Dreaming Of War

Joe Klein fisks Kristol:

In the end, Kristol's saber-rattling is the death rattle of a simplistic, extremist ideology that has caused the U.S. great damage. A more sensible, centrist approach to international affairs won't have the bang or melodrama of military kinetics. It will take time to work, if it works. But it also won't have the bloodshed and torture that have stained our nation's history these past eight years.

The longer I observe the neocons the more I realize that for many of them, war is a natural state of being, even a vocation. Some actually view a martial society as more noble than a peaceful one, and believe in war as both morally good and socially beneficial. I am much more interested in conservatism as a temperament that recoils from violence, rather than being attracted to it. And while I see war as a necessary evil, I have been forced by the Iraq debacle into a much better grasp of its limits and its potential for catastrophe. Others seem emboldened by an occupation they are now declaring a "success."