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Posted on 03/30/2026 10:44:48 AM PDT by Ultra Sonic 007
At the beginning of the Iraq War, David Frum published an article in National Review entitled “Unpatriotic Conservatives,” attacking those on the right opposed to the war—including the founders of this magazine, Patrick J. Buchanan, Scott McConnell, and Taki Theodoracopulos. Almost a quarter-century later, Frum’s arguments stand out as particularly lazy and dishonest smears. Almost everyone acknowledges that the Iraq War was a mistake sold to the American people on false pretenses, directly causing the deaths of 460,000 Iraqis and 4,506 American servicemen, destroying Iraq’s ancient Christian community, and replacing a stable government with a power vacuum that has been ripe for sectarianism and terror. Those who opposed the war now stand vindicated, even if many lost their careers due to their opposition to the Iraq War.
But, at the time, the Bush speechwriter chalked their opposition to the war not up to well-thought-out (and later vindicated) analyses of the disaster that the war would bring to the Middle East and the quagmire that it would be for United States, but instead to supposed lack of patriotism and personal opposition to the neoconservatives. “They began by hating the neoconservatives,” Frum wrote, in the part of his article that has become the most infamous. “They came to hate their party and this president. They have finished by hating their country.”
One would expect Frum’s line of argumentation to remain in the dustbin of history. But, in the midst of the current war with Iran, somehow this argument returned. The most noteworthy proponent of this argument—albeit in a more low-brow form—has been Ben Shapiro, the co-founder of the Daily Wire and a popular hawkish podcast host.
“There’s a coalition of people who are uniting to take down the United States,” Shapiro wrote in a recent op-ed, describing people who oppose the Iran War. “These people are cowards, plus liars, plus people who despise America.”
Another line of attack taken by both Frum and Shapiro is to attempt to accuse those on the right opposed to the war of not being real conservatives, as there are some on the left who also happen to oppose the war.
“They have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe,” Frum wrote in 2003.
Shapiro has made similar arguments when attacking non-interventionists. For instance, in a December 2025 speech at the Heritage Foundation, Shapiro attacked the prominent conservative media presenter Tucker Carlson for his foreign policy orientation, which, according to Shapiro, “has become essentially indistinguishable from the thought of far-leftists like Noam Chomsky.”
Since the start of the war, Shapiro has continued this, calling those conservatives opposed to the war as being part of the “horseshoe right,” implying that they are somehow in cahoots with the left in opposing a foreign war.
Contra Shapiro, Frum, and others, if anything it is deeply conservative to oppose the war in Iran. America’s great conservative statesmen, from John Randolph of Roanoke to Robert Taft, have been markedly noninterventionist in foreign policy, seeking to preserve the republic bequeathed by the Founders and fighting back against attempts to turn America into an empire that, though (in the words of John Quincy Adams) it “might become the dictatress of the world” would “be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.” The principles of geopolitical noninterventionism and neutrality comprised an important part of the American tradition, and anyone who seriously seeks to conserve this tradition will recognize this. While Frum and Shapiro use the label “conservative” to describe themselves, are on matters of foreign affairs utterly disconnected from historical American conservatism.
Shapiro’s arguments, though mirroring Frum’s, are considerably less convincing. Whereas the Iraq War initially had broad support, the current Iran War only has the support of 27 percent of Americans. The original conservative opponents of the Iraq War were a small (though correct) minority, and Frum et al. could write them off as kooks. Today, it is implausible that the majority of Americans who oppose or question the war with Iran are “uniting to take down the United States” or “despise America.”
Shapiro is not the only one to make the argument that conservatives opposed to the Iran War are “anti-American.” The radio host Mark Levin often whines about those he deems to be “isolationists,” calling them “the Woke Reich” (apparently borrowing a phrase from Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu). Levin also routinely attacks noninterventionist media figures, such as Carlson—who Levin says “hates America, our Judeo-Christian beliefs, President Trump, and MAGA”—and Steve Bannon, whom he accused of “aiding the enemy” for hosting, Trita Parsi, one of America’s foremost scholars on Iran.
But Shapiro, unlike Levin, is broadly intelligent. He is a Harvard Law graduate; unlike Levin, he does not write books criticizing the “Franklin School” or attacking St. Thomas More for writing a satire titled “Utopia.” One might expect him, as a former supporter of the Iraq War (he wrote an article in favor of invading Iraq in 2001, as a UCLA undergraduate), to have some level of introspection about adventures abroad, or to at least explain to the audience why they should trust him on matters of Middle Eastern war and peace. Instead he is reviving neoconservative canards about war skeptics. We’ll see how that ages.
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Notwithstanding that you can think our current Middle East military operations are wrongheaded *without* being an isolationist, what is considered "too much" isolationism? Is withdrawing or minimizing even one of our overseas military bases (out of the at least 128 we have) considered too much isolationism?
Food for thought.
David Frum is not a conservative.
Tucker Carlson has also left conservatism.
What is the true intention of this article? Does it exist to try to cover up and hide the Woke Right?
I am an isolationist, 100% committed, don’t care about being called names.
Conservatives don’t believe that one person, by executive fiat, should have the sole power to launch a war.
It's fairly self-explanatory, don't you think?
Neo-cons who are keen on brushing all opponents (conservative or otherwise) of our current military operations regarding Iran as "unpatriotic" or "anti-American" are relying on lazy rhetorical canards...and given our recent track record in the Middle East, they of ALL PEOPLE should be far more circumspect about such criticisms.
Conservatives believe in America first, not Israel first.
No, I don't think it is at all. Any article that tries to smear conservatives with people who have consistently stood in favor of the growth of government has to be held as suspect and having an alternative agenda. That is, whatever is on the surface can be thrown out if such simple facts cannot be accurately combined.
That aside, I do see what the NeoCons are up to, such as Lindsey Graham. Trump made a massive mistake endorsing that guy for re-election and going to war with Iran was equally a bad call considering all the campaign promises for starting no new wars.
It is worth noting that Trump has been talking (sparsely) about Iran since the 80s. That doesn't "trump" promises of no new wars.
Of course! Israelis are the radicals & not the Islamic Regime!
I wonder if you look as stupid as you sound?
“Almost everyone acknowledges that the Iraq War was a mistake sold to the American people on false pretenses,”
Now they do, but when it was actually happening there were now nearly as many who thought that.
We won the war, and lost the peace, much like in Vietnam, because the Left and the Media in the USA did not want us to win, and would not allow us to reap the benefits of winning.
American oil companies were forbidden from biding on contracts on Iraqi oil. As President Trump said, we should have taken the oil.
The Left in the USA has much to answer for.
The smear that the USA killed 450,000 Iraqis is another big lie.
Death Cult + Ballistic Missiles + Weapons Grade Uranium Enrichment
= what could go wrong?
You're historically out of bounds if you think "the Left and the Media" kept Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq any longer than he wanted to be, especially for those first couple of years.
You can't blame "the Left and the Media" for Bush thinking that trying our hands at nation-building in Afghanistan and Iraq was a good decision.
Which people are you talking about? Who in the article referenced by name has "consistently stood in favor of the growth of government"?
And in Biblical terms, that will be the strategy of Vhrist's return.
Gather around kids, here is a perfect example of argumentum ad stramineum. And by “perfect,” I mean asinine, fatuous, inane, and puerile.
I certainly hope not.
Lol if that’s how it gets framed so be it
I agree with Tucker and that sentiment is growing fast —unfortunate that the last chance at some actual America first progress is going to be squandered in order to protect pedophiles and start an unnecessary war
Exactly. Frum, Shapiro and Levin vs. Buchanan, McConnell and Theodoracopulos.
Are you a Libertarian?
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