Over at the American Conservative, which isn’t entirely Pat Buchanan being stupid, Daniel Larison struggles to understand Sarah Palin and the other opponents of the START treaty. Apparently, the Russians have been moving some tactical nuclear weapons around (maybe), and Sarah and her kind are claiming that this is a deal-breaker. Dan is puzzled by this:
“This is one thing in the treaty debate that has never made much sense. Treaty opponents are overwhelmingly drawn from the ranks of people who viscerally dislike and distrust the Russian government, but they ought to be among the first to want to put Russia under a verification regime. As it stands, they are working very hard to prevent the re-establishment of any verification regime. Whether or not they claim to want some ideally superior means of verification, they are taking the position that the regime established by this treaty should not be implemented.”
Let me enlighten you, Dan. The anti-START people don’t fear the Russians. They don’t give a damn about verification, or tactical nuclear weapons, or anything else. What they fear is peace. They want another Cold War, one that will go on forever, because they fear that without a Cold War they can’t win elections. They feel free to be as rude and outrageous as possible to the Russians, because it never occurs to them that the Russians have the power to harm us.
For the past twenty years, conservatives have been secretly kicking themselves for letting Ronnie end the Cold War. Damn him, anyway! And the “War on Terrorism,” well of course it’s terrific, but it’s just not as all-consuming as the Cold War was. And, someday, it’s possible that Americans will realize that Al-Qaeda doesn’t have a “weapon of mass destruction” larger than a hand grenade, and then where will we be, Danny Boy? Screwed, that’s where! Screwed! Totally screwed!
