Living in a Dream World

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If you need an example of just how sophomoric both Bill Kristol’s Weekly Standard and AEI’s Michael Rubin can be, don’t miss Rubin’s latest article in the Standard, entitled “Living in a Dream World: The Political Fantasies of Foreign Service Officers”. Rubin’s target is the contents of a regular column in the State Department’s in-house monthly magazine, State, in which diplomats overseas offer brief descriptions of life in their host countries. It’s very difficult to figure out why Rubin, a talented polemicist and Rudi Giuliani’s “Senior Iran and Turkey advisor”, would spend much time going over old issues of the magazine to prove what he calls the “sheer inanity of Foreign Service thinking.” Perhaps he had an intern with a lot of time on his or her hands, and the Standard needed some filler. On the other hand, most neo-conservatives, especially proteges of Richard Perle, believe there’s never a bad time to bash the “realists” in the State Department. (Indeed, in his new book, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, Jacob Heilbrunn quotes Douglas Feith, Rubin’s boss during Bush’s first term, as saying that his family’s history as Holocaust victims made him understand the true nature of foreign policy, “unlike the ‘WASPs in the State Department.’” With an attitude like that, it’s no wonder the Feith and the Pentagon civilians tried so hard to keep the State Department out of the loop.)

Of course, it was Rubin more than any other neo-con who repeatedly assailed Gen. David Petraeus for trying to “appease” Ba’athists in his efforts in 2004 and 2005 to pacify Mosul and al-Anbar provinces, as I pointed out in a post last October on the Likudist cast to Giuliani’s foreign-policy team. As late as 14 months ago, Rubin, a de-Ba’athification hawk and Chalabi acolyte from the get-go, was still complaining bitterly about Petraeus’ early efforts to co-opt the Sunni insurgency. That those efforts are now given credit — even by Rubin’s fellow-neo-cons and most especially Kristol, who named Petraeus the Standard’s “Man of the Year” just last month — for what progress has been made in reducing the violence in Iraq over the past year is ironic to say the least. Indeed, the relative success of Petraeus’ tactics also suggests that it’s not just foreign service officers who inhabit dream worlds.

Michigan And The War

Related to James Bovard’s question about the war and the Michigan primary, here are some indications of how the war may be affecting the primary.  According to Strategic Vision, 39% of Republicans support withdrawal for American forces from Iraq in the next six months, which hints that Michigan should be receptive to an antiwar message.  However, as he noted about the exit polls from New Hampshire, antiwar voters seem to have backed McCain there for some reason, which suggests that the war was either a low priority for most of these voters or they did not identify McCain with the ultra-hawkish wing of the GOP.  According to Rasmussen, Ron Paul has 8% support, which is one of his best poll results since his fifth-place finish in New Hampshire last week.  Based on the crosstabs of that Rasmussen poll, 92% believe Iraq is “very important” or “somewhat important,” but those who rate it as very important tend to be “conservative,” among whom Paul does not poll as well as among “moderates.”  To the best of my knowledge, all the leading candidates have been running heavily on domestic, economic issues, given Michigan’s high unemployment rate.  The wild card remains Democratic crossover voters who have no stake in the essentially one-sided Democratic primary, where Clinton is the only leading named candidate on the ballot because of a DNC ruling againt Michigan for its early primary.  These Democrats could follow the lead of Kos and back Romney, or antiwar Democrats could vote on principle for Paul and boost his final result.

The War Issue in the Michigan Primary?

Unfortunately, I don’t live in Michigan [!] – but I’m curious on the big vote on Tuesday –  

How are the presidential candidates playing the Iraq war issue in the Michigan primary?

Are any candidates running radio or TV ads explicitly opposing or supporting the war?

If so, are the ads on the war resonating?

Does the Iraq war seem to be a major issue for voters?

 

NH Voters Thought McCain Opposed the Iraq War?

CNN crunched the exit poll data from yesterday’s New Hampshire primary and found that “among the 34 percent [of Republican primary voters] who said they disapproved of the war, McCain had a wide advantage over the GOP field — even over Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the sole advocate of a U.S. withdrawal in the Republican field.” (hat tip to Think Progress).

Perhaps such voters did not realize the temporal difference between exiting Iraq “now” (in Ron Paul’s case) versus 10,000 years from now (in McCain’s case, according to his comment on CBS’s Face the Nation last week).

McCain has rarely missed a chance to grovel at Bush’s feet to support the Iraq war.

Why were so many voters who claimed to oppose the war so ignorant?

The History of the Anti-Interventionist Right

The first installment of my review-essay of Murray N. Rothbard’s The Betrayal of the American Right, entitled “The Real American Right,” is now up at Taki’s Top Drawer. The second installment is up tomorrow, and the third on Wednesday.

I have to say that I’m really jazzed about this particular piece, and had great fun writing it. Today’s “conservative” movement is a caricature — and, in many ways, an inversion — of what it used to be. In my essay, I examine the historical roots of the “Old Right,” the anti-interventionist, pro-liberty movement that grew up in opposition to the war-mongering collectivist currents of the 1930s.

Oh, and I’ve been doing a lot of Paul-blogging over there: go and check it out.

UPDATE: Part II of the series appears here.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Part III is here.