Will Conservatives Abandon the War on Terror?

This blog has always specialized in foreign policy and international relations, and for a time I wrote almost exclusively about the Iraq war. Lately, of course, I've been having a lot of debates here with the nihilist lefties and so forth, but as folks can see in my recent essay on theories of patriarchical cultures and interstate war, foreign policy analysis remains front and center.

I mention all of this after reading Patrick Poole's essay on the Conservative Political Action Conference at Pajamas Media, "Was CPAC an Epic Fail?"

Poole opens with a discussion of how the meeting's tremendous enthusiasm masked a lost opportunity for new thinking, which I discussed previously (and see Rick Moran's thoughts on this, which generated some pushback). But Poole's discussion of Dutch filmmaker Geert Wilders' attendance at the convention should set off some alarm bells:

That the conservative movement has slid into complete irrelevancy was demonstrated by the absence of any ideas — nay, any discussion whatsoever — of several of the most pressing political issues of our day. As fellow blogger Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugged observed, there was not a single panel on the War on Terror, the growing threats to free speech, or the cultural jihad underway in the West.

What should have been one of the most important events of this year’s CPAC, the appearance by Dutch parliamentarian and anti-jihad activist Geert Wilders, was relegated to the opposite side of the hotel, divorced from all of the other conference proceedings. There were no official announcements that this event would even be taking place (none that I heard at least), and when trying to locate the room in which it would be held, not a single CPAC staffer could tell me where. And this event only happened because David Horowitz, Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, and Andy Bostom personally shelled out the money to make it happen.

Now CPAC organizers would no doubt respond that they could not fit Wilders into the schedule on such short notice. But I have no doubt that if Bristol Palin had suddenly come available to address CPAC on the virtues of teen pregnancy, David Keene and the American Conservative Union would no doubt have moved heaven and earth to make room in the schedule for her. But they could not accommodate a man who lives under constant death threats by a long list of Islamic terrorist organizations.

Honestly, I don’t know much about Geert Wilders’ politics. I only met the man briefly, and I heard his stump speech twice on Friday. But anyone who has a stack of fatwas calling for his death because of his willingness to speak out against the global jihad is going to receive my support, regardless of any politically incorrect view he may or may not hold.

From my limited perspective, all Geert Wilders has done is hold a mirror up to reflect back the ugly racism and advocacy of violence that are the staple of the most prominent and authoritative officials in Islam. For that he has earned nothing but enmity from the avowed enemies of the West. But it wasn’t enough to earn him a speaking spot on this year’s CPAC schedule.

I've written about Geert Wilders a couple of times of late (video here). But don't forget Melanie Phillips' recent piece, "Britain Capitulates to Terror," or Phyllis Chesler's, "A Dutch Hero Comes to Warn Us, Seek Our Support. The Incomparable Geert Wilders, MP, in New York City."

Pamela Geller discusses her experience at CPAC as well in "Squandering CPAC."

Patrick Poole embellishes upon the drum I have been beating all week, that despite the urgent need for bold leadership CPAC is bereft of vision, integrity, leadership. At what I am hearing is the largest gathering of CPAC attendees ever (my cabbie said 9,000), there was nothing concerning the most critical issues of our day. The people who attended desperately need educating on a vast range of issues that threaten American sovereignty and basic human freedoms. There was nary a mention of the greatest threat to the West - the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference).

Shameful. The only moment that was inspiring and dead on balls was John Bolton's speech.

I'm not sure of Poole's ideological identification. But Pamela's post points us to the disconnect between neoconservative priorities and conservative electoral ambitions. There is a disconnect between the need to combat the scourge of Islamist radicalism - and hence to fulfill America's responsiblities in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the recurring hot spots of contemporary evil (from Madrid to Mumbai) - and the interests of Beltway conservatives who seem to focus on partisan-electoral moderation exclusively, as if truly existential issues of national security and preservation of cultures should be minimal to the conservative agenda. (Note how some suggest that those who discuss these issues are not serious policy-makers but "controversialists".)

Much of the Democratic election last year was about Bush fatigue. And much of that fatigue was based in the problematic nature of maintaining public support for costly foreign wars whose origins are found not insubstantially in the preservation of Western ideals and institutions. Armies are not marching across Europe and Asia today as they were in the 1930s and 1940s when the United States entered the war to preserve the balance of power and prevent the victory of totalitarianism over freedom.

That conflict, War War II, was the "good war." Americans tend not to look at wars the same way today. A far off, abstract threat of Islamist ideology is less immediate than, say, the threat of kamikaze attacks of an earlier age. Why these modes of warfare should be seen as separate and discrete is puzzling, because the same fanaticism that drove young Japanese fighter to sacrifice their lives for a code of honor is not unlike the fanatical militants around the world today who would die in much greater numbers if the movements and states they represent had greater capabilities.

As it is, the horror of Madrid or Mumbai subsides within weeks after the hellish scenes of death fade from the nightly news. Americans are worried about collapsing banks and laid off workers, and they've elected a party to power in Washington that for the first time in American history has sought to bring about the defeat on the battlefield of America's own soldiers. The new Democratic administration is Washington is now winding down the war in Iraq in what by all measures is a precipitous withdrawal that puts in jeopardy the signature military victory of the Bush administration's last two years in office. Note here, that while top foreign-policy pundit Fareed Zakaria inveighs on the importance of "Learning to Live With Radical Islam," the Islamic American community sees "Obama as Muslim," that is to say he's their "Muslim President"!

I guess that helps explain why as a society we refuse to recognize and condemn "moderate" Muslim beheadings as ritual honor killing, at precisely the same time Islamists worldwide "are plotting to destroy us."

The "tea party movement" that folks are talking about might serve as an instructive case in the disconnect between party insiders/convention-goers and the rank-and-file patriots who are out and about, in freezing weather, mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

I mean no disrespect to those involved on both sides of this debate, but it's disheartening that the driving vision of moral clarity in foreign policy this last eight years seems to be dissipating in an remarkable acceptance of creeping Islamization and political correctness, amid frequent calls for ideological moderation as the path back to power.