies, because they think those policies do not serve the national interest.  It takes a pretty strange mind to turn that into an accusation of disloyalty. 

In other words, the authors (and, I suppose, Fallows also) accuse these activists of misunderstanding what the American interest really is, when this is what these activists say about their opponents on a regular basis.  That’s the state of the argument, which only one side confuses with a great deal of hand-wringing about alleged prejudice.

This is the DCI Counterterrorist Center’s logo.  I didn’t realise that bayonets now came in scimitar form, or that all terrorists were, in reality, the black-goo creature Armus from Star Trek: The Next Generation:

Via Yglesias

The Washington Post, not generally known for exaggerating the electoral viability of anti-immigration politicians, has another item, this time a full news report, on the significance of the candidate’s opposition illegal immigration in the excessively touted, but better-than-expected performance of Jim Ogonowski in the MA-05 special election:

But by last month, although opinion polling showed that he was well liked, he was still running 10 points behind Democrat Niki Tsongas with just weeks to go before a special election. The campaign needed a way to go beyond biography, to persuade Northern Massachusetts to vote Republican. They found it in illegal immigration.

GOP spinmeister Democratic House majority whip Rahm Emanuel commented:

This issue has real implications for the country. It captures all the American people’s anger and frustration not only with immigration, but with the economy.  It’s self-evident. This is a big problem.

Republicans can either capitalise on this and address the economic and other anxieties of voters (which would require them to cease their “the sun never sets” rhetoric about the economy for starters) and craft a message that will reach the “Lou Dobbs voters” and others in fairly hard-hit parts of the country, or they can ignore this potential advantage and pretend that all will be well.  We know what the leading presidential candidates want to pursue the latter course.  The question is: why would the Republicans want to cede an issue that they theoretically could use to their advantage?  So that they can retain their credibility as ideologues of free trade?

The Post story continued:

“Immigration played into the economic issue,” said Francis Talty, a political science professor at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell who followed the Tsongas-Ogonowski contest. “Do you want illegal immigrants to get in-state [university] tuition? Do you want them to get driver’s licenses? Do you want their children to get benefits under SCHIP? It was the benefit side that has real resonance, not the deportation thing.”

In other words, the “Tancredoisation” of these issues, so to speak, by Ogonowski apparently did work to his advantage.  It wasn’t enough to overcome Tsongas’ lead and all the natural advantages a Democratic candidate has, but it helped narrow the gap.  Immigration was apparently just about the only area where Ogonowski had a decisive advantage:

Internal polling found that Ogonowski’s tough stance was winning 60 percent to 30 percent over the positions articulated by Tsongas, said Rob Autry, another Public Opinion Strategies partner who served as Ogonowski’s pollster. Ogonowski’s position on taxes had a narrower, 13 percentage point lead. Every other issue “was dicey,” he said.  

So, one of the lessons of MA-05 would seem to be that recasting issues on which Republicans are on the losing side into an argument about illegal immigration is a vote-winner.