Mark Moyar

And neither of those went quite as expected.

Yeah, you can say that.

Yes.

So I think that's what's, you know,

I think on the left, but it's been interesting on the right, you know, that was not, as I said, that was not the main message that the right took.

The right took away the message that you fight to win.

It's not that you just don't fight.

Whereas I think...

in recent times again mainly i think because of iraq and afghanistan you increasingly hear people on the right who are questioning whether we should get involved in these uh interventions again i think the right now is thinking more in terms of you know iraq afghanistan how those things were costly um and into you know at a time when we've got rampant inflation people here con you know conscious of how much we

spend abroad.

And so, yeah, there is a lot of reluctance.

And I think there is, and within the Republican Party, you know, of which I'm part, there's been this big split between the neoconservatives and the neo-isolationists.

You know, the neocons kind of get blamed for Iraq and Afghanistan, and they were kind of the principal architects.

And so now you've had this, you know, this other element that's very hostile to them.

You know, there's also, I think, in between those a large group, which I would say maybe sort of the Reagan conservatives who are sort of not either super eager to get in every war, but also not necessarily opposed to war and willing to fight when American interests are at stake.

um so to go so far another extreme seems kind of incompatible with america being the most powerful country in the world yeah i think that's right and i do think there is some naivete and what you know and i have debates with people you know i'm kind of consider myself in the middle on this but um there are some who would say well

yes having a military is important for deterrence purposes what we should do is just have a big military but then we never use it but i don't think you can really have deterrent power if you take that position because people are going to call your bluff uh or if you're out there you know advertising this so you know sometimes as you said if it's the world's greatest power sometimes you are actually going to have to do something or you're not

going to be the world's greatest power, especially we have this rising China.

I do think we also see today what we saw before is that American politicians have not done a good job explaining to the American people why

ukraine or israel or whatever other causes why this is actually so important to us um and you know i spent a lot of time teaching college students and that's the things they say they don't really understand you know why are we spending all this money here but it hasn't really been explained to us and how do you explain it to your students