Common wisdom would purport that those on the so-called ‘right’ are and have always been hawkish and pro-war, while those on the proverbial ‘left’ have always been the tree-hugging, peacenik, anti-war folks. For many conservatives, unfortunately, this is more or less correct. However, progressives have once again airbrushed their own past, which is about as anti-war as, well, war.
Much of this perception is relatively recent and primarily boils down to the Iraq War. The neoconservative warmongering was in full swing and for his part, Barack Obama gave a rather pleasant speech about his opposition to the war before it began. In his book, Obama elaborated,
What I sensed, though, was that the threat Saddam posed was not imminent, the Administration’s rationales for war were flimsy and ideologically driven, and the war in Afghanistan was far from complete.[1] Not terribly bad, at least for a politician.
Obama then proceeded to escalate the war in Afghanistan, go to war with Libya without Congressional approval, authorize airstrikes in Iraq as well as drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan while saber-rattling at Syria, Iran and the Ukraine. Even the American withdrawal from Iraq he oversaw -which is now being ballyhooed by clueless neoconservatives – was hardly different than the schedule George W. Bush had already agreed to.
This post was published at Ludwig von Mises Institute on Thursday, October 09, 2014.
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