Hawks Want Their Interventionism Straight Up

There’s a surprise: West Point cadets, allegedly, hardly clapped in honor of President Barack Obama, who delivered a message about “limiting the use of American power to defending the nation’s core interests and being smart enough to avoid the temptation to use such power when it embroils the country in costly mistakes such as the decision to invade Iraq.” (CNN)

“Just because we have the best hammer does not mean that every problem is a nail,” said Obama, who, rhetoric aside, is hardly a dove.

But hawks are furious. They want their interventionism straight up. If the Empire loses its grip, how will they remain the world’s Top Dogs?

“Is this how a great nation decides matters of war and peace”? demanded Chucky Krauthammer. The neoconservative columnist derides Obama’s foreign policy as “a nervy middle course between extreme isolationism and madcap interventionism.” More like the latter, if you ask me.

Krauthammer also bemoans Obama having “denied night-vision goggles, protective armor” and military assistance to “Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s newly elected president.”

I’m not cut up about it at all.