POST-BUSH FOREIGN POLICY?
Rich Lowry
The Corner
There's been some discussion lately about what conservative foreign policy will look like post-Bush. I think we might be getting a glimpse of it in the cartoon controversy. I was struck by this comment last night on the all-star panel by Fred Barnes:
It tells us a lot. It tells us our enemy is not just al-
Qaeda. That there's Muslims all over the world are
certainly enemies of western civilization. Look at what
the showing of these cartoons which I originally thought
was a mistake. They shouldn't have run them. Now I think
we've learned a lot from this. We see Muslims contempt
for democracy, for freedom of speech, for freedom of the
press and particularly for freedom of religion.
He added later:
...from the size of these demonstrations, these are not
jihadists, these are not people that are trying to get
into Iraq so they can blow up a Shiite mosque or
something or kill American soldiers, I think this is
mainstream Islam in Britain and Denmark and all over
Europe and then we see these -- some of them are
supposedly friendly Arab governments like Egypt and other
places promoting this. This is not a fringe protest
against Western civilization.
What was so striking about this is that Fred is generally a fan of all-things-Bush in foreign policy. But it is at the least uncomfortable--although perhaps not strictly inconsistent--to believe the things Fred said last night and still support a sweeping program of democratization based on the belief that people everywhere have the same yearning for freedom.
I'm guessing this contradiction, or semi-contradiction, will works itself out in coming months and we will begin to see the real emergence of the “to hell with them hawks” (patron saint: Derb). They believe that it was right to invade Iraq, but wrong to try to make it better afterwards. They will support military action in Iran, but only if it doesn't involve any re-building or sticky involvement with Iranians. They will want, more or less, to give up on the “hearts and minds” element of the War of Terror, since the people whose minds and hearts are in question haven't been cooperating (so: “to hell with them”). In Walter Russell Mead's terms, they will detach Bush's Jacksonianism from his Wilsonianism. They will keep the Jacksonianism, but toss the Wilsonianism aside as fuzzy-headed and disproven by events, from the Iraq insurgency to the cartoon riots.
That's my guess...
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