DON'T LOOK now, but neoconservatism is making a comeback — and not among the Republicans who have made it famous but in the Democratic Party. This new crop of liberal hawks calls for expanding the existing war against terrorism, beefing up the military and promoting democracy around the globe. They support a U.S. government that would seek multilateral consensus before acting abroad, but one that is not scared to use force when necessary.

It all started in late 1969, when president Richard Nixon announced the first withdrawal of American soldiers from South Vietnam and their replacement by South Vietnamese troops. The new policy was dubbed "Vietnamization" by secretary of defenseMelvin Laird and hailed as the beginning of the end of America's war in that land. In the five-plus years of war that followed, more than 20,000 American soldiers would still die; Nixon would actually widen the war by invasions of both Cambodia and Laos; and brutal US bombing campaigns would kill over a million more Indochinese. In fact, more Indochinese and Americans would be killed or wounded during the Vietnamization years than in the war before 1970.

After 9/11, the greatest fear that U.S. officials had was that the American people would figure out that U.S. foreign policy was at the root of the terrorist attacks and thus demand a total reevaluation of U.S. foreign policy. That might well have meant an end to all foreign aid to the Middle East and a withdrawal of U.S. forces from the region. That could have obviously meant a significant diminution of the U.S. government's overseas empire and the military-industrial complex, along with the enormously high taxes needed to pay for it all.

It is very easy to criticize the government of Lebanon for not doing more about Hezbollah. I object to terrorism committed by Hezbollah because I am a strong opponent of all violence on all sides. But I also object to the unreasonable accusations that the government of Lebanon has not done enough, when we realize that Israel occupied southern Lebanon for 18 years and was not able to neutralize Hezbollah. There is nothing wrong with considering the fact that we don't have to be involved in every single fight.

The Bush administration is likely to find itself increasingly trapped between Iraq and a hard place, wound in an ever-tightening knot of failing policy and falling support, at the heart of which lies a decision about reconstituting a draft. How this will resolve itself will be one of the complex dramas of our time.

We would be better served defending ourselves. I love America and I will defend America. If someone is a threat to America, I have no problem removing that threat. But I don't want a U.S. world. I don't want a U.S. government that dominates people around the world. I don't want to force democracy down anyone's throat. I think the idea of not forcing ideas down people's throat is itself very American. I want a robust military. I want the U.S. government to have a highly developed intelligence operation so that we're not sitting ducks. But I don't believe in invading other countries.

I've been an economist over half my life. The more I've learned, the more I've seen what a powerful insight economist Ludwig von Mises had over 60 years ago when he pointed out that virtually every government intervention leads to unintended consequences that then lead to further interventions.

The idea of the Persian Gulf as an American lake is not exactly new. Neoconservatives, moderate conservatives, “realists” typified by Henry Kissinger and James A. Baker, and liberal internationalists in the mold of President Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, mostly agree that the Gulf ought to be owned and operated by the United States, and the idea has been a cornerstone of U.S. policy under presidents both Republican and Democratic.

President Bush has been under pressure to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whom many view as the architect of a failed approach in Iraq. Even many ardent war hawks are unhappy with the secretary for not having more troops on the ground in Iraq, and for conducting the war less aggressively than they would like. But the issue is not who serves as secretary of defense, the issue is how, when, and why the United States uses military force.

This U.S. government mindset was expressed perfectly by former U.S. official MadeleineAlbright when she stated that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children from the U.S. and UN
sanctions against Iraq had, in fact, been “worth it.” By “it” she was referring to the U.S. attempt to
oust Saddam Hussein from power through the use of the sanctions. Even though that attempt did
not succeed, U.S. officials still felt that the deaths of the Iraqi children had been worth trying to
get rid of Saddam.