Hawks We Are, Hawks We Must Remain
With CPAC 2010 now fully behind us, conservatism’s rising generation has some choosing to do. Specifically, on the matter of war and national security, will we be the hawks that we were born to be? Now is the time to make a lasting decision, and we better get it right.
After all, those of us who fall into the Generation Y or Millennial bracket—born under Reagan/Bush, came of age under Clinton/Bush II—bear a special responsibility. That which we stand for today will define what American conservatism represents tomorrow. Indeed, it was the young conservatives who lifted Barry Goldwater to the Republican presidential nomination back in 1964 who eventually took over the GOP, redefined America’s mainstream political right, and continue to run the movement today.
Of course, no two conservatives anywhere are wired exactly the same and that naturally extends to those of us in our 20s. But there are certain overarching differences among our lot in particular that are too deep to ignore or diminish. A few years ago it was thought that social issues would be the barrier that partitioned us into separate camps. That has not happened. Instead, it seems to be our dramatically conflicting views over U.S. foreign policy that have drawn a thick, undeniable line in the sand.
No better snapshot of this under-acknowledged 10,000-lb. elephant in the room could be seen than when isolationism’s leading icon Ron Paul won the Conservative Political Action Conference’s straw poll for preferred 2012 presidential candidate. Almost immediately after the news broke, the pundit world fingered the conference’s overwhelming youth presence as the culprit behind the libertarian congressman’s surprise victory.
Never mind that only half of the mere 24 percent of CPAC attendees who actually remembered to vote in this year’s straw poll were under 25. And never mind that nobody seriously believes Ron Paul will ever see the White House let alone the Republican National Convention. What matters is that his brief moment of glory at CPAC gives young conservatives everywhere a reason (or perhaps an excuse) to ask ourselves, on the topic of foreign policy, the unnecessarily uncomfortable question of where we want to stand and who we want (and don’t want) to stand with us.
Our answers should lay in our generational identity.
We are the 9/11 generation.
We were born sometime in the ’80s—a period we know better through old films and theme parties than from actual memory, yet we’re still aware that a certain actor-turned-president is responsible for making the decade everything that the ’70s were not: harmonious, optimistic, and thriving.
We grew up through the roaring ’90s—a time of peace and prosperity that neither our parents nor grandparents ever knew. Occurring between the end of the Cold War and the arrival of Y2K, it was truly a holiday from history and we enjoyed every fruit it had to offer. The music was great, the movies were fun, the new cellular telephones were neat and the World Wide Web was even cooler. As much as we remember how easy that era was for us, we also remember how and why it ended.
It’s been almost a decade since 9/11. Many of us felt our first spark of political passion in the aftermath of the attacks because we saw something (or many things) that we deeply, personally admired in George W. Bush. Whether it was his character, his leadership, or that he was the guy who was going to send our warriors to rain down justice on our new enemies, we lined up behind him. He was not only our president, he was our avenger. We’d heard endless tales of the greatness that was Ronald Reagan, but we never actually knew him. Bush was different.
And so we rallied to the side of President Bush, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement in the years that followed. Alas, the decade began feeling like the ’40s but soon seemed more like the ’60s: polarized, uncivil, and uncertain. We knew who was to blame.
But while our liberal Democratic adversaries remain our natural adversaries and thus painless to oppose, our libertarian cousins—supportive of the free market, sure, but viciously anti-war—are much more difficult to deal with. And so to those of us who earned our political stripes and scars during the first decade of this century particularly because of the events that followed September 2001, I pose these questions:
Do we want the American right (along with the entire nation) to forever remember 9/11 as a call to arms for the Good War of a new century, or should we forever regard it as a sad precursor to a national blunder abroad over which we hang our heads in shame?
Will we retell the story of Operation: Iraqi Freedom as one of courage and liberation, or will we opt to let Fahrenheit 9/11 do the talking?
And as the war in Afghanistan continues to be waged and its toll continues to rise, will we demand that America must win and that the bad guys must lose no matter what, or will we quietly tip toe away from the fight if it becomes a political liability and look the other way if our troops come home in defeat?
On every one of these questions, self-proclaimed conservatives of every age and background must choose the former. There are no two ways about it. Regrettably, I fear that most of the libertarians who cast their ballots for Ron Paul at CPAC would instinctively trend toward the latter.
To be sure, when I say “libertarian,” I don’t mean pro-free enterprise, pro-limited government conservatives. If I did, I’d be referring to half the country let alone every single Republican I know. Rather, I’m talking about capital-L “Libertarians”—the anti-government, anti-war, “we provoked 9/11,” “Lincoln was a tyrant,” conspiracy-minded squad of ideologues who’ve gotten louder, prouder, and increasingly self-righteous and more numerous over the past several years. Despite whatever similarities we might share with them (and some certainly do exist), we conservatives are still our own separate species.
A popular adage among conservatives in Washington is to “always add and multiply, never subtract and divide.” But when some differences are so severe that fundamental disagreements cannot be overcome, definitive distinctions need to be drawn. Can those who openly profess that Iran should be able to possess nuclear weapons really stand for very long on the same ship as those who squarely reject such as asinine notion? Of course not.
In the months, years, and election cycles that lay ahead, certain conflicts will be unavoidable. There may well arise the temptation for some conservatives to misread the 2009 backlash against Barack Obama as purely libertarian-rooted and thus to foolishly forget about the national security plank of our movement. The enormous CPAC spotlights given to the likes of Ron Paul and Glenn Beck were indicative of this.
In the face of anti-war libertarian dissidents, conservatives—especially the rising generation—must defend the issue that most sets us apart from them. And we must be vigilant. I urge my peers: if Ron Paul and his ilk do not speak for you, then speak up; if the Campaign for Liberty, which prides itself in youth representation, does not represent you, then say so; if you are not willing to toss aside your support for America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, then stand up and defend them with the fullest of throats. You’ll be called a “warmonger” or a “neocon,” sure. But so what?
Of course, scores of young conservative are currently doing much more than debating America’s foreign policy behind the comfort of our borders; they’re fighting the wars of which we speak as Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines. But for those of us who’ve chosen a vocation on the home front, our support for them and their mission must be unambiguous and unwavering. It is time for conservatism’s 9/11 generation to fully embrace and defend the role that history has bestowed upon us and wear our hawk feathers more proudly than ever.
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Tom Qualtere currently serves as research assistant to the president of The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. This column was originally published at TheDailyCaller.com.
