Southern Avenger

Those who advocate a reduced global American military presence are often accused by defenders of the status quo of somehow being naïve or unable to see the big picture. But the exact opposite is true — it is those who insist America must be everywhere at all times who are also all over the place in their logic, as their advocating for perpetual war continues to lead to permanent disaster.

Take Iraq. Now that Obama has announced his own “Mission Accomplished” and is reducing troop levels, Democrats are praising the president’s leadership and Republicans are touting the Bush surge that made it all possible. But however stable or unstable Iraq becomes in the years ahead, what, exactly, did the United States get out of this war?

Did any of the reasons Americans were given for invading Iraq — that Saddam Hussein was a “threat,” that he possessed weapons of mass destruction, that he aided terrorists and was somehow connected to 9/11 — turn out to be true? When asked whether it would have been wise to oust Hussein during Operation Desert Storm, former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney said in 1994 that invading Baghdad would have created a “quagmire,” destabilized the region, caused civil war, empowered Iran, and led to U.S. casualties that would have been too high. “How many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?” Cheney asked in ‘94.

Did not everything Cheney once feared about invading Iraq come to fruition after 2003, and are these not the reasons Bush even had to surge or Obama still has to stay? Cheney was right the first time — how many dead Americans was Saddam worth? With nearly 5,000 soldiers lost, tens of thousands of civilian casualties, a more brazen Iran, and a $3 trillion price tag, what have we accomplished in Iraq that, in retrospect, was even remotely worth the cost? Those who still believe that it was necessary to invade Iraq would likely consider this critique the ramblings of a naïve fool who does not understand the big picture when it comes to fighting the War on Terror — but what has the Iraq War ever had to do in any conceivable way with actually fighting al-Qaeda, a group that did not even exist in that country until the U.S. invaded? It is not the Iraq War’s critics who have failed to see the big picture.

American foreign interventionism is like an abusive marriage — no matter how illogical or tragic it becomes, we always rationalize why we must stay. We went to Iraq to take care of the “threat” that Saddam had allegedly become — something, even if true, we created through years of aid and ammo to the Iraqi dictator in the 1980s. If Saddam ever had WMDs, we gave them to him. Why would we aid Hussein? As a bulwark against Iran, whom we perceived as a threat, and why? Because Iran took American hostages following their 1979 revolution in which they overthrew the Shah — a leader we installed and Iranians despised, engendering anti-American sentiment and sowing the seeds for revolution for decades. Today, the same people who thought the Iraq War was a good idea are clamoring for war with Iran. Why? Because with the overthrow of Saddam, Iran’s power and influence in the region has risen, making that country now also a “threat,” just as Dick Cheney once warned it might become.

And then there’s Afghanistan, where we fought the Taliban after 9/11, whose training and weapons came from the United States in the ’80s during the Cold War. The 1988 action movie “Rambo III,” in which Sylvester Stallone made new friends in Osama bin Laden’s social circle, ended with the following dedication: “This film is dedicated to the gallant people of Afghanistan.” Those gallant Afghans now make up the insurgency that persists in that country, where our current president is escalating troops for some vague reason, while simultaneously carrying out drone strikes in neighboring Pakistan, our supposed ally. Former Reagan official and foreign-policy critic Bruce Fein estimates that for every U.S. drone strike, 10 new insurgents are created — making the so-called War on Terror more a war for it.

That our interventionism only begets more interventionism, that our wars on terror only create more terrorists, and that virtually every military action we take in the Middle East results in further military action is the big picture that defenders of the foreign-policy status quo either cannot see or do not want us to. What do we ever “win” in the Middle East? What have we ever “won?”

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Denouncing libertarianism as not true conservatism is like saying The Rolling Stones somehow dethroned Elvis Presley. There’s no questioning that both acts sound very different-there’s also no questioning that both are rock n’ roll personified. The philosophies of libertarianism and conservatism are no doubt particular and distinct, as the loudest voices for each will eternally argue; but both brands have also been virtually inseparable in the history of American conservatism. Perhaps Ronald Reagan said it best in 1975: “I believe the very heart and soul of conservatism is libertarianism… The basis of conservatism is a desire for less government interference or less centralized authority or more individual freedom and this is a pretty general description also of what libertarianism is.”

Judge Andrew Napolitano’s FOX Business program “Freedom Watch” now brings to a wide audience this integral conservative ingredient that has long been missing in the right-wing media-pure, unadulterated libertarian philosophy. Sure, there are conservative hosts who spend hours explaining the many different ways in which they don’t like this president or his party. There are even right-wing hosts who claim to be libertarian yet enthusiastically support unprecedented civil liberty intrusions so long as the intruder is Republican. But what talk radio or FOX News “Reagan conservative” actually consistently advocates for the Gipper’s basic concepts of both conservatism and libertarianism: less government interference, less centralized authority and more individual freedom?

At precisely the moment the Tea Party is raising questions related to these concepts, particularly concerning the practical limits and sustainability of our current government, Napolitano’s show is a custom fit for what’s brewing on the grassroots Right. In April, a Tea Party poll conducted by The Politico showed the movement split evenly between the more socially conservative Sarah Palin and libertarian hero Ron Paul. The television debut of “Freedom Watch” was billed as a “Tea Party Summit” and featured both figures, as Paul suggested that the gap was exaggerated and Palin reinforced this point by surprisingly agreeing with the Judge on marijuana legalization and the unconstitutionality of government snooping. Predictably, the largest divide was on foreign policy, where Paul and Napolitano advocated a strict and thorough non-interventionism and Palin subscribed to Reagan’s “peace through strength” axiom, keeping the details of her position vague. But no matter-where else are such issues being raised, before mainstream conservatives, Tea Partiers and people like Palin? It’s hard to imagine changing the conversation on the Right from partisanship to principle without first starting conservations about said principles, and Napolitano’s program shines a much needed libertarian light on the Republican darkness that has become mainstream conservatism.

Compare Napolitano’s efforts to get conservatives to think outside the GOP box to his fellow FOX host Sean Hannity’s most recent effort to stuff the Tea Party back in it. Reviewing Hannity’s new book, Conservative Victory, the Charleston City Paper’s Chris Haire writes: “Hannity has nothing but disdain for the Tea Party’s No. 1 goal: to vote all the bums out, Democrat and Republican alike. Hannity wants to keep those bums in power, as long as they’re members of the GOP and their last name isn’t Paul… Even worse, like many of his talk radio and Fox News brethren, Hannity pays lip service to the Tea Party movement, but only for so long. For the talking head, there’s nothing more disastrous that could happen to the GOP than for the Tea Party to become a true force within the Republican Party.” Hannity’s partisanship and Napolitano’s principle paint a stark-and new-contrast for FOX’s conservative audience. Hannity closes his radio show each day promising a “conservative” line-up of regulars like Karl Rove and Mitt Romney, where these men do little more than nitpick Democrats and excuse Republicans. Napolitano closed his program’s television debut with the following: “The American public needs to know and understand that the government that serves best is the one that serves less.”

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Speculating who might become America’s-next-top-conservative-idol has become common sport. No doubt, the GOP establishment would love to anoint a Mitt Romney, Scott Brown, or Tim Pawlenty. Many rank-and-file Republicans have begun to gravitate toward men like Congressman Paul Ryan and Senator Jim DeMint. One national poll has the Tea Party split between former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Texas Congressman Ron Paul. Ron’s son Rand, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Kentucky, and GOP outsider Sharron Angle, a candidate for U.S. Senate in Nevada, are also now being portrayed as national leaders of the rumbling that continues to brew on the grassroots Right.

It should be noted that before the 2008 election, most Americans had never heard of Palin, Angle, or either Paul, and before Obama became president, few had heard of Ryan, DeMint, Brown, and a host of other Republicans whose profiles have been elevated in recent months. This goes to show you that pundits can make all the predictions they want—but figuring out who tomorrow’s political celebrities will be is no exact science, if possible at all. Most “expert” predictions for the 2008 GOP presidential primaries, pitted former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani against movie star-turned-Senator, Fred Thompson, with the rest of the Republican pack eating their dust, with the exception of Romney. Today, the Giuliani and Thompson campaigns are insignificant and distant memories, and who were the biggest political celebrities to emerge from the 2008 elections on the Republican side? Sarah Palin and Ron Paul.

Clint Didier is also a candidate most Americans, to date, have never heard of. The Tea Party-anointed candidate in his home state of Washington, Didier has received the endorsement of both Palin and Paul in his bid for U.S. Senate, but his politics are far more in sync with the latter. While many on the libertarian or traditionalist Right, or critics of the Tea Party on the Left, wonder if Palin-loving conservatives are truly prepared to break free from the pro-war, any war rhetoric that animated the Right during the Bush years—rhetoric Palin still mouths herself—Didier makes his foreign policy clear: “I subscribe to Jefferson’s view, and favor a non-interventionist philosophy. We need to stop trying to police the world and telling other nations how to manage their affairs. It is depleting our wealth and draining our national spirit. America is a republic; therefore let’s stop trying to spread ‘democracy.”

Whether the Palin wing of the Tea Party can widen their critique of government spending to foreign policy—an absolute necessity if they are serious—remains to be seen. Whether Tea Party candidate Didier’s critique of government largesse extends beyond foreign policy is already clear to see—as the multigenerational small farmer has included ditching federal farm subsidies as part of his platform, along with slashing the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, phasing out Social Security, and opposing just about every unconstitutional department, function, or folly the federal government now chooses to involve itself in. Says Didier of ending federal farm subsidies—money that has benefited both him and his neighbors—”It’s the kind of a move that we all better be willing to make for this country… We’ve got to all realize this is unsustainable. We’ve got to quit taking this money.”

While Didier might appeal to Barry Goldwater-style, fiscal conservatives, how about the larger masses, particularly on the Right, many of whom seemed more impressed by Romney’s smile and haircut, or Palin’s caribou hunting, than by any discernible policy positions? Didier has this all-important “style” factor down too—as the 51-year-old family farmer was also a former member of the Washington Redskins, even scoring the final touchdown at Super Bowl XXII. Didier’s campaign slogan is “A Game Plan for Washington,” and the well-spoken and personable candidate uses locker room strategy imagery and rhetoric frequently.

So how is this mixture of farm-boy philosophy, Redskins nostalgia, and hard-line Ron Paul Republicanism playing out for Washington primary voters? While his campaign started out slow, recent polls put Didier in a dead heat with his fellow Republican contenders. This is quite a feat considering his strict constitutional conservatism, newcomer status, and the fact that his daughter schedules all his interviews-operating out of the family farm.

And Didier is but one of many unconventional and potential conservative leaders, now running for state office or Congress, nationwide, many of whom were inspired by Ron Paul, the Tea Party or both, and who-more importantly-are bringing together it’s disparate parts, under a solidly conservative banner.

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Last week, when whistleblower website Wikileaks released over 90,000 classified documents portraying a dismal war in Afghanistan, the White House called editor Julian Assange and his organization a threat to national security. But it is this White House that is a threat to national security. Wikileaks simply helped prove it.

The war in Afghanistan is a disaster, something President Obama refuses to acknowledge and insists on continuing for no discernible reason. Afghanistan’s top commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal voiced his frustration with the mindlessness of our mission and lost his post. His replacement, Gen. David Petraeus isn’t any clearer about our prospects than his predecessor or the president. Who truly puts the nation’s security more at risk? A government that continues to put soldiers in harm’s way with no clear mission or strategy, as the bodies, dollars and questions continue to pile up, or a website that insists the general public should know what their government is up to?

What was it specifically that the Obama administration found among some 90,000 documents that compelled the White House to declare Wikileaks a security risk, mere hours after their release? Did Obama hire an army of speed readers? Or how about the most significant stories to come out of the Wiki-leak: That we pay Pakistan $1 billion a year to help the Taliban; that drone attacks are far less effective than portrayed; that significant civilian deaths are being covered up. Which of these is truly a massive security risk, domestically or abroad? Or do these stories simply “risk” damaging this president’s reputation, or perhaps simply the administration’s preferred war narrative?

Truth be told, the real “risk” is that Wikileaks dared to report the actual news, or what the New York Times calls, “an unvarnished, ground-level picture of the war in Afghanistan that is in many respects more grim than the official portrayal.” Ironically, the pro-war, any war hawks in both parties who still refuse to believe that Islamic terrorists target the United States not for our “freedom,” but for what we do in their homelands, are now warning of potential blowback over what Wikileaks has done. You see, dropping bombs and occupying countries for years could never incite hatred—but actually reporting the truth about the war could spark a jihadist revolution, as if jihadists don’t already know what’s going on in their own backyard, something an organization like Wikileaks simply believes everyone else should know about too.

Salon.com’s Glenn Greenwald has it right: “WikiLeaks has yet again proven itself to be one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world… there is no valid justification for having kept most of these documents a secret. But that’s what our National Security State does reflexively: it hides itself behind an essentially absolute wall of secrecy to ensure that the citizenry remains largely ignorant of what it is really doing.” The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson writes, “What does it mean to tell the truth about a war? Is it a lie, technically speaking, for the Administration to say that it has faith in Hamid Karzai’s government and regards him as a legitimate leader—or is it just absurd? Is it a lie to say that we have a plan for Afghanistan that makes any sense at all? If you put it that way, each of the WikiLeaks documents… is a pixel in a picture that does, indeed, contradict official accounts of the war, and rather drastically so.”

It is no secret that that telling lies to make sure the “citizenry remains largely ignorant” of what its government “is really doing” is standard operating procedure for Washington, DC. Many Americans rightly see disingenuousness in their government’s selling of programs like, oh, I don’t know, the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP)—something Obama originally told us would cost $700 billion but is now reaching $3.7 trillion due to housing rescue efforts—but it should also be stressed that such duplicity is just as regularly used in foreign policy. Granted, waging war is not identical to domestic politics, but the degree to which government uses supposed “national security” to deceive the public about what is truly happening overseas is something the mainstream media largely ignores. Wikileaks claims it went to great lengths to make sure nothing that might genuinely compromise national security was included in their release, and given that the White House can’t cite any specific risks and only issue blanket condemnations, it is reasonable to assume that Wikileaks has simply released information the administration would rather the public not know—not necessarily for safety reasons, but to save face.

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I’m often asked, “Jack, why do you talk about foreign policy so much?” That’s simple—because foreign policy is unquestionably the most significant divide on the American Right. In fact, until mainstream conservatives rethink this issue, any desire for smaller government will continue to be in vain.

Recent political history highlights this constant obstacle. In the 2008 presidential election, how could so many conservatives hold their noses to vote for John McCain? That’s easy—despite McCain’s sponsorship of amnesty for illegal aliens, enacting campaign finance reform, his support for TARP and virtually all of George W. Bush’s big government agenda, the senator was still seen as “strong” on national defense. How could so many conservatives ignore Ron Paul during the Republican primaries, whose conservative platform was arguably purer than that of any Republican presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater? That’s easy too—by opposing the Iraq war, the congressman was viewed by his party as being “weak” on national defense. At the 2008 Republican National Convention, hawkish liberal Democrat Joe Lieberman was given a prime time speaking role and Paul wasn’t allowed inside the building. Talk host Sean Hannity regularly referred to Lieberman as his “favorite Democrat,” but usually referred to Paul begrudgingly and disparagingly, if at all.

But this once rigidly enforced division has since become blurred, not-so-coincidentally as Obama continues to pick up where Bush left off. First, Paul’s profile and influence has risen significantly since 2008, within the GOP and beyond. Obama’s exorbitant spending has helped shift rank-and-file Republicans’ focus from war-at-all-costs to cost-cutting, something reflected most explicitly by the Tea Party. Popular mainstream conservative pundits like George Will and Tony Blankley now openly question the wisdom of carrying on in Afghanistan. When Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele dared to challenge Obama’s “land war” in Afghanistan, the pro-war, any war hardliners who rallied around Bush and McCain—from neoconservative pundits like Bill Kristol to their politician advocates like Senator Lindsey Graham—publicly excoriated the RNC head. Popular conservative pundit Ann Coulter not only defended Steele but harshly attacked Kristol and the neoconservative agenda of “permanent war.”

Praising Coulter, MSNBC conservative talk host Joe Scarborough noted:

“When Ann Coulter comes out criticizing Republican foreign policy… you know a real debate’s about to begin in the Republican Party. The party has been the party of endless wars, now, for the last five, six, seven years, with George W. Bush promising to export democracy across the globe… You know for too long you’ve had John McCain, and you’ve had Bill Kristol, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman define what it meant to be a Republican when it came to foreign policy, when in fact the Republican Party historically has usually been for restraint, accused of being ‘isolationists’ in the past, now it seems like a small group of people want to fight every war in every corner of the planet and it’s just not good for the party.”

To lose this issue, or to give any ground whatsoever to foreign policy dissenters on the Right, is exactly what the old Republican guard fears most—and it is also the issue which prevents the GOP from becoming a conservative party in any substantive manner.

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The NAACP accusing anyone of “racism” is like Mel Gibson accusing his wife of being abusive—at this point, the first impulse is to cast a critical eye on the accuser. When the nation’s oldest civil rights organization passed a resolution recently condemning the Tea Party for supposedly harboring racists, they likely changed few people’s opinions about that movement. In fact, in the minds of many Americans, the NAACP calling people racist probably isn’t even considered anything new or newsworthy—it’s simply what they do.

This is not to say that the NAACP doesn’t believe its own press. Though the NAACP’s recent resolution asked Tea Partiers to repudiate the “racist elements” in their midst, you don’t have to listen long to president Benjamin Jealous, or old race-huckstering standbys like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, to realize that such “civil rights” leaders’ perception of Tea Party racism isn’t relegated to a few crazy slogans or signs. Their view of grassroots conservative is in line with what the larger Left, as evidenced by the columns of the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd and Paul Krugman, or the words of pundits like MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann, all believe about not only the Tea Party, but the GOP and any other white folks who dare to organize outside the Democratic Party. That Republican Congressman Joe Wilson would yell “you lie!” at Obama, has mostly to do with the president being black, insists Dowd. Conservative anger over the president’s national healthcare plan, is obviously racial in origin, says Krugman, Matthews and Olbermann. That conservative whites must be racist or are at least in league with them, is nothing new for the Left—and certainly nothing new for the NAACP.

Ironically, when liberals subscribe to such caricatures of white conservatives, it makes them every bit as goofy as the wackiest Tea Partier. Ask a Tea Party guy holding a sign portraying Obama as a Nazi, or Nancy Pelosi as Satan, whether or not he believes Democrats are all socialists who might destroy the country. We already know the answer. Now ask a gathering of liberals whether or not Tea Party folks and their allies in the Republican Party are all racists who might tear down the country. We already know the answer there as well. Matthews dedicates every episode of “Hardball” to this premise. The NAACP issues press releases about it. For such conservatives Obama is the root of all evil, and such liberals believe the same about anyone who opposes this president, with both groups ascribing their own extra-sinister attributes to their political enemies (racist, socialist) to pepper an already established, mostly emotion-driven hatred. So much of today’s politics isn’t over policy differences, per se—but political identity.

This brings us to the most deplorable and encouraging aspects of the Tea Party—none of which has much to do with race. The Tea Partier who honestly believes that America has just now reached the breaking point due to the ascendancy of Obama and the Democrats is really just the partisan Republican of old, and has now simply expanded his yelling activities beyond the TV in his living room. This perception of the Tea Party, coupled with the belief that such protesters also have hoods and robes stuffed away in their closet, is, by-and-large, what the Left believes. To the extent that this is true, this type of Tea Party is worthless precisely because it will fade away the moment Republicans start spending us into oblivion again.

But rejecting the old partisanship that has long characterized American politics is exactly where the Tea Party is encouraging. How many Tea Party folks now defend the big spending, budget-busting George W. Bush years? Sure, they will point out that Obama is spending more, and they will admit to voting for Dubya—but a significant portion of Tea Partiers will not defend him. Talk radio might still defend Bush, and Republican politicians who marched in lockstep with the last administration try to stay as quiet as possible about it—but the Tea Party base?

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During the Bush presidency, William Kristol’s Weekly Standard closely mirrored the administration’s agenda, not only in the magazine’s unwavering enthusiasm for war with Iraq, but in trying to make connections between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, assertions that should now be considered at least as wild as those who believe 9-11 was an “inside job” carried out by the United States government. Kristol, whose magazine once ran a cover story on the supposed “connection” between Saddam and Osama, likely considers the so-called “9-11 Truth” movement a collection of conspiracy-minded kooks, but in the mid-2000s the same could be said of the Weekly Standard, which perpetuated its own conspiracy myth to promote a war that Americans likely would not have supported otherwise.

But support it Americans did, particularly on the Right where everyone from the president and vice president down to talk radio either explicitly said or heavily implied that there was a connection between 9-11 and Iraq. Working in talk radio, I still receive the occasional phone call from listeners who believe this nonsense.

And I still get plenty of phone calls from conservatives who honestly believe we must stay in Afghanistan at all costs. When Kristol called for Michael Steele’s resignation after the Republican National Committee Chairman dared to raise questions about the wisdom of our war in Afghanistan, it reminded me of just how much influence—and damage—neoconservatives have exerted on the larger conservative movement. During the Bush years, if Steele had voiced such criticism, he likely wouldn’t have survived, as there was no room for debate on foreign policy—or the size of government, the national debt, increased executive power—the very things the Tea Party raises hell about today. As an illustration of the significant difference between traditional and neo-conservatives, during the 2004 election, the New York Times‘ David Kirkpatrick reported that Kristol said he’d take “(John) Kerry over (Pat) Buchanan or any of the lesser Buchananites on the right. If you read the last few issues of The Weekly Standard, it has as much or more in common with the liberal hawks than with traditional conservatives.”

Curiously, at the same time Kristol was calling for Steele’s head—and high profile conservatives like Ron Paul and columnist Ann Coulter were defending him—Sarah Palin sided with Kristol. Writes the Huffington Post’s Thomas Z. Dengotita, “Tea Party darling Sarah Palin has issued a major foreign policy statement on her Facebook page taking a generally hawkish neocon line. She wants, for example, to eliminate the withdrawal timetable for US troops in Afghanistan and presses for support of that war, along with other aggressive measures. This puts her with Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol and other conservatives who are demanding Michael Steele’s resignation for knocking the war.”

Palin’s stance poses a challenge to the Tea Partiers and the larger conservative movement. Is the Right finally serious about limiting government and reducing spending, which must include at least addressing the fact that our now bankrupt country has a larger military budget than every other nation combined, or will conservatives simply revert to the same old, Bush-style, Kristol-approved and Palin-suggested, neocon statism? Kristol freely admits that he would prefer a pro-war president John Kerry, or Obama, than a figure like Buchanan, Paul or any traditional conservative who might question American foreign policy. Ann Coulter asks, rightly, “Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney have demanded that Steele resign as head of the RNC for saying Afghanistan is now Obama’s war — and a badly thought-out one at that. (Didn’t liberals warn us that neoconservatives want permanent war?)… I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government and a strong national defense, but I guess permanent war is on the platter now, too.”

Coulter makes the distinction that Palin and her adviser, Kristol, ignore—that there is a difference between support for a strong national defense and support for nonsensical permanent war.

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In so many columns, in so many ways, I have repeatedly made the case that an unquestioning attitude toward America's wars, always masquerading as “patriotism,” is completely at odds with traditional conservatism—whether in a libertarian fiscal sense, or even old fashioned Russell Kirk-style pragmatism, who believed history and experience should be guides above ideology. Nevertheless, the single-issue minded (that single issue being war, war and more war) neoconservatives successfully transformed George W. Bush’s Republican Party into eager world’s policeman—and they intend to keep it that way.

I don’t always agree with pundit Ann Coulter, but major kudos to a conservative of her stature taking on the neocons by attacking them on the very issue (their only issue) where they’ve done the most damage. Defending Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele’s "controversial" questioning of Obama’s foreign policy, Coulter writes:

Republicans used to think seriously about deploying the military. President Eisenhower sent aid to South Vietnam, but said he could not "conceive of a greater tragedy" for America than getting heavily involved there.

But now I hear it is the official policy of the Republican Party to be for all wars, irrespective of our national interest.
What if Obama decides to invade England because he's still ticked off about that Churchill bust? Can Michael Steele and I object to that? Or would that demoralize the troops?

Nonetheless, Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney have demanded that Steele resign as head of the RNC for saying Afghanistan is now Obama's war — and a badly thought-out one at that. (Didn't liberals warn us that neoconservatives want permanent war?)

I thought the irreducible requirements of Republicanism were being for life, small government and a strong national defense, but I guess permanent war is on the platter now, too.

In a recent issue of Foreign Policy magazine, journalist Peter Beinart reassesses the legacy of Ronald Reagan by first restating the most common assumption about our 40th president, that “Ronald Reagan was the Ultimate Hawk.” Is this true? “Not so much,” writes Beinart:

“Today’s conservatives have conjured a mythic Reagan who never compromised with America’s enemies and never shrank from a fight. But the real Reagan did both those things, often. In fact, they were a big part of his success… Sure, Reagan spent boatloads — some $2.8 trillion all told — on the military. And yes, he funneled money and guns to anti-communist rebels like the Nicaraguan Contras and Afghan mujahideen, while lecturing Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down that wall. But on the ultimate test of hawkdom — the willingness to send U.S. troops into harm’s way — Reagan was no bird of prey. He launched exactly one land war, against Grenada, whose army totaled 600 men. It lasted two days. And his only air war — the 1986 bombing of Libya — was even briefer. Compare that with George H.W. Bush, who launched two midsized ground operations, in Panama (1989) and Somalia (1992), and one large war in the Persian Gulf (1991). Or with Bill Clinton, who launched three air campaigns — in Bosnia (1995), Iraq (1998), and Kosovo (1999) — each of which dwarfed Reagan’s Libya bombing in duration and intensity. Do I even need to mention George W. Bush?”

Reagan’s comparably humble foreign policy is worth noting, precisely because so many of his neoconservative admirers today insist that Dubya’s wars, or even Obama’s insanity in Afghanistan, somehow reflect a “what would Reagan do?” philosophy. Yet, the opposite is more true and given his record, it is hard to imagine Reagan launching, or enduring, wars as foolish and long as what the U.S. currently finds itself bogged down in. Reagan had an aversion to prolonged military conflict, something either forgotten or intentionally ignored by his pro-war champions today. Writes Beinart:

“As early as 1982, after Reagan skirmished with Israel (and) declined to send U.S. troops to Central America… Commentary’s Norman Podhoretz declared that neoconservatives were ‘sinking into a state of near political despair.’ New York Times columnist William Safire announced that ‘if Ronald Reagan fails to awake to the hard-liners’ anger at his betrayal, he will discover that he has lost his bedrock constituency.’ By 1984, after Reagan withdrew troops from their peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, Podhoretz moaned that ‘in the use of military power, Mr. Reagan was much more restrained’ than his right-wing supporters had hoped.”

But how about Reagan’s supposed crown achievement, in helping to win the Cold War? According to the neocons in his day, who apparently have short memories these days, Reagan got that wrong too. Writes Beinart:

“(N)othing compared with the howls of outrage that accompanied Reagan’s dovish turn toward the Soviet Union. In 1986, when Reagan would not cancel his second summit with Gorbachev over Moscow’s imprisonment of an American journalist, Podhoretz accused him of having ‘shamed himself and the country’ in his ‘craven eagerness’ to give away the nuclear store… When Reagan signed the INF Treaty, most Republicans vying to succeed him came out in opposition. Grassroots conservative leaders established the Anti-Appeasement Alliance to oppose ratification and ran newspaper advertisements comparing Gorbachev to Hitler and Reagan to Neville Chamberlain.”

In December of last year, a Public Policy Poll ranked Ronald Reagan as the most popular modern president and he certainly remains popular in the GOP, where everyone from John McCain to Sarah Palin claims to be a “Reagan Republican.” Considering this continuing popularity, it is well worth pointing out that Reagan as the “ultimate hawk” is largely a myth—at least compared to how most of the Republicans today who speak in his name view American foreign policy.

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Even among Israel’s harshest critics, I’m not aware of anyone serious who believes or espouses what veteran White House reporter Helen Thomas said recently—that Israeli Jews should return to their nations of origin in Poland, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe, where they or their ancestors resided prior to World War II. Such a statement grossly ignores the almost unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust and Thomas should be ashamed and embarrassed for even making it.

But if we are to be honest, Thomas’s sin had more to do with who she dared to criticize than what she actually said. For instance, what if Thomas had suggested white Australians should return to where they came from, out of respect for the occupied Aborigines? Or perhaps white Americans should vacate parts of the Southwest United States that once belonged to Mexico, or even go back to Europe altogether, giving the Chicora and the Cherokee back their rightful land? Of course, these suggestions are as silly as what Thomas said, but it’s hard to imagine anyone being forced to resign over them. It’s also not hard to imagine some pundits on the Left, or perhaps leaders for Hispanic-advocate groups, making such statements about the U.S. in particular, with little or no repercussions.

Writing for the LA Times, UCLA professor Saree Makdisi notices a blatant double standard concerning the Thomas controversy, “(If) it is unacceptable to say that Israeli Jews don’t belong in Palestine, it is also unacceptable to say that the Palestinians don’t belong on their own land… Yet that is said all the time in the United States, without sparking the kind of moral outrage generated by Thomas’s remark.” Makdisi notes that when Israel was created in 1948 “Europeans and Americans were, at the time, willing to ignore or simply dismiss the injustice inflicted on the Palestinians, who, by being forced from their land, were made to pay the price for a crime they did not commit.” Makdisi then goes on to outline many instances of well-respected pundits and politicians making the same sort of harsh and unreasonable—and outright racist—comments Thomas did, only with the criticism directed at the Palestinians, concluding, “An endless deluge of statements of support for the actual, calculated, methodical dehumanization of Arabs in general and Palestinians in particular goes without comment; whereas a single offhand comment by an 89-year-old journalist, whose long and distinguished record of principled commitment and challenges to state power entitles her to respect — and the benefit of the doubt — causes her to be publicly pilloried.”

My purpose here is not to defend Thomas, or even Israel or Palestine, but free speech. Being politically incorrect should mean more than a politician’s willingness to oppose some liberal policy or some shock jock’s eagerness to make a crude remark. Political correctness implies many things, but perhaps the best definition is that some subjects are so beyond reproach that to even “go there” means the inquisitor should be immediately discredited, read out of polite society, or as in Thomas’ case, forced to end their career. Challenging the status quo—the alleged role of the press—necessarily requires questioning the very premise upon which our conventional wisdom rests. How can anyone possibly challenge the status quo without occasionally saying, thinking or writing things that sometimes stray outside the limits of respectable opinion? The very notion seems impossible.

While I don’t condone her controversial comments I also don’t condone the overreaction to them, and I’d rather have an army of Helen Thomas’s speaking their minds and saying plenty of stupid things, than a press so constricted by fear that it never challenges convention.

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In the upcoming runoff for South Carolina’s 1st Congressional District, the losing Tea Party-anointed candidate in that race, attorney Larry Kobrovsky, has said that both primary winners—Charleston County Councilman Tim Scott and fellow Councilman Paul Thurmond—are too “establishment” to deserve an endorsement from grassroots conservatives. This is true, but there’s also another reason to be reluctant to endorse such Republicans: Because neither one of these men is really as conservative as he claims to be—and not just in the obvious ways establishment-weary Tea Partiers might think.

In his recent column “A Tea Party to Nowhere” former CIA counter-terrorism specialist Philip Giraldi writes “Most Tea Partiers claim to want smaller and cheaper government, less interference from Washington in their daily lives… (but) Most also want a strong, assertive national defense and are supporters of an aggressive foreign and security policy.” Giraldi notes the incoherence of conservatives holding both positions:

“They fail to understand that it is precisely the interventionist defense and foreign policies that are driving the bad things they see in government… Ballooning defense and security spending… all accomplished without raising taxes, has been the engine of growth for a $13 trillion national debt, a total that increases by $4 billion every day. The United States now accounts for 45% of the entire world total for military spending, euphemistically referred to as ‘defense.’ The Pentagon budget has gone from $432 billion in 2001 to a projected $720 billion in 2011, not including the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Federal Government is twice as big as it was in 2001… Tea Partiers have unfortunately been fed a line of hokum by politicians aided and abetted by the mainstream media.”

It would be helpful if Tea Party folks reluctant to endorse men they perceive as establishment candidates, like Scott and Thurmond, would finally make the connection that the most crucial membership requirement for being part of the Republican establishment is a politician’s support for the foreign policy status quo. The reason so many GOP bigwigs went after Rand Paul in his bid for US Senate in Kentucky recently was not simply because Paul has an interest in smaller government, but because he is comprehensive enough in his conservatism to be willing to look at all of government spending—including the Pentagon. This is the same reason the GOP establishment does not attack Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin to the extent that they do Paul, as Palin’s foreign policy views differ little from Dick “deficits don’t matter” Cheney—who understandably, has admitted to being a Palin fan.

True to form, the establishment always tries to frame any criticism of our national security status quo as unrealistic and coming from those who don’t believe in having any defense at all. This is preposterous. There’s a world of difference between actually defending the nation and trying to defend the entire world, our current policy and never-ending predicament. But it is true that we do have a disproportionate view of the actual terrorist threat versus what we sacrifice, or as Giraldi notes “The Tea Partiers should instead understand that terrorists will only tear down the United States if we Americans help them to do so. Irrational fear of a small group of men hiding in a cave in Asia is what drives larger government, the infringement of civil liberties, and more taxes and regulation.”

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Wednesday evening, I had the pleasure of participating in a panel on the subject of “Anger in Politics,” inspired by artist Fletcher Crossman’s “State of Shock” exhibit currently on display at Eye Level Art, downtown. By constructing a fictional scenario in which President Obama is assassinated, Crossman’s work examines the seeming heightened rage and incivility in today’s politics and particularly what the reaction by the conservative media might be to such a tragedy, taking aim at Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Report, among others. The work is certainly provocative.

So was the discussion. I was joined by Crossman, my WTMA co-host Richard Todd, fellow CP columnist Will Moredock, College of Charleston Communication Dept. Chair Brian McGee, Charleston Tea Party representative Mike Murphee and New York Hip-Hop artist Will Gray. The panel was moderated by Washington, D.C. based political strategist Ryan Prucker.

McGee brought up the salient and most obvious first point, when considering Crossman’s work—that anger in American politics is nothing new. Pointing to not only the political vitriol commonplace in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, over everything from slavery to the New Deal, but that George W. Bush was demonized as much by the Left as Obama is now by the Right. McGee is right. Crossman conceded McGee’s points, but believed there really is something new and different happening in American politics, and that there is a new, somewhat unprecedented “anger.” Crossman is also right.

There has always been anger in American politics but what’s new is the extent to which it’s outside of the two-party machine. Those who see the Tea Party, grassroots Right as simply an auxiliary of the Republican National Committee need to take their case to recently ousted, so-called “conservative” Senator Bob Bennett of Utah, establishment Republican Governor Charlie Crist in Florida who was forced to quit the party, or even explain the landslide GOP primary victory in Kentucky of Rand Paul—son of Ron—who was firmly opposed by the old Republican guard. Limbaugh and Coulter have been just as loopy and bombastic—and conventionally partisan—as they are now, for over a decade. But it’s their traditional audience that’s changing the political narrative right now, with Rush and Ann following more than leading. All conservative pundits want to latch on to the Tea Party—even as they’re still not quite sure what it all means. Limbaugh and hosts like Sean Hannity are far more comfortable rooting for Dick Cheney and Karl Rove than Tea Party leader, Paul. This disenchantment is what’s “new,” in American politics and even extends to the Left, where a liberal president going to bat for Democratic candidate Arlen Specter did not stop Obama’s Pennsylvania base from choosing the other candidate.

With much of the discussion focusing on the rise of the Tea Party movement, it seems the primary disagreement among the panelists was over where this new “anger” comes from and what it represents. Crossman believed it was simply an extension of the Republican Party and Moredock tended to agree. Tea Party rep Murphee contended that it was born of rage over evaporating freedoms, something some on the panel and in the audience found too vague. I argued that it began with widespread backlash against the George W. Bush sponsored illegal alien amnesty proposal, was kicked into high gear by the Bush-sponsored $700 billion TARP bailout (Troubled Assets Relief Program) and fully exploded with the election of Obama and the implementation of his agenda. Liberals who immediately, and predictably, want to insist that race (our president is black, if you didn’t know…) is a primary motivator, don’t ever seem to think that a $14 trillion national debt is that big a deal. In his comments, Murphee might have been too vague, or too concerned about the minutia of local bureaucracy, but he represents a wider mainstream audience genuinely concerned about an unsustainable status quo. Talking about “taking my country back” is no less disingenuous that “make love, not war”—a sound bite used by another generation of protesters, who were also accused by their detractors of being against everything but the obvious, disastrous issue at hand.

The discussion was spirited, intelligent and a pleasure. Though much of it centered on perceptions of Left and Right—with stereotypes, misconceptions along with a few truths coming from both sides—the discussion was far better than anything you’re likely to hear on talk radio or the world of television punditry, Crossman’s primary targets. Fletcher Crossman is to be commended for his work, inspiring this conversation and Eye Level Art for hosting such an event.

By the time I was ten years old I already hated the government. When I was eight, they almost killed E.T. When I was nine, they wouldn’t let Kevin Bacon dance. At ten, I watched Rambo attempt to bring home prisoners of war from Vietnam only to be refused and left for dead by government bureaucrats. Long after outgrowing my concern for aliens and dancing rights, the cheesy, over-the-top 1985 “Rambo” movie still stuck with me because the plot was at least plausible. Would our government knowingly leave POWs behind? Did they?

In the introduction to a symposium in the latest issue of The American Conservative, TAC publisher Ron Unz confirms my childhood suspicion. In a piece titled “Was Rambo Right?” Unz writes:

“(T)he average teenage moviegoer of the 1980s watching mindless action films such as ‘Rambo,’ ‘Missing in Action,’ and ‘Uncommon Valor’ was seeing reality portrayed on screen… as the years and decades went by, and various schemes to ransom or rescue the POWs were considered and rejected, their continued existence became a major liability to numerous powerful political figures, whose reputations would have been destroyed if any of the prisoners ever returned and told his story to the American people. So none of them ever came home.”

Unz’s claims are based on the investigative work of Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Sydney Schanberg. No slouch, Unz notes that Schanberg was a high ranking editor for the New York Times, his book on Cambodia was made into the 1984 Oscar-winning movie “The Killing Fields,” and he is considered to be one of America’s foremost Vietnam War journalists. Schanberg makes a very detailed case that our government—including presidents, congressman and other officials—either had knowledge or were presented with evidence on numerous occasions pointing toward the existence of hundreds of American POWs left behind in Vietnam, and did little to nothing about it. Unz describes one of Schanberg’s allegations as “a story that if true might easily represent the single greatest act of national dishonor ever committed by our political leaders.”

Other than The American Conservative, Schanberg’s expose has only been published online by The Nation Institute and that was in 2008. But if his story is true, only half true, or even ten percent true, why isn’t this a major news item? If President Obama makes a joke at a White House dinner, it makes headlines. If U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul takes a fairly conventional conservative position concerning illegal immigration, it becomes a controversy worthy of coverage. But the possible betrayal of hundreds of our soldiers in Vietnam orchestrated at the highest levels of government for decades? We hear nothing.

On Memorial Day it struck me that a holiday intended to honor the memory of those who served their country, might also be a good day for Americans to reflect on what their government does to its soldiers. Writes Pat Buchanan “While Americans this Memorial Day put flags out for all of their war dead, the arguments do not cease over the wisdom of the wars in which they fought and died.” But today, what I see is a glaring lack of argument with too many Americans simply assuming their government knows what it’s doing when it comes to foreign policy. Americans pay taxes, but still raise hell about it. They become involved in electoral politics, but still bash politicians. But when it comes to foreign affairs, it’s as if the same government everyone knows to be incompetent domestically gets a pass internationally. As we ask America’s bravest to put their lives on the line, something we salute, admire and memorialize—but are still reluctant to ask “why?”

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In the wake of Rachel Maddow’s interrogation of Rand Paul and his stance on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Young Americans for Liberty blogger Wesley Messamore posed a few choice questions for the MSNBC host: Would it be moral to force black restaurant owners to serve former Ku Klux Klansman, David Duke? If Fred Phelps, of “God Hates Fags” fame, walks into a gay bar, does he have the “right” to a Cosmopolitan? Considering that Phelps’s Westboro Baptist Church spends most of its time protesting military funerals, should this unpatriotic “preacher” be allowed to hoist red, white, and blue ribbon beer alongside Vietnam veterans at the local VFW, by force of law?

Maddow would probably consider these questions hypothetical, improbable, and irrelevant to the discussion at hand—just like her needling of Rand Paul about his support of the long -settled Civil Rights Act. Ironically, if Maddow were to admit that Duke or Phelps could or should be denied service, it would place her squarely in the libertarian camp—you know, along with Rand, the Klan, and the “racist” rest.

Though some liberals and even libertarians might disagree, there is a larger point being made than whether Paul or Maddow is correct in their particular debate. The most significant news is that finally—there will be actual debate.

The phony Left/Right divide represented by our two-party system hardly ever addresses any issues that have anything to do with what truly ails this country. To listen to Democrats, Bush wrecked the country and Obama’s wrecking machine is somehow fixing it, and too many Republicans seem to believe America has just now reached the point of collapse with the arrival of our current president, as if his predecessors had nothing to do with it. To follow the logic of the partisans who direct our national conversation, America’s problems aren’t systematic—but the result of the wrong party controlling the system. This is absurd.

Challenging our current, broken government necessarily means questioning sacred cows. With a $14 trillion dollar debt, should the federal government be in the retirement and healthcare business? Should the government be bailing out private industry and banks? Can the U.S. afford to continue policing the world? Democrats oppose Republicans’ micromanaging of such issues just as the GOP now opposes Obama’s tweaking of the status quo, but few venture outside conventional debate to question whether these should even be issues in the first place. With the rise of the Tea Partiers and widespread bipartisan disenchantment, American politics is changing and more substantive, root cause questions are beginning to be raised—and the establishment’s got nothing. Writes columnist Rich Lowry “When politics as usual is out of favor, expect some politics as unusual. That’s the newcomer Rand Paul, a stilted public performer with an unassailably anti-establishmentarian pedigree.”

Having a conversation about private property rights by addressing half-century old, segregation-ending, civil rights legislation is not a good way to make a national debut in a high profile campaign for U.S. Senate. Neither is talking about the Civil War and slavery a good way to begin a discussion of states’ rights, a conversation Ron Paul had with the late Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” in the midst of his 2008 presidential campaign. But this is what we’ve come to expect from the Pauls—professorial and often controversial questions about the very nature of American government.

Rand’s civil rights controversy has led some pundits to declare that that the Pauls’ brand of politics might be fine for the lecture hall but have no place in practical politics. Wrong—any politician at this late, economically unsustainable juncture, who is unwilling to bring up philosophical questions about what government can and cannot do, should or should not do, is not being practical.

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I have long contended that most supposedly "conservative" talk radio hosts are as much a part of the Republican establishment as George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, something evident in how they defended the last administration with the same frequency and ferocity as they attack the current one. Their beloved Bush administration can justifiably be called the first, full blown "neoconservative" presidency, a label I gave context in February:

Neoconservatives care about one thing—war (and where they can wage it). Says contributing editor to the Weekly Standard, neocon Max Boot: “Neoconservatives believe in using American might to promote American ideals abroad,” a progressive, Wilsonian vision, if there ever was one. As for traditional conservative concerns like limited government, fiscal responsibility, and constitutional fidelity, these are ideas neoconservatives will occasionally pay lip service to, so long as none of these principles interferes with their more important task of global military domination. It is no coincidence that George W. Bush—the first full-blown neoconservative presidential administration—did not limit government, was not fiscally responsible, and shredded the Constitution, while still implementing the most radical foreign policy in American history. Writes conservative columnist George Will, “The most magnificently misnamed neoconservatives are the most radical people in this town.”

Most mainstream conservative pundits still possess the neocon mindset and haven't really learned any lessons from the Bush years. Rush Limbaugh still praises Donald Rumsfeld. Karl Rove is a permanent guest on Sean Hannity's radio and TV programs. I listened to Rush, Hannity and Mark Levin's radio programs today, and while Rand Paul's "Tea Party" victory in the Republican primary for US Senate in Kentucky made headlines across the nation, three of the most prominent conservative talk hosts barely touched it. Why? TheHill.com's John Feehery has nailed it:

Rand Paul’s election may very well mean the beginning of the end of the neo-conservative movement in the Republican Party. It also might mark the beginning of the end of the social-conservative wing of the Republican Party.

During the nomination process of the presidential election two years ago, I wrote about the impact of the Ron Paul insurgency and its potential impact. Paul was a fundraising sensation and he had a cadre of committed followers who believed profoundly that the federal government had grown too big, had become too intrusive, had gone to war for all the wrong reasons and was too involved in the daily lives of the American people.

Paul went after some pretty significant sacred cows in the Republican orthodoxy. He thought the Iraq war was stupid and that our foreign policy presence in the Middle East was a big reason why we were attacked on 9/11. He thinks that the war on drugs is a waste of time, and that if people want to smoke pot, well, that is up to them. He thinks that the security apparatus of the United States makes America more of a police state and should be downsized dramatically.

Two years ago, those were not popular stances to take with conservative Republican primary voters who were used to the political rhetoric of George Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove.

But that has all changed, at least in Kentucky. My suspicion, though, is that this changing sentiment is spreading around the country.

There has always been the myth of the freedom voter. Those are the voters who want low taxes and government out of their lives. Grover Norquist calls these voters the “Leave me alone” caucus. But the leave-me-aloners are often outvoted in Republican primaries by the neo-cons — who think that big government should have a role in our daily lives — the social conservatives — who think that government needs to have a role in dictating morality in our lives — and national-security conservatives — who think that it is well worth it to sacrifice some freedoms so that we can remain safe.

Ron Paul, and now Rand Paul, challenges each and every one of those assumptions. Ron Paul used to quietly challenge them from the safety of the House of Representatives, where one vote is rarely critical to the passage of anything.

Rand Paul, should he get elected to the upper body, will have far more power to fight for Paulism in that chamber.

Rand Paul will be more than the skunk at the garden party in the United States Senate. He will be subversive when it comes to critical Republican orthodoxies. He represents a profound threat to the neo-cons and the social conservatives because he is willing to fight for the belief that the federal government should truly stay out of the lives of the American people.

The voters in Kentucky found this message so appealing that they gave Paul a huge primary victory last night. We will see if the American people, who are so insistent publicly that they want their freedoms back, are really willing to sacrifice some security for their liberty.