Friday, December 04, 2009

Emotional Gratification

Earlier today, I said this over on my twitter account:
Shorter Right: until the day Obama leaves office, we will fault everything he does and says, as well as things we imagine him to think


Now Brad at Sadly, No takes it a bit further in addressing a Charles Krauthammer "But He Didn't Sound Like He Liked War Enough!" post:
And this is why the neocons will never warm to Obama, no matter how many wars he eventually decides to start. It’s a personality thing, really — Obama likes to give off the air of someone who makes decisions only after careful deliberation and weighing the costs and benefits. The neocons, however, only respect fellow travelers who get funny feelings in their pants when they think about war, people who really get off on the idea of watching other people get blown up. For them, war isn’t merely an act of national defense but an emotional gratification and a validation of their personal strength.

To be fair, I can sympathize with them in some ways. When I used to play StarCraft back in the day, I’d really enjoy sending in a platoon of siege tanks to blow up Zerg encampments. But mercifully for the rest of the world, I learned to get out my primordial thirst for blood through computer games and not through becoming a member of the American foreign policy establishment. If only I’d applied to work at the American Enterprise Institute instead, I could have made quite a name for myself. What could have been and so forth.

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