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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 24, 2024

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As someone who remembers the '90s, 9/11 caused both parties to do an about face on war. If you remember the 2000 election, Bush criticized Clinton for his international meddling and promised a "more humble" foreign policy. Nobody was really opposed to Afghanistan (Barbara Lee said later that she only voted against it because it gave the administration a blank check on terrorism and would have supported the resolution if it were limited to the immediate objectives), and there was still strong Democratic support for Iraq. That support collapsed when the war turned into a fiasco and it became de rigeur for conservatives to double down on it during roughly 2004–2006. It was only really about a 10 year period where Democrats could firmly claim the mantle of being the anti-war party and it was de rigeur among Republicans to speak favorably about any military intervention. The last real instance of this was around 2013, when Assad crossed Obama's "line in the sand" over chemical weapons and Obama took heavy criticism for letting it slide. Or possibly 2015, when there was some suggestion that Obama could have gotten a better Iran deal if he made it clear that military action wasn't off the table, though this sentiment wasn't as widespread.

I'd like to say that this ended with the rise of Trump, but that's not really the case. While the Republican base will criticize Democrats for any of the current administration's foreign adventures, there's still widespread support for the shots we don't actually take. I actually hang out in bars with a lot of conservative-leaning people and most of them will make some comment about how we need to bomb Iran back into the stone age every time they're in the news for doing something aggressive. Every time Biden makes a concession to some foreign leader I hear remarks about him not being tough.