A Wilsonian War?

I like a well crafted paragraph, and this one by Commentator Walter Russell Meade, at The American Interest, in "The Shores of Tripoli: Our Latest Wilsonian War", is one such paragraph.

The Wilsonians now have their war; they also now have their president.  Barack Obama’s inner Woodrow Wilson has clearly won out; he has nailed his colors to the mast of a liberal international foreign policy.  The cautious Jeffersonian realists have lost one policy battle after another in this administration.  Colin Powell’s Pottery Barn law (“if you break it, you own it”) has been cast to the winds.  A president who won his party’s nomination as the most consistent opponent of unpopular interventions abroad has become an apostle of liberal war.  Not since Saul went to Damascus has there been such a dramatic conversion.

I especially liked the Saul reference.

That said, I do think it is tacky to compare President Obama to President Wilson.

The problem with this kind of intervention is exactly what General Colin Powell said, and said so well—"Pottery Barn Rule".  And walking away is the worst sort of thing one can do to a People one has been supporting.  I know that Cambodia is an extreme example, but it is one that should resonate with people from Lowell or those living in the shadow of Signal Hill.

Hat tip to the Instapundit.

Regards  —  Cliff