[unspun]

Here you go, Tom, from a forty-five year old, old, conservative:
http://www.illinoisleader.com/opinion/opinionview.asp?c=5010

[Mr. Mojo]

And they have been immeasurably aided by propagandists from outside who propel the false idea of U.S. military manifest destiny: conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer; William Kristol, who runs the Weekly Standard; his father, Irving, and his mother, the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb.

Strange, there are literally hundreds of well-known conservative columnists and pundits who support the administration's policy in Iraq, but this author names only the Jewish ones.

[Reagan Man]

Dick Cheney is no neocon! What an absurd comment to make in public.

[Avenger]

I think I'm a mesocon.

[sheltonmac]

That would mean the so-called neocons, former liberals all, would be supplanted.

"Former liberals"? First of all, neocons are merely big government "conservatives." Secondly, what reason would Bush have to start cleaning house after the election? What incentive is there for him to start acting like a true conservative now?

[Restorer]

In an address before the House on Feb. 15, 1848, Abraham Lincoln had said: ''Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose, and you allow him to make war at pleasure. Study to see if you can fix any limit to his power in this respect. If today he should choose to say he thinks it necessary to invade Canada, to prevent the British from invading us, how could you stop him? You may say to him 'I see no probability of the British invading us,' but he will say to you: 'Be silent: I see it, if you don't.' ''

I must be missing something here. If I'm not confused, Honest Abe did not have to worry about a sneak attack with WMDs.

I think that makes direct application of his thoughts remarkably inappropriate for today's world.

[af_vet_1981]

Bush will go down in history as a decisive war president, in the same sense Harry Truman was with Korea.

Harry Truman did not achieve victory in Korea and so we are now facing a North Korea armed with nuclear weapons and missiles to deliver them while the opposition in this country would have us armed with spitballs.

Thankfully President Bush nows how and when to fight.

[sauropod]

Neocon jock sniffer...

[rmlew]

. New leadership following a limited foreign policy would prompt party philosophy hewn to the lines advocated by Sen. Robert A. Taft (R-Ohio).
You mean the guy who opposed any build-up of our military prior to Pearl Harbor and helped ratify the UN treaty?

That would mean the so-called neocons, former liberals all, would be supplanted. A shorthand history of the GOP in the latter half of the 20th century saw Dwight Eisenhower apply Taft's wise dictum, which avoided undue involvement in Vietnam, Richard Nixon's rapprochement with China and Ronald Reagan's victory over the U.S.S.R. without a shot being fired. What is this revisionist crap?
Eisenhower was hated by conservatives. Nixon's China policy was a betrayal of conservative policy. The USSR fell after many shots were fired in many small wars.

But after 2000, certain neocons came to believe the United States should be committed to imperial overstretch to inculcate democracy in lands that have never known it nor want it.
1. This is just sloppy writting. Neocons do not support overstretch. That is the result claimed by their enemies.
2. After 2000? They have been talkiong about this since the early 1990's.
3. How are we to know what the people in dictatorships or oligarchies think. They don't vote on it!

. But now there continues in certain circles drumbeats that indicate in the minds of some neocons, war and strife should be a constant condition. For that reason, our foreign policy must change.
The idea of wars for revolution is wrong. However, this twit seems to forget that the Islamists are at war with us.

[Hank Rearden]

I cringe every time I hear Bush rationalize the Iraq war by saying we needed to "remove a brutal dictator". Wrong answer, Georgie Boy!

We don't have a Dept. of Defense to tend to other countries' problems; there are lots of more-brutal dictators that need a shiv in the neck. Like that creepy Chia Pet in N. Korea for instance.

If it doesn't involve our national security, we don't go. Period. You got a brutal-dictator problem that doesn't threaten the United States? Call the UN.