Rick Perry Is Gosh-Doggedly A Hawk; And Why That Is A Good Thing

Some recent articles and essays on Perry’s world view will smack of neoconservatism — a well known word, if not its actual ideology — and that will rile many. Now that Perry is sending out strong signals of his imminent splash into the GOP primary and his recent meetings with fellow Texan, President W. Bush; these are the kind of treats we can expect.

The leftists, though now considerably quite, derided Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfield as warmongering, neoconservative colonialists. They often vilified certain personalities such as Paul Wolfitz, Douglas J. Firth, Richard Pearl, and Weekly Standard editor William Kristol. Their vitriol rarely stopped there though. They labeled them as fascists. The reincarnations of Mussolini or Hitler. “The highest expression of human power,” Mussolini said, “is Empire.”

However, President Obama has offered very little in the form of an alternative. In fact, it would not be a great error to say Obama has carried out and expanded many of Bush’s supposed “sins.” The only difference now is that the “scholarship” and “journalistic” tour de force has all but disappeared.

There is a subtle quality to neoconservatism and it’s not all about reckless policies and globetrotting. There is a real need to press, and press hard, for American interests. That often means engaging the rest of the world, and at times, confronting it, even challenging it. A little moral clarity and conviction that “there is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America” would be welcomed reform to our nation’s foreign policy.

Foreign Policy online has a piece up about Rick Perry charging him as a “hawk internationalist”.

However, read American Spec‘s accompanying piece to that. After which, Perry’s “internationalism” doesn’t appear to be brash or reckless at all. It looks refreshing and position-oriented as it relates to the idea of Americanism. Something that has been poorly lacking and sorely missed over the last couple of years.

With Perry’s candidacy looming, some of us international relations wonks have begun to take note of his foreign policy positions. As governor, Perry has been quite the internationalist, taking his traveling sales-pitch to China, Mexico, Iraq, Israel, Italy, Qatar, France and Sweden to support free-market, free trade investment in the great state of Texas. In a 2009 debate against primary opponent Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Perry plainly stated that his faith required him to support Israel. This latter statement was bolstered by his trip to the Holy Land where he accepted the Defender of Jerusalem Award before breaking bread with then-President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He put his medal where his mouth is on June 28, 2011, when he wrote Attorney General Eric Holder encouraging him to prosecute Americans who would participate in the “unacceptable provocation” of a Gaza Flotilla against Israel.

Now, Foreign Policy is reporting that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has introduced Perry to a cabal of would-be national security strategists including former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith, former NSC expert William Luti, former Assistant U.S. Attorney and National Review columnist Andrew McCarthy, the Heritage Foundation’s Asia expert Peter Brookes, and former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalizad. Rumsfeld’s office confirmed the group gathered last week in Austin to provide Perry with his first national security briefing as a potential presidential candidate.

So what do these names tell us? Well, within the galaxy of foreign policy analysts and experts these folks trend much closer to the neoconservatism of the Bush administration than the non-interventionist approach of Tea Party types like Michele Bachmann and Rand Paul, or the wishy-washiness we’ve gotten from Mitt Romney on the future of American troops in Afghanistan. As governor, Perry has suggested the deployment of American troops to Mexico to control drug violence and proceeded with the execution of a Mexican citizen, despite impassioned requests from their government, President Obama, the International Court of Justice and former President George W. Bush to stay the sentence.

Understood in context of the hard-line stance he’s taken on matters south of the Rio Grande, his national security team suggests Perry’s shaping up as the traditional defense hawk many conservative have been clamoring for in an age of Obama.