Afghanistan

"My question to all of you is, does the call by General McChrystal to invest trillions of dollars and (probably) thousands of more American lives over the next decade to "build" a new, more secure and democratic Afghanistan not contradict the most basic of "conservative" principles as I understand them to be? The notion of "nation building" is historically seen as "New Deal" in nature (anyone recall the Marshall Plan?) and has questions all its own in regards to furthering the interests and security of the USA."

It's an interesting question that's been growing for some time now. It's absolutely true that traditional conservative dogma dictates a noninterventionist policy. I don't know how many times I've heard Pat Buchanan quote George Washington's farewell address warning of "becoming entangled in foreign wars." But that's what is interesting - because the converse is true: the traditional interventionists, i.e. those left of center, have now taken on an isolationist stance - "get out of everywhere, right now." Buchanan & Ron Paul are on the same side of the Iraq argument as Dennic Kucinich (by the way, I couldn't remember Kucinich's name so I googled "congressman claims to have seen UFO" and his name popped right up - how great is that?).

At any rate I believe this is where we enter the "neo conservative", as Buchanan phrased it, whom in a post 9/11 world Bush & the military intellegencia turned to. The traditional arguments that were posited to "leave" Vietnam or communist Latin America were "we don't need to be there, it doesn't affect us at home." Others would argue we must stop the spread of communism to our allies for our own security, but the "lets just focus on domestic issues" arguments were always potent because no one believed that communists were going to take over the US (at least not until the 2008 elections ... hehehe). However 9/11 has shown us (I'm not lecturing here, just proposing the argument in general terms) that this new enemy WILL follow us home. Muhammad Ali once quipped in his (in)famous refusal to adhere to the draft, "Them Vietnamese never did nothing to me." Well, "them" terrorists did. In fact the exact same terrorists whom perpetrated 9/11 and the infrastructure which harbored and supported them is who we are fighting in Afghanistan now.

The choice is clear to me - stay and slug this out, as painful and unsettling as that might sound, or hand Al Qeda and the Taliban a victory of monumental proportions. For not just they will be the victors, but Hezbollah, Hamas, and Jihad movements the world over. Their ranks will swell to unimaginable numbers. They will again have a state sponsored base of operations from which to attack us - basically we do this whole thing from September 11th, 2001 through to today all over again. Only this time perhaps 30,000 Americans, or 300,000 will perish.

Is this a "conservative" mantra? No. Not a traditional one. However, the Founding Fathers were considered wildly "liberal" for their day, and the current incarnation of that label doesn't resemble them at all. In my opinion so has the label "conservative" changed. It is isolationist no more. Pat Buchanan can call us "neo" all he wants, and it's factually accurate; however, if he can recount for me just how many presidential elections he and Ron Paul are winning, I'd be glad to listen. Our voting public (the majority any way) inherently understands that there is a threat looming and we must proactively extinguish it. And for better or worse THAT philosophy is for the foreseeable future indelibly part of the conservative ideology, and rightly so in my opinion, for with the ideologies of Obama, Pelosi and Reid governing Washington [neo] conservatives are the only adults left at the table.