I know that the idea that George Bush is not a true conservative has been raised repeatedly by both the left and the right, but an interesting thought occurred to me as I was reading John Murtha's interview in Rolling Stone's wonderful "Mavericks, Renegades, and Troublemakers" piece. Murtha says, "[Iraq] is one of the most educated countries in the world, one of the oldest civilizations. We have to give them the incentive to control their own destiny. Sure, they're happy to let us do the fighting- what the hell, why not? But they don't like Al Qaeda either. Once we redeploy, they'll take over and get rid of the terrorists."
This quote got me thinking about the inconsistencies between the conservative position on the War on Poverty and the conservative position on the war in Iraq.
Any good conservative will tell you that government welfare programs are a harmful intrusion on the infallible workings of the free market. If government assistance were removed, the poor would learn to fend for themselves and their lives would be better.
So why aren't they applying the same logic in Iraq? Shouldn't any good conservative believe that if we were to stop meddling in Iraq, the intense pro-democracy sentiment we are told so often exists there would conspire with market forces to compel the Iraqis to find a way to beat back the insurgency and establish a working government?
Colin Powell's Pottery Barn argument, "we broke it, we bought it" doesn't answer this question. Unjust government programs are responsible for much of this nation's poverty just as Bush's invasion is responsible for the problems facing the Iraqi people. Yet conservatives tell us that in one case we should stand aside and let the market do its thing, while in the other we need to do everything possible to fix the problems we've created.
For the record, I recognize that such faith in the free market is a load of garbage. It would just be nice if people who are horribly misguided could at least be consistently horribly misguided. Don't even pretend to have principles if you're not going to follow them.