Why the right should oppose almost all war and foreign adventurism

Our parts of the right — the serious parts that is — who found Trump's breaking with GOP orthodoxy on foreign policy to be one of his greatest appeals, cheering on every indication that he would end our forever wars (e.g. announcing the pulling of troops from Syria, negotiating an end to the Afghan War) and giving him hell when he seemed to waver (his missile strikes on Syria), have tended towards the same messages: no more neocons, no more "regime change," no more pointless forever wars. Recent developments with Iran though require us to rethink our message and ideas.

The Trump administration's decision to assassinate the commander of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Qasem Soleimani, which seemed impulsive and likely to lead to escalating conflict, has gone unexpectedly well for them so far. Iran's shooting down of Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752, full of civilians from Iran and elsewhere, blew up in their faces and ignited protests by Iranians outraged at their government's incompetence and the fact that they lied about the incident for days. Their ballistic missile attack on U.S. bases in Iraq, though it may have achieved exactly what it was designed to do by minimizing harm to the Americans stationed there, came across as ineffectual to the U.S. domestic political audience that expected worse.

So, so far, there's no war as Iran is unable to respond with conventional military means, and what look like large organic protests show that there are many in Iran who may welcome external pressure against the regime. What "war" then is there to oppose? What "regime change" if the people themselves want it?

Our house is on fire and our leaders are off spreading democracy around the globe

The political establishment (i.e. both Conservative Inc., heavily influenced by a hawkish neoconservative ideology for some time now, and the relatively bipartisan national security brain trust) has a long history of getting these things very wrong so reflexive opposition to their designs is quite understandable. War must be opposed before it happens as well, so what some have described as a "hysterical" response may only seem that way in retrospect, with the outrage being partly responsible for cooler heads prevailing.

Further, we don't know where this will go. Iran has promised to respond by other means than conventional warfare and their threats could be realized through any of their many proxy groups spread throughout the Middle East. There's almost certain to be considerable tension between the U.S. and Iran for many years to come from this and that used as justification for the increased presence of U.S. troops in the region, and that's not just undesirable but dangerous because that same U.S. troop presence was one of the justifications given by Al Qaeda for its attacks on the U.S. Also, they've announced that they've officially pulled out of the JCPOA nuclear deal, which is sure to be yet another intractable problem potentially leading to conflict in the years ahead.

But there's a far more fundamental problem than that: at a time when our situation at home is — not good — it must be said that these things simply don't serve our interests. Our house is on fire and our leaders and political representatives are off spreading democracy around the globe. War and foreign adventurism are major distractions for the right at a time when we find ourselves in an ever-deeper hole in politics and our electoral prospects keep getting worse.

The Bush administration made for a particularly egregious demonstration of this problem. 20 years ago conservatives still had some cultural power: Michael Moore got booed for denouncing Bush during his speech at the 2003 Oscars, major pop music celebrities like Britney Spears completely deferred to the Republican president, saying we should "just trust [him] in every decision he makes," and maybe most infamously, the Dixie Chicks had their careers almost ruined over their disavowal of Bush and the Iraq War during a London concert. Conservatives had real power and they totally squandered it on one of the worst foreign policy blunders of all time.

Now it's 20 years later and we're in a far worse position. Even if conflict with Iran happens to go well, it'll suck up the attention and nationalistic passions of conservatives and divert them towards ends that don't serve our critical interests at home.

A comment from Iranian protesters struck me too: they've said that it's the IRGC that's their enemy (for oppressing them at home) and not the U.S. and Israel. Well that's nice of them, but that's similar to our situation. Though one can point to this or that provocation or attack linked to Iran to justify hostility with the country, it's simply absurd to claim that this minor regional power on the other side of the world is such a threat to the United States. Iran is a threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia and the geopolitical games our security establishment plays, not the interests of Americans. In this way, Iranians are not our enemies, those are the people actively screwing us at home.

These days the right should oppose almost all war and foreign intervention. War is violent and destructive and should therefore be objectionable to anyone, but we have our own additional reasons to oppose it too, as explained above. Technically speaking, the right is not "anti-war" in the sense that we take a principled stand against war for any reason (few do), but in the world we live in today, we effectively are.