The problem is: since WWII, most conservatives have adopted and adapted the Wilsonian belief that The United States has been charged with making the world, ultimately, into one, big [happy] Democracy.

[Wilson was a rabid Progressive who applied his Utopian ideas to the world stage...and it failed miserably. FDR, as has every Leftist leader who has come along believes about the failed Leftist experiments of the past, believed that Wilsonianism had not been really tried yet and that he was gifted enough to make it work. Both were quite wrong because their premises were fantastical.]

This belief in a Universal Democracy Project, as it were, was well-entrenched in the GOP before there ever was such a thing as a neo-conservative. Thus, the table was set when the neo-cons came along and sat at the Right Wing feast – and we were so overjoyed to have them on our side that we ignored the fact that the neo-cons never stopped wearing their Made-In-Left-Land rose-colored glasses. Soon, in fact, many conservatives were wearing them, as well.

For some on the Right, this state of affairs was so bad in their eyes that they reacted, as men often do, by running to the exact opposite view: isolationism.

In the midst of all this micheghas, Right Wingers on both sides forgot that being successful in any venture requires one to practice The Art Of The Possible, and not to engage in flights of fancy and whim [ie: idealism].

The world is what it is. A is A. People are fallen creatures – only the degree to which they are corrupted varies. The American Experiment cannot be conducted in any other country because there never has been and never will be the same set of circumstances present any where else in the world that were to be found here in 1787. Therefore, any efforts to impose the American template on any group of people in the world are doomed to fail.

Ultimately, we have to be concerned with our own security and survival. And this requires us to see the rest of the world, not as a set of laboratories, but as always and forever different. This requires us to act accordingly.

When we go to war our goal must not be to win it and then seek to transform the loser nation(s) into a mirror image of ourselves. Our goal must be to deal our enemies such a crippling blow that they will not be a threat to us again in the near future, issue them a warning that we’ll be back if they dare threaten us again, and then go home.

You equate the Balkans with the Iraq war, but the issue is scale. The trick is to get the foreign policy done at lower cost in lives and treasure.

I don’t know what era of the United States of America you came from but I cannot identify a period where US government foreign policy since 1945 where the quote “America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to freedom and independence of all.” applies. The US government has been beating foreign bee hives since before I was born (1967).

I don’t doubt that there are people and groups across the world that hate America not to mention freedom. If such a problem person or group can be identified then let the US government declare war and obliterate the problem. As for Afghanistan I hardly think that the average informed American will say that after 11 years that the US armed forces have obliterated the problem of American freedom haters in Afghanistan.

The question was not the Afghans hating us, it was who they were harboring. ISI also had a lot to do with it as well.

Well, they haven’t knocked down any more buildings here, have they?

Then I would suggest you pay attention to what he really says. All of what he really says. I don’t agree with some of what he says, but what you are spouting is a neocon lie.

He does not say that we should not protect our interests, but that does not entail going off on Wilsonian crusades as we have for the last 11 years or so. Many of us old Cold Warriors thought going into Iraq, for example, was a mistake. We laughed at morons like Frum because it was clear he did not understand the issues.

A rather limited view of what victory is supposed to be. Not to mention grossly stupid.

Your typoed username stinks of troll.

Because shut up, that’s why. It’s not explainable unless you paranoiacally (I think I just made up that word) fear having logistical superiority. All because Washington warned against foreign entanglements.

Putting Paulism aside, I think Conservatives should stand against all ‘stealth’ foreign intervention. Particularly the CIA. – Likely not founded with the consent or will of the American people, functions without their knowledge or consent. What’s more it is responsible for most ‘american blunders’, and doubles functions which can be more transparently done by the Pentagon and FBI, directly connected to military or criminal investigations which supposedly justify its existence.
I think the CIA, in concept and implementation, is unAmerican.
But I’m just a foreigner, over to you.

How do you declare war against non-governmental groups like al Qaeda?

Give the US government some credit. If it can figure a way to authorize the Department of Education as Constitutional surely they can figure out a way to declare war against a non-governmental group.

The problem is that no “humble foreign policy” survives contact with the enemy.