On Moral Compromises.

One can tell a great deal about a person by finding out what he will not compromise: what lines in the sand he will not cross.

For all their faults, I personally will be voting for the Republicans in my district next week, as I believe national security remains the most important issue of the day and I continue to mistrust the Democratic leadership on that issue in particular. I believe that a Democratic majority in either house would result in a flood of hearings investigating Bush's foreign policies, a defunding of our efforts to forge a stable government in Iraq, or both. This would make it harder for Bush to confront a nuclear North Korea and a nearly nuclear Iran, it would make it harder for Bush or his successors to use military force against a rogue state, and it would send a signal of weakness unfathomably worse than our retreat from Somalia.

So far as I can tell, Rod Dreher doesn't give a damn about any of this. He is willing for us to lose face in front of our jihadist enemies just so Bush and Rumsfeld can be held accountable for what he believes is gross incompetence in Iraq. I don't believe they are guilty of such a thing, but even so: it's one thing to hold Lincoln to account for early defeats in the Civil War, it's another thing entirely to give the Copperheads the government in the process.

(Would that the modern Democrats were hawks...)

Because there's no clear indication that he's thought through the consequences of his petulant temper tantrum, I suspect that -- despite his otherwise clear appraisal of the threat posed by the jihadists -- Rod's willing to sacrifice national security to have his way in seeing the Bush Administration punished for Iraq.

It's now also clear that Rod's willing to sacrifice his principles on abortion to see to it that Republicans suffer for their supposed corruption and incompetence. There's a lot that's reprehensible about that post: there's the convenient redefinition of what it means for Rod to be "pro-life," and there's the suggestion that the American government isn't worth defending with Bush in the Oval Office:

"And I look at my own two sons, and wonder how I would feel if they were in Iraq now, putting their life on the line to protect two unworthy governments: Maliki's and Bush's. And that shapes my thinking heavily this year." [emphasis mine]

But beyond that is the emphasis on punishing the GOP:

"I think we are in a terrible, terrible situation in Iraq, and that the Republicans have a lot to answer for."

I find it hard to believe that a Dem-controlled Congress will make the admittedly rough situation in Iraq -- or, more importantly, national security overall -- any better, and I haven't seen any substance from Rod defending such a notion. Ultimately, I think the big issue for Rod is that Republicans must answer for their sins.

National security? It's not given much thought at all. Abortion? Important, he says, but not important enough.

I wonder what Rod won't sacrifice to satisfy his childish craving for punishing the GOP.


Update: In a later post, Rod quotes Paul Krugman -- odd how much our crunchy conservative likes and respects the NY Times' most liberal writer -- who asserts, "the United States has accepted defeat on [Iraqi] reconstruction."

God help us if that's true. But the interesting thing as it relates to Dreher is that it shows that he doesn't naively believe we can win in Iraq while the "crooks" in the White House are "roasted on live television."

He thinks Iraq is already a lost cause, and he furthermore thinks hearings where Rummy is grilled by indignant leftists is far more important than America's making clear its will to fight and to win.