The Silence of the Hawks

One would have thought that Vladimir Putin’s* end zone victory dance in the New York Times would have produced an outraged chorus of right-wing “I told you so’s” loud enough to be heard on Mars—if, contrary to fact, sound waves could travel through a vacuum. But even they could, they still wouldn’t, because the right’s reaction to this outrageously convenient dénouement to the Obama Administration’s ham-handed attempt at Tomahawk diplomacy has been seriously restrained. A cursory check of both the National Review and the Weekly Standard web pages a remarkable lack of comment, a trickle instead of a tidal wave.

There will surely be extensive chin-stroking and thumb-sucking to come on Obama’s spinelessness and the decline of American resolve—Victor Davis Hanson, not to mention “the Kagans,” surely can’t be expected to make a living writing advice columns and conservative cookbooks—but the lack of immediacy in the right’s reaction strikes me as significant. The interventionist right isn’t speaking because they’re listening. They’re listening to Sen. Ted “Red Meat” Cruz say things like this:

According to Cruz, the American People living in his state were almost unanimously opposed to intervention in Syria. If the president hadn’t called off his attempt to seek congressional authorization for an assault on Syria, it would have been overwhelmingly voted down, Cruz said.

Hearing words like that from the baddest bad boy on the Republican block has got to redden the ears of the Bill Kristols and the Jennifer Rubins of the world just a bit, as well as the gang who write the editorials at the Wall Street Journal. A week ago, they were dreaming of boots on the ground, and now what? Nothing but continuing resolutions, debt ceilings, and appropriations. Oh, and the farm bill. That’s important. When are we going to get back to killing people and having fun?