Well, What Are You For?

Our friends in the Democratic Party (other than Joe Lieberman, that is) often talk about foreign policy merely in negative terms. George Bush shouldn’t have attacked Iraq; George Bush isn’t protecting us sufficiently from terrorism; George Bush is doing too much in a phony attempt to protect us from terrorists—these are many of the shibboleths of our friends on the political Left.

Now, dear reader, to some extent this is entirely natural. After all, Republicans currently control the presidency and both houses of Congress; it stands to reason that Democrats would offer their views on world affairs in mostly negative terms.

And yet it seems to speak to a poverty of ideas within the Democratic Party itself, which is quite dangerous for a movement hoping to recapture the White House during our Age of Terrorism.

It just doesn’t make sense: Our pals on the Left are always prattling on about the “root causes” of problems, but—besides lunatic causes like the existence of Israel and George Bush—they can’t fathom a “root cause” for terrorism. Rather, it’s the political Right that has trumpeted a lack of political freedom as a key ingredient in the fomenting of anti-Western violence. Need a “root cause”? The Republicans have one; Ned Lamont doesn’t.

Many have expressed surprise that the Republican Party has become home to a muscular Wilsonian foreign policy commonly called neoconservatism. After all, a quick look in the history books will demonstrate that the Grand Old Party was quite isolationist in its not-too-distant past.

But, if you ask us, perhaps the more peculiar thing is how gosh-darned parochial the political Left has become. Ask your lefty pals what they think the president should do, and they will likely give you one of two options (which are not mutually exclusive): Leave Iraq and/or offer capitulations to the terrorists; focus solely on capturing Osama bin Laden.

These, we feel, are rather simple-minded “solutions” to real problems. Regardless of what one thinks about the justice of deposing Saddam Hussein, it should be obvious that cutting and running wouldn’t make things better in Iraq or in the world. And, if you have been paying the slightest attention to the terrorism the world has experienced since 9/11, you should know that capturing Osama bin Laden—while surely offering some catharsis—will not end the terrorist menace.

So, the next time you’re talking to a pal who’s blabbing about the horrors of the Iraq War, ask him what he thinks the US should do to combat terrorism. Nothing? Give up Israel to the terrorists? Allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon? Put the ACLU in charge?

We’re pretty sure you won’t get a good answer.