John S;
What planet are you living on? The “hurt no feelings” liberal consensus would stop every one of those initiatives before they got out of the pre-proposal stage. That consensus is unfortunately like the apocryphal mule that has to be smashed across the forehead with a 2×4 just to get its attention. What it will take to do that, 9/11 having failed, is frightening to imagine.
The mesh of denial and pretense that constitutes modern isolationism is as flexible and resilient as it is irrational. Incompatible arguments and information are wrapped, bounced, and thereafter ignored.
The only gap I’ve seen so far is a certain anxiety about being labelled “serial back-stabbers” if the forces are pulled. The underlying reason, believe it or not, seems to be that it implies they have been insensitive to the feelings of the troops, which is Crime #1 in the liberal Ethos. (It wouldn’t rank up there with the Republicans, Bush, and America in general being so insensitive to the delicate sensibilities of the unfortunately emotionally anachronistic Muslim world, but still too much to bear easily.)
But in the end, as I said, it’s going to take some hellacious event to drive home the actual implacability of the Core Opposition, the Global Jihad. Such unpersuadable and diplomacy-immune enemies are not conceivable or creditable in the liberal universe.
So belief will come very hard, at great cost to everybody.
BTW;
dougf, agree fully. With both posts.
