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Deliberately Destroying America's Soul
At the U.S. Army War College's 16th Annual Strategy Conference last week, a senior Department of Defense strategist defined U.S. "Grand Strategy" as the export of freedom and democracy. He added that the U.S. military would play a huge role in implementing the strategy. In short, and to paraphrase, the official said: "Get ready, soldiers, you're going democracy-crusading."

Exporting freedom and democracy is not a Grand Strategy. It may be an ambition, an obsession, or – most likely – a hallucination. ...

...like Wilson, Bush is ill-served by some of his advisers, public and private. Wilson had House, Page, and Lansing, each of whom put British interests above American and pushed us into world war. Bush has Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and Perle, who seem to conflate Israel's interests with America's and are pushing us toward a war with Islam. Indeed, U.S. elites across party lines bask in this American-killing conflation.

Wilsonianism is nothing more than cynically promising oppressed people freedom that cannot be delivered without using force. As an anti-military, provincial bigot, Wilson knew this. He knew Americans would not allow their sons to be killed in large numbers so that 1919 Bosnia-Herzogovinians could vote. He also knew the rhetoric of "self-determination" and "teaching people to elect good men" would cost him nothing. He did not care what it cost the foreigners who believed his twaddle; they could not vote.

Today's Wilsonians, with father-and-son Bush in the van, are far more dangerous to America than the late, unlamented Wilson. Their ignorance of the Founders' intentions and lack of any semblance of the Founders' wisdom have made them democracy-crusaders in every blood-spilling sense of the phrase. Knowing nothing of, and thus having no respect for, the long and bloody post-Runnymede struggle of Americans and their ancestors to build an equitable democracy at home, the new Wilsonians are using – and intend to expand the use of – the U.S. military to seek overseas the unobtainable, war-inducing goals of the crazed Woodrow....