The ‘To Hell with Them’ Hawks

EVENTS have conspired to knock the supports out from under the Wilsonian aspects of President Bush’s foreign policy. This is driving a nascent reaction to Bush foreign policy on the right, a growing sentiment, although one as yet without a prominent political champion. It is the rise of the “to hell with them” hawks.

These are conservatives who are comfortable using force abroad, but have little patience for a deep entanglement with the Muslim world, which they consider unredeemable, or at least not worth the strenuous effort of trying to redeem. To put their departure from Bush in terms associated with foreign-policy analyst Walter Russell Mead, they want to detach Bush’s Jacksonianism (the hardheaded, somewhat bloody-minded nationalism) from his Wilsonianism (the crusading democratic idealism). Democrats are headed in this direction too. But the tendency is problematic and, in its own way, as naïve and unrealistic as Bush at his dreamiest.

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Rich Lowry

Rich Lowry is the editor in chief of National Review.

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EVENTS have conspired to knock the supports out from under the Wilsonian aspects of President Bush’s foreign policy. This is driving a nascent reaction to Bush foreign policy on the right, a growing sentiment, although one as yet without a prominent political champion. It is the rise of the “to hell with them” hawks.

These are conservatives who are comfortable using force abroad, but have little patience for a deep entanglement with the Muslim world, which they consider unredeemable, or at least not worth the strenuous effort of trying to redeem. To put their departure from Bush in terms associated with foreign-policy analyst Walter Russell Mead, they want to detach Bush’s Jacksonianism (the hardheaded, somewhat bloody-minded nationalism) from his Wilsonianism (the crusading democratic idealism). Democrats are headed in this direction too. But the tendency is problematic and, in its own way, as naïve and unrealistic as Bush at his dreamiest.