And While We're at It

To see the kind of "conservative" arguments Victor Hanson is out to defeat (and he does a bang up job), read the counterargument put forward in this article by Stephan Halper and Jonathan Clarke. The authors make the tired (and inaccurate) charge that "neoconservatives" have hijacked American foreign policy under the guise of Reaganism. They state, correctly, that Reagan's response to terrorism was far less muscular than Bush's. As Hanson notes, that history of failure to take terrorism seriously -- something most of us were guilty of in the '80s and '90s -- led directly to 9/11.

But like other critics who deride the necessity of taking the war on terrorism to the terrorists themselves, they barely mention the fact that we were attacked. Apparently, the murder of 3,000 Americans in a single day, which came on the heels of years of smaller acts of terrorism in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East, changed nothing. Halper and Clarke offer no alternative vision or plan of action.

Furthermore, their argument fails to recognize that Reagan's foreign policy was in fact innovative, bold, and muscular. It marked a stark departure from the weak, appeasement-based stances of Carter and Ford, and it was crafted to respond to the principal threat of the day -- the USSR.

As others have pointed out, there's a difference in tradition and traditionalism, or in a conservative and a reactionary. Working within a tradition, innovation is welcomed, but never for innovation's sake. The Bush administration has crafted a policy in response to an historical event -- a brutal attack on America -- and not in obeisance to an ideology. Going to war to protect Americans in America falls well within the bounds of traditional American foreign policy. What would the President's critics have done?