VDH describes the Pepe's Phalanx of Brown and Red

Be careful of what you wish for
Liberals used to deplore realists—a James Baker (“F*** the Jews” or “Jobs, jobs, jobs”), a Brent Scowcroft (letting the Shiites and Kurds get mowed down by helicopter gunships in late February/early March 1991), or George Bush Senior shaking down the Japanese et al. to pay for the first Gulf War and then leaving Saddam in power to “balance” Iran. But now with Baker and Gates sort of back, and apparent greater reliance on the first Bush’s realism, it will be interesting to see what the Democrats in the House will do—especially if there is a realist-Right and anti-war Left convergence that gives up on Iraq and comes home.

Weird Politics
Since 9/11 I have been fascinated by the Nation/American Conservative affinities—and especially how the “Don’t Support Dictators” abroad protests of the 1960s morphed into a sort of ‘See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya’ about Iraq (cf. Sen. Rockefeller’s statement that the world was better off with Saddam or liberal Dan Rather’s postwar lamentation that it was quieter driving in Baghdad when he used to interview Saddam). Equally interesting is the smash up when multiculturalism (e.g., no culture can be any worse than the West) hits the right-wing, fascistic agenda of Islamic fundamentalism. What an “Other” or “People of Color” Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood are!
I thought something was haywire in the late 1990s when I spoke on California campuses and would see the Hamas booths in the free-speech plazas—right next to the usual 1960s-style teach-ins where Chicanos, blacks, Native Americans, women, etc. handed out pamphlets and megaphoned on American sins. So how did anti-Semitism, gender apartheid, religious intolerance, homophobia, and suppression of free expression synchronize with these groups’ complaints against supposed American fascism?
But it is not just Leftists who are getting what they wished for, but a lot of the neoconservatives as well. It may be that true, as one pundit wrote, that Mark Steyn and myself are about the only two left that both support the war—despite the mistakes—and Rumsfeld in general. But after reading for three years from almost every neoconservative pundit that Rumsfeld should go, they now will get their wish. The only problem is that Gates is more a Baker-realist than a neo-Wilsonian. I suggest they go back and read The Generals’ War or Crusade and review the discussions about not going to Baghdad. That decision, whether right or wrong, was based entirely on realpolitik, not thousands of Iraqis who rose up on our call to overthrow Saddam. Now it might have been defensible not to go to Baghdad in 1991(I would disagree: it was a terrible mistake), but was abjectly amoral to call for insurrection, and then when Kurds and Shiites took us at our word, to have abandoned them.