Axiom 1: Obama Is Wrong About Everything
Libya Edition
And:
The Insanity of Conservative Foreign Policy

The GOP's current Axiom 1 is: Obama is wrong about everything. This is an unshakable, unquestionable assumption, and no evidence can ever count against it to any degree. All evidence must be evaluated in light of this assumption, to be reinterpreted or rejected if disconfirmation threatens.

Here's E. J. Dionne on Axiom 1 as applied to Libya. As we know, according to the GOP, Obama should (i) not have intervened in Libya and (ii) should have intervened sooner and taken a more active role.

It does not matter that the actions he took were judicious and reasonable, it does not matter that he took the best available course of action, and it does not matter that it seems to have worked. It's an axiom, people--it is known a priori and with absolute certainty...

Here's how American foreign policy has gone in my lifetime:

Liberals argue for modest steps in the direction of living up to our principles by eschewing alliances with the most brutal regimes, modestly pressuring some governments to stop oppressing their people, and pushing for judicious interventions (e.g. in the former Yugoslavia).

Conservatives respond that we must be "realists", i.e. that it is never permissible to take human rights into account when making foreign policy. They argue that "we cannot be the world's policeman," and that the very fact that liberals would make such suggestions shows that they are too hapless and naive to be trusted with foreign policy. Conservatives then--not regretfully, but downright eagerly--back brutal dictators and repressive governments in order to gain--at best--modest and equivocal strategic advantages.

However, when conservatives decide that one of their pet dictators has gotten annoying, or that we need some more oil, or when the blowback from their original brutal policies becomes problematic, suddenly they begin waving the flag, singing "God Bless America," and speaking in pious tones about our sacred duty to defend the innocent and spread democracy. They don't actually care about actual human rights, but they are willing to use it as a stalking-horse when they decide they want something done. Hell, they even convince themselves that they care about that stuff. Then they engage in some monstrous, over-the-top intervention that...well, insert facts about the $3 trillion Iraq fiasco here...

When liberals are back in power, and again suggest modest, reasonable actions to--genuinely--advance human rights, we return to the beginning of the cycle, and conservatives decry the steps as foolish and naive. (See: Libya.)

(Oh, and: it doesn't help that liberals then tend to criticize conservative follies by saying that "you can't impose democracy at the barrel of a gun," a criticism which is not only demonstrably false but at odds with the core liberal view at issue here--that sometimes we need to help the good guys throw off their oppressors. There a a lot of good criticisms of the insanity of conservative foreign policy...but that ain't one of them.)

The first major realization I had when I was first coming to learn about foreign policy as a teenager, and shrugging off my early Republicanism: conservatives cannot be trusted with foreign policy.