David Frum, Master of the Muslim Mind

David Frum has surely not said the stupidest thing about the current crisis in the Middle East, and Egypt in particular. Still.

The kicker is the half line “do what was necessary to resist them.” In other words, it would be perfectly feasible for the U.S. to intervene in a country of 82.2 million—one with no particular love of the United States—and effectively neutralize the leading political movement in that country. If Mr. Frum will recall those heady days when he was writing speeches for George Bush, the U.S. attempted a similar maneuver with Iraq, a nation of 31 million, with spectacularly unsuccessful results. The invasion followed more than a decade of massive harassment and attempted subversion on the part of the U.S., with absolutely nothing to show for it, other than massive suffering on the part of the Iraqi population. Mr. Frum would surely protest that he was not advocating invasion, but he prudently refrains from identifying the magic buttons he would press to cause the Muslim Brotherhood to magically shrivel into impotence.

Frum was the author of the notorious “axis of evil” line, linking together Iraq, Iran, and North Korea—three nations that had little to do with one another and absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. Now he is enunciating what is likely to be the “responsible” Republican critique of the Obama Administration: that if only the President had waved his magic wand with the proper vigor, hundreds of millions of people, living thousands of miles from our shores, would instantly conform their lives to our will.