Read the entire entry on Unclaimed Territory but these two paragraphs really state the premise I’ve long advocated (and much better than I) that our current neoconservative regime and ideology is premised on the United States being fundamentally weak and vulnerable and our foundational values inadequate to the task of “defending” us in our weak and vulnerable state.

Neoconservativsm is rarely defined but its central tenets are, by now, quite clear. At its core, neoconservatism maintains that the greatest threat to America is hostile Muslims in the Middle East, and the only real solution to that problem is increased militarism and belligerence, usually with war as the necessary course of action. Our mistake has been excessive restraint, a lack of courage, and a naive and cowardly belief that measures short of war and all-out aggression are effective in dealing with this problem. This threat is not just uniquely dangerous, but unprecedentedly so, such that Islamic extremists render prior American ideals and principles — both foreign and domestic — obsolete, and only radically more militaristic approaches have any chance of saving us from destruction at their hands.

This is the neoconservative mentality — the bloodthirsty, militaristic, largely authoritarian world-view — which has been driving not only our foreign policy since the September 11 attacks, but also the bulk of our most controversial domestic policies undertaken in the name of fighting terrorists. Over the last five years, neoconservatism has been the central force of American political life, and it has resulted in a fundamental ideological realignment. Far more important than one’s views on traditional matters of political controversy is the extent to which one supports or opposes neoconservative theories.

Excess militarism is not a sign of strength, it is a sign of weakness or at least a sign that those engaging in it or advocating it see no other option. Not the freedoms they purport to be defending, not our position as the largest economic, cultural and political power in the world nor our ability to persuade or influence the world. At the single moment in our history, the days immediately following 9/11, at the time when we had more worldwide support than arguably any single nation has ever had in history, the neocon agenda took hold of the reins of power in our government and rode roughshod over that support, trampling it into the dust of history as rapidly as it arose.

Real leadership, leadership that recognized and truly honored the basic values we purport to stand for, would have instead used that international support to address terrorism at its roots, to put in place the mechanisms to track down and capture terrorists before they could organize further or rally more support, and to name them as criminals, enemies of all rational States of the world and pariahs everywhere and then demand of our newly minted friends around the world that they cooperate and make it worth their while to do so.

Real leaders, who believed in American strength and the strength of real freedom, would have done that immediately. But the neocons aren’t real leaders and, by virtue of their actions and ideologies, obviously do not believe we are strong enough to battle a group of common criminals less well organized than the Mafia.