MORE RUDY….Hell, James Joyner is a conservative, so I’d expect him to be at least a little more sympathetic toward Rudy Giuliani’s recent foreign policy manifesto than me. But no. The former Giuliani fan, after watching America’s Mayor in action for a few months, has changed his opinion slightly:
I must concur in Matt Yglesias’ judgment: “this man is batshit insane.”
….The more I hear and read, though, the more I think Giuliani is either a charlatan or a simpleton. Either he’s lying to us and we therefore have no idea what his foreign policy will be or, worse, this is what he really thinks.
….Essentially, he wants to massively increase [the] defense budget….topple every regime we don’t like….wipe out every instance of non-democratic badness….diplomatic policy that finally lives up to the caricature of Bush policy….win the hearts and minds of Muslims everywhere by allying ourselves even more closely with the Israelis….spend billions on surveillance systems….learn the one lesson from Vietnam that no serious student of that war has learned: We were THIS CLOSE to winning!
In a way, this essay is a test for the bipartisan foreign policy community that’s taken so much abuse in the blogosphere lately. I mean, Rudy is plainly nuts. No one closer to the center than Charles Krauthammer should take this as anything more than the incoherent burblings of a national security naif. But will they say that? Or will it be considered a serious addition to the foreign policy discussion? Any bets?
