What’s a Neocon To Do?
Bill Kristol is downright despondent
after his failed
search for an alternative to Donald Trump. Max Boot is indignant
about his “stupid”
party’s willingness to ride a bragging bull into a delicate China
policy shop. And the leading light of the first family of military interventionism
– Robert
Kagan – is actually
lining up Neoconservatives behind the Democratic nominee for president of
the United States.
At the same time, the Democrats have become the party of bare-knuckled, full-throated
American Exceptionalism. That transformation was announced with a vein-popping
zeal by retired general and wannabe
motivational screamer John Allen at the Democratic convention in the City
of Brotherly Love. During his “speech,” a few plaintive protests of “no
more war” were actually drowned-out by Democrats chanting “USA-USA-USA!”
This is the same Democratic Party often criticized by Kagan & Co. as the
purveyors of timidity, flaccidity, and moral perfidy. It’s not that Democrats
haven’t dropped bombs, dealt arms, and overturned regimes. They have. And they’ve
even got the Peace Prize-winning Obama-dropper
to prove it. But unlike enthusiastically belligerent Republicans, the Dems are
supposed to be the party that does it, but doesn’t really like to do it.
But now, they’ve got Hillary Clinton. And she’s weaponized
the State Department. She really
likes regime change. And her nominating convention not only embraced the
military, but it sanctified the very Gold Star families that Neocon-style interventionism
creates. It certainly created
the pain of the Khan family who lost their son in the illegal
war in Iraq. But the Dems didn’t mention that sad fact as they grabbed the flag
away from the Republicans.
Now that’s truly Neo-confusing.
It kinda feels like reality has slipped off its axis and we’ve landed on a
Bizarro World version
of America. Democrats are acting like Republicans. Pat Buchanan is championing
the GOP’s “Peace
Candidate.” And the Neocons are fleeing from a party they’ve used like a
geopolitical cudgel for the better part of three decades.
At first glance, it all makes sense. Trump captured the GOP nomination in no
small part by trashing two of the Neocons’ favorite things ever – the Bush family
and the Iraq War. He also suggested early on that he’d approach the Israeli
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as (gasp!) an honest broker. Trump said
he really wanted to “make
that deal.” Without irony, one-time Neocon
wonderboy Marco Rubio remarked that it isn’t a “real
estate deal” when, in fact, that’s exactly what it is.
But the ever-pliable Trump quickly
got religion on Israel. He did an about-face,
marched into AIPAC’s annual confab, and
staked out a claim on the…