Kevin Williamson successfully articulated something I couldn’t quite, myself, over this past few weeks, as American “liberals” have gone from flirting with police defunders to cheerleading for no-fly zones: it’s the dawn of the neo-neocon. All of the neo, none of the (visible) con.

The war has produced a bull market in what I suppose we have to call neo-neo-conservatism, with Democrats and center-Left figures suddenly rediscovering the uses — and necessity — of American hard power. You won’t find a better example of this than Professor Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution, who in a recent conversation with Jonah Goldberg was at pains to distance himself from anything that might be called “conservative” or “Bushian,” in his words. Instead, Professor Hamid insisted, responsible liberals such as himself (1) have kept true to their principles while other elements of the Democratic coalition have descended into mad radicalism and identity politics; (2) understand that the alternative to American hegemony is Chinese hegemony or Russo-Chinese hegemony; and (3) being worldly cosmopolitans, admit that it is entirely understandable that Europeans take a different view of European refugees than they do of, say, Muslim refugees from Syria, whose culture and religion inevitably make it more difficult to assimilate them.

For those of you keeping score at home, Professor Hamid here has channeled (1) Ronald Reagan (“I didn’t leave the Democratic Party — the Democratic Party left me!”); (2) George W. Bush (an axis of what, now?); and, perhaps most surprising, (3) Pat Buchanan, once denounced as a vile racist for asking hypothetically whether Virginia would have an easier time assimilating 1 million English immigrants or 1 million Zulu immigrants.

Everything old is truly new again.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The US keeps troops in the Middle East to prop up the governments of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates so we can buy their oil at favorable prices. All the sudden, Saudi Arabia and the UAE won’t take our calls?

Might be time to think about redeploying US troops elsewhere. Those Yemeni Houthi rebels we’ve been keeping off your backs? Have fun with that.

Joe Doakes

I don’t know. I take that as more of a “this is how bad things have gotten on the foreign policy front since Joe Biden came along to save our worldwide…”

Given the situation between Russia and Ukraine, could we finally stop gushing over Angela Merkel’s brilliance at realpolitik?

She’s put the majority of the largest continental economy in NATO directly into the hands of Vladimir Putin. Over half of German energy is now supplied by Russia, with the failure of Germany’s green energy initiative and the attendant dismantling of Germany’s once awesome nuclear power capability. Germany’s economy can be thrown into a cataclysmic depression with the turning of a couple of valves.

Thus, NATO’s largest continental economy and military is at Putin’s dubious mercy.

Germany has to be calculating that if it participates in harsh sanctions against Russia, it makes itself vulnerable to Russian countermeasures. Already, Russia has been squeezing Europe’s gas supplies. It’s not at all clear that Germany would give up on the pipeline even if Russian tanks roll for Kyiv.

The Germans, meanwhile, aren’t willing to make even the slightest gesture toward deterring Russia. They are blocking Estonia, a fellow NATO ally, from sending howitzers to Ukraine that originated in Germany.

Why it’s almost as if this is another thing Trump was right about.

Fact: The Garden Administration recently bombed Syria, killing at least
one person, possibly a civilian.

Fact: Ahmad Al-Issa, the Boulder shooter, was born in Syria.  He shot up
a grocery store killing Americans.

These are completely unrelated random facts.  Unlike incidents during
previous administrations, there is no connection, no cause-and-effect,
no reason to link bad foreign policy to domestic terrorism because this
administration . . . are Democrats.

Joe Doakes

On the other hand, we didn’t really have a whole lot in the way of mass shootings rom 2018 on. Suddenly, we hear about ’em again…