I suppose it’s just part of the pineapple upside down cake that is living in these, well, Last Days, but when did conservatives stop being warmongers?
Of course, in general, you could ask the same question of most liberals. Except sort of turned around. When did liberals start being such warmongers? Because in recent decades, most liberals were crazy for the warmongering, all around the globe, as were the conservatives, in heartbreakingly long wrongheaded wars, especially in the Middle East, all as wrong in their separate ways as was America’s awful war in Vietnam.
Blessings upon the actual pacifists, few but mighty.
For most of the rest of us, there are wars and there are wars. None are a happy occasion. Over 99% don’t merit anything in the way of United States involvement.
For the pragmatist, some do.
An unprovoked war by a Russian dictator aimed at wrongly taking back an independent part of the old Soviet empire would be one of those.
Right now, and in almost any foreseeable future, helping to counter the invasion of Ukraine at the hand of Vladimir Putin does not involve sending U.S. troops. Most of us pragmatists have never even considered the idea.
But it does involve sending money, equipment, armor and facilitating the use of U.S.-made aircraft. It does involve U.S. advice — ever-mindful of the slippery slope that started with American “advisers” being sent to Vietnam beginning in the late 1950s, a slope that led to hundreds of thousands of our soldiers sliding down it, soon enough.
Most moderate and liberal Americans, strongly believing that starting a major war in Europe is tantamount to starting a war on us, are for the current level of U.S. support for Kyiv, and a bit more.
So what’s the deal with the conservative lack of support for Ukraine, and the growing props to Putin, including by some presidential candidates?
A new poll of the 26% of registered Republicans who can reliably be called simply “right wing”: they watch Fox News and Newsmax, and describe themselves as politically “very conservative” — shows that just 19% of them support providing additional support to Ukraine.
Candidate Nikki Haley holds many positions that are just vicious and inane. But the best part of the Wednesday GOP debate was when she called out Vivek Ramaswamy, a Putin enabler, for “choosing a murderer” over pro-American Ukraine.
“Putin has said … once Russia takes Ukraine, Poland and the Baltics are next,” she said. “That’s a world war. We’re trying to prevent war. Look at what Putin did today. He killed Prigozhin. When I was at the U.N., the Russian ambassador suddenly died. This guy is a murderer. And you are choosing a murderer over a pro-American country.”
A former president who didn’t show at the debate and the guy in distant second place in the polls also are Kremlin-appeasers. What gives? Reds bad, nouveau Czarists good?
Or is it just the conservative dislike for everything Europe in general, barring a few statist leaders in the former Soviet bloc, ignoring the strength of conservative movements in Italy, France and Spain and the longtime dominance of the literal Conservative Party in Britain?
Obviously there were anti-interventionist conservative American politicians in the past. Charles Lindbergh was a Republican, and led the “America First” opposition to fighting in World War II to save Europe.
It was a lousy bunch, but they caved after Pearl Harbor. What will it take to get right-wing Republicans today to support freedom in Europe?
Larry Wilson is on the Southern California News Group editorial board. lwilson@scng.com.
