I’d heard frightening rumors that Robert Kagan had written a column praising Barack Obama that should send shivers down my spine. Mostly, I found Kagan to be accurate but unthreatening. It’s true that Obama is not proposing to dismantle the American national security apparatus, and that some (though not me) will be disappointed by this. On one key issue, though, Kagan really does ascribe to Obama a view I find objectionable:

Obama never once says that military force should be used only as a last resort. Rather, he insists that “no president should ever hesitate to use force — unilaterally if necessary,” not only “to protect ourselves . . . when we are attacked,” but also to protect “our vital interests” when they are “imminently threatened.” That’s known as preemptive military action.

Perhaps using unilateral force to protect imminently threatened vital interests is known as “preemptive military action.” The Bush administration, meanwhile, with the support of people like Robert Kagan, has put forward a doctine of unilateral preventive military action to counter non-imminent threats. Then they decided to call this doctrine “preemption.” Thus, through sleight-of-hand Obama comes to agree with Bush. In the real world, though, as Martin Peretz correctly notes Obama’s views seem closer to Al Gore’s than to Bush’s or Kagan’s — supportive of a very robust American military capability, willing to use that capacity in a variety of circumstances, but not interested in making unilateral military strikes (or threats of strikes) the centerpiece of America’s non-proliferation efforts. At least that would be my guess.

Admittedly, we’re all conjecturing based on rather limited textual evidence. But it seems significant that in the case of Iraq, Gore and Obama came down on one side of the issue, while Kagan and Bush came down on another. Neither Gore nor Obama are “doves” in the sense of wanting to curtaul US military capabilities, but unless their views different in some important ways from the Bush/Kagan view it’s hard to see why they would reach different conclusions about a significant concrete issue.

Brad Plumer points out that Mitt Romney’s stance on the Muslim Brotherhood is actually well to the right of the Bush administration. So if you think the problem for the past few years has been that George W. Bush is a weak-kneed appeaser, I think Mitt’s got to be your man.

While Mitt Romney impressed me and most other reporters with his presentation, it would be good for some to observe that he also put forward a completely insane policy idea on the leading issue of the day:

We’ll move everything to get him. But I don’t want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there’s going to be another and another. This is about Shi’a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate.

To put it bluntly, the trouble here is that the Muslim Brotherhood just isn’t a violent terrorist organization, and certainly doesn’t commit acts of violence against the United States. It’s an extremely traditionalist multinational civil society organization. It’s true that a lot of violent types used to be in the Brotherhood and now they’re in terrorist groups, but used to be is the key phrase here, they left the Brotherhood because the Brotherhood wouldn’t sign on for their agenda. In one clause, Romney’s just gone and broadened the war to include a huge new category of people who have no intention of waging war against the United States or even against Israel.

Note that even without the Muslim Brotherhood bit, this is a terrible idea. If you liked Iraq, you’re going to love trying to root Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon and Hamas out of the West Bank. Check out Spencer’s remarks on this as well. He notes that “it’s hardly remarkable that Romney doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” It isn’t surprising, but then again this point needs to be driven home again and again — Mitt Romney displayed zero understanding of political Islam or global terrorism, none of his Republican opponents called him on it, and as far as I know, nobody in the press (the same press, you’ll recall, that’s concerned with the Pursuit of Truth above all else) bothered to notice.

Weird moments in Republican self-deception:

Giuliani said the only thing worse than an American-led military offensive against Iran would be Iran having nuclear weapons, which he called “the worst nightmare” of the Cold War. The way to stop Iran, he said, was resolute American leadership facing down the Iranian president.

“He has to look at an American president, and he has to see Ronald Reagan,” Giuliani said.

Is that the version of Ronald Reagan who sold the Iranians weapons, or it is the version that sought to check Iranian power by sending Don Rumsfeld to Baghdad to assure Saddam Hussein that the United States didn’t really mind if he used poison gas to attack the Kurdish civilian population?