Neocon Hysteria Over Defense Cuts Falls Flat

Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer have been sort of doleful in their appearances on FOX News lately, looking like their hearts are just not in it. Not hard to see why: it looks like cardboard cut-out and moderate Republican Mitt Romney will be their party’s presidential nominee. On the national security front, it’s been difficult to stake a strident position against a president who has put the former administration’s drone program to shame, bombed more countries and killed more Pakistanis in the last three years than they probably thought possible. Gitmo’s still open for business and it could be expanding its capacity, thanks to new detention provisions in the NDAA.

Meanwhile, the exit from Afghanistan looks like it’s going to be a really slow one, and Iraq … well, all Krauthammer’s fulminations about President Obama “losing” the war have largely fallen on deaf ears. Americans have heard enough — most everyone wanted to come home, even the troops, who Kristol and Krauthammer and the rest of the American Enterprise Institute brain trust claimed they were speaking for all along. As for Iran, it seems it’s going to take a lot more than puffed-up rhetoric to drag the people behind yet another war.