Then I ask you, how many army generals are liberals?
As Colin Powell (himself no extreme conservative) has clearly enunciated, almost all generals are averse to war, having been there & seen it magnified in its infinite detail. Liberal? Conservative? That need not be the issue.
The fact that liberal leadership (executives, different from generals) has not been successful in conducting wars does not speak to the notion of whether conservatives are "aggressive militarily". These are in no way related concepts.
Conservatives, unlike liberals, tend to be driven by fundamental, core beliefs and have the stomach to act contrary to poll results where it is called for. Why? Because the concept of "righteousness" is absolute in a conservative whereas liberals allow the concept to be driven by the needs of the moment.
The weakness of liberal executives apparently results in a series of second guesses. This, unfortunately, resulted in the incremental buildup of Vietnam -- LBJ didn't want to be there and as a result was unable to commit the proper level of force to end the war. The result, as we all know, was 50,000 dead American kids.
Similarly, Carter, when our hostages were taken, was petrified, unable to act. Any conservative president would have creamed Iran for its actions. Carter couldn't move -- fearful of getting us involved in a protracted engagement. Of course, Carter's gutting of our intelligence community further crippled our miliary.
Clinton is the best example of weak leadership. In particular, his failure to hammer Saddam when our weapons inspectors were ejected was one of the most incompetent moves on the part of an administration in our history. Inexcusable. We should have slammed Saddam instantly when this happened. Now, Bush II has inherited an untennable situation with respect to Saddam, that ultimately, will require military action. |
