Thread by @josh_hammer

I finally finished @jackbutler4815's interminable slog of an essay purporting to take aim at me on @SohrabAhmari on foreign policy.

It is candidly not worth responding to in full, but here are a few quick thoughts. nationalreview.com/2021/08/reflex…

First, on a personal note, I'd like to thank @NRO (some employees of whom I certainly consider friends) for apparently living rent-free in their heads this week. There was also @baseballcrank's fusillade against common good originalism. nationalreview.com/2021/08/explai…

(I responded to that piece with this thread.)

https://twitter.com/josh_hammer/status/1428381990697328643

I'd also like to note that I believe I'm at least the third @AmMomentOrg advisory board member (after @JDVance1 and @esaagar) who Butler has come after in bizarrely ad hominem terms. So be forewarned, @rachelbovard and @Schilling1776—y'all are probably next!

Turning to Butler's "substance," he manages to write an entire hectoring, self-righteous essay bullying two fellow conservative opinion/submissions editors without landing a single actual blow. Literally not a single one. All I see is a bizarre misinterpretation of Federalist 11.

More importantly, anyone who knows me *at all* can easily tell you that I would never in a million years self-identify as an "isolationist." I am a hardcore Zionist and I retain hawkish instincts vis-à-vis America's actual threats—China, Russia, Iran, etc.

The entire argument against moralistic nation-building boondoggles in third-world tribal backwaters such as Afghanistan is that they are ultimately *detrimental* to the national interest and distract from our ability to adequately counter our actual strategic threats.

I also adamantly support the use of pinprick strikes and narrowly targeted uses of force to take out America's legitimate enemies, such as the January 2020 strike against Qassem Soleimani (ditto the September 2011 strike against Anwar al-Awlaki, etc.).

Sohrab too, I believe.

In general, this notion that any deviation from neoconservative moralistic interventionism "orthodoxy" makes one an "isolationist" is worse than a false dichotomy—it is outright intellectual dishonesty masquerading as principled conservative "gatekeeping."

It's pathetic.

This was the concluding paragraph of my syndicated column this past week. Does this sound like an "isolationist" to you? Really?

What is so difficult to grasp, for some people, that a national interest-centric, "Jacksonian," prudential, "America First" (use whichever label you want) foreign policy exists between the "isolationist" and neoconservative/interventionist extremes?

Michael Anton did as good a job as anyone of laying that out here. foreignpolicy.com/2019/04/20/the…

In short, Butler has doused a field of straw men in gasoline and applied an industrial-grade blowtorch. But I’m not sure he’s thus far demonstrated that he’s capable of much else in the public-facing arena.

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