The Right Flank

Reihan reacts to Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) making the case for withdrawal in Afghanistan:

Remember that the bitterest opponents of the Clinton-era U.S. interventions in Kosovo and Haiti were conservatives like Tom DeLay, who condemned the Clinton administration for treating “foreign policy as social work,” in Michael Mandelbaum’s evocative phrase. The post-9/11 moment represented a departure from this conservative suspicion of nation-building, as Jacksonian sentiments were yoked to the ambitious project of building democracies in the Muslim world. But now that Obama, a man most conservatives dislike and distrust, is the steward of that effort, those conservative instincts are making a comeback. Jason Chaffetz represents the beginning of a waveand it’s not obvious that Obama can do anything to stop it.