I'm not bad, I'm misunderstood.

Good/bad.

Black/white.

Right/left.

Democrat/Republican.

Up/down.

Us/them.

We like to categorize things. We like to apply our reason to situations. We like to discriminate. (Discriminate is a fine word, which shouldn't be polluted, as it is today, with the very narrow sense of "racial discrimination" which is code for racism. Fine word, discriminate. Underused. When was the last time you heard a phrase like "a gentleman of discriminating tastes"?)

Our reason, of course, is not infallible. We make mistakes. We take mental shortcuts. We put things into categories that are convenient for us--and sometimes we're wrong.

I have opposed our Mesopotamian adventures from the get-go. Before that, I was very concerned about our Afghan adventures. I have regarded the presidency of George W. Bush as a stain upon America, upon American history, culture, and constitutional order.

In mainstream popular opinion, people who do these things tend to be Democrats. Thus, by the simple and natural categorization process I outlined above, a lot of people have listened to me, or read what I have written (not here, since I'm only a beginning baby blogger), and categorized me as a Democrat--and, more, as a moonbat.

It is, gentle reader, to laugh.

Human beings are complex, and thus, without in any way tooting my horn, I too am complex. In this instance, at least, I do not fit into the neat paradigm of "pro-Bush, Republican/anti-Bush, Democrat."

My concerns for the last ten or fifteen years have mostly centered around foreign policy, more than domestic. A simple reason for this is that we have, in my honest opinion, two major parties of social democrats (in the European sense) who prance around in the clothing they wore sixty years ago. The Republicans are perhaps slow socialists, and the Democrats fast socialists, but they're all socialists. And so it's foreign policy that I focus on.

Some of that is because of the time I spent wearing the pickle suit. "Pickle suit" was one of my friends' term for the camouflage utility uniform we wore when we were on active duty in the United States Marine Corps. Before I joined the Corps, I sat down and thought for a long time about what being an American meant to me, and what it had meant to me (in a material sense). I didn't join the Corps because I wanted to go to war and kill bodies---but because I realized how lucky I am to be an American, and because, in my way, I wanted to stand on that wall between us and them, and to protect me and mine. As a disposable asset of the United States Government, then, I thought about foreign policy a lot. Where were they going to send me, if they sent me anywhere, and why would they send me?

In the event, I pretty much never went anywhere, and never did anything, and while I am proud of my service in the USMC, I'm not claiming to be a hard-charger or high-speed, low-drag, extreme tactical operator. I was a linguist, and that barely even qualifies as being a Marine.

Some of the time I spent focused on foreign policy was because I worked abroad for several years. I worked in former Soviet Central Asia, in Kazakhstan, and I spoke the language at work and at home while I did it, and I read a lot more European and Asian news reports. Suffice it to say, I was exposed to points of view beyond those of the New York Times, the Washington Post, and People.

Those things, together with where, and when, and to whom I was born, have all influenced my perception of the world. I know I see things differently than my father did, and than my grandfather did, and differently than people of my generation who grew up in other circumstances, other regions, other countries, other classes, other religions, other, in other words, stuff.

Religiously, I am quite Christian. Socially, I am quite conservative. Politically, I am quite libertarian. Legally, I am quite the constitutionalist, and by that I mean in the Ron Paul mode. My parents received and read both Ron Paul and Gary North in the late 1970s, and I have, on and off, continued the association. It is for the foregoing reasons that I have been appalled at the George W. Bush administration, and my objections include each category (religion, social theory, politics, and legal theory).

I could be wrong, but I think that in none of the categories set forth above do I have much agreement with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party in America.

Why, then, do I so loathe the actions taken by the Bush Administration?

I am not as conversant with Augustine's just war theory as I should be, perhaps, but I think our Afghan intervention clearly qualifies as just (i.e., in response to an attack) and that our Mesopotamian adventure does not. Despite the hysterics of the pro-war faction in early 2002, Iraq had not attacked the United States. Saddam Hussein had been a client of the US, not that this is much of an endorsement. After all, we cooperated with Joe Stalin, and he's at the top of my personal list of monsters. Saddam, too, was probably a monster. Many regimes are headed by monsters, though, and as some dead white guy once opined, America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.

As a conservative, I am loathe to take giant steps. "Look before you leap" is kind of a watchword of mine, and the times I have leapt without looking have frequently reminded me why I want to look, before I leap. For the entirity of my life, the United States had pursued a more or less traditional balance of power foreign policy. The Cold War gave us a neat categorization of good and bad, and the possession of nuclear weapons made the case for careful balancing. After 9/11, a certain frenzy seemed to overtake our foreign policy elite. We spoke in nearly apocalyptic terms of an end to evil, of remaking the world to remove whatever root causes were behind these heinous attacks.

The main reason I had voted for George W. Bush the first time around was that I really liked his criticism of Bill Clinton for being, ahem, internationally adventurous. I remember, with the disappointment of a jilted suitor, Bush's comments about a more humble foreign policy. These things comport with my conservative instincts. Change the world? Ha! How'd that whole "New Soviet Man" thing turn out?

It turned out about like I'd expected. Man is not a blank slate. Afghans are Afghani, Americans are American. Where and when and how you're born, and how you're raised, those things are important. (Isn't this, after all, self-evident?) We can change things, we can make progress . . . but we can also make mistakes. There's nothing wrong with making mistakes. I remember an old line about how the only people who never make mistakes are people who never make anything.

But as a conservative, I want to be able to mitigate the effects of our mistakes. Not only do I want to look before I leap, but I want to be able to "leap back" whenever possible. What if I leap into quicksand? Let's try Policy A---and let's not commit to it entirely, not before we've shown that Policy A actually works, and does not provoke Counterpolicy B, or Unintended Consequence C. To me, this seems like common sense. (I could be wrong.)

As a libertarian, I am, on general principles, suspicious of the motives, means, and ability of government to achieve its stated goals. Many people conflate "libertarian" with "libertine"---and, indeed, an awful lot of mainstream libertarianism is of the abortion-on-demand, huff hash, spit on the Pope and burn the flag sort. I'd call that libertinism, too. But my libertarianism is different. (Yes, I'm special. Wheee!)

My libertarianism does not worship the market. (I worship God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ who redeemed us of our sins.) I know that the market can make wrong choices, sometimes hideously wrong. But I favor freedom, the ability of people to choose for themselves how they'll live. I think that freedom of choice is one of God's gifts to man, and that maximizing that freedom will lead to the least bad outcome.

As a libertarian, I don't think I need to comment overly on why I'm opposed to the massive centralization of state authority in the hands of the executive branch of the United States Government. We need fewer laws, not more. Some old Italian guy once said that the more laws you had, the more corrupt your state was going to be. Once more, I think that this resonates with "traditional American culture."

From a constitutional standpoint, I think the Bush Administration has provoked, or nearly provoked, a constitutional crisis. The recent Supreme Court decision regarding Gitmo detainees? I think it was prompted not only by social concerns about human rights, but also institutional pushback from the judiciary. If you think back to the Padilla case, the executive branch of the United States Government asserted that it had the right to arrest an American citizen, on American soil, without a judicial warrant, and to detain such an American citizen indefinitely, in an undisclosed location, without benefit of counsel or appeals to judicial remedy.

Friends, that's a pretty bold rethinking of our constitutional order.

The executive branch of the United States Government has also given the thumbs-up to enhanced interrogation techniques, like waterboarding, stress positions, and "light pokes or shoves" that have resulted in numerous deaths among US detainees. In order to approve these techniques, the executive branch of the United States Government asserted that the president could countermand US statutory law, treaties signed by the United States, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and common/constitutional law. Constitutionally speaking, I ain't down with that.

Now lest the foregoing sound too liberal, let's play "Well, what would YOU have done?"

I would have gone into Afghanistan with fire and sword, with the explicit and avowed goal of capturing or killing Osama bin Laden for terrorism and a direct attack upon the United States. I would have told the Taliban that they could either step aside, or step up. If, as it eventuated, Osama bin Laden had sought refuge in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan (former North West Frontier Provinces), I would have pursued him with, once more, fire and sword.

And I would have made explicitly clear to the states in the region that once we got Osama bin Laden, we were going home. We would stay until we got him, and then we would leave. Afghan for the Afghanis! Pakistan for the Pakistanis! We would not be coming to bring them the benefits of Western civilization, we would be coming on a manhunt and, if necessary, a punitive raid. But we WOULD NOT BE STAYING. After Jefferson smashed the Barbary pirates, did we stick around? No, we sailed for home and good beer and smiling wenches and a victory celebration. The job was done---let's go home.

I would have treated captured members of Al-Qaeda or the Taliban as Enemy Prisoners of War, or Prisoners of War (EPW/POW, depending on your vintage). I would have said, "They are scum and they do not deserve this, but we'll treat them that way anyhow, because we're better than they are." (And by "better" I do not mean some limp, pallid moralism, either. By "better" I mean that it is my honest belief that a limited government, socially conservative free market society simply kicks butt.)

My idea for going into Pakistan has been mocked, and eyes rolled at it. Yet today, we're still sending Predator drones to make Hellfire strikes into Pakistan, which looks more and more like Cambodia to me, only, you know, drier. We have invested ourselves into the protection of the Afghan government headed by Hamid Karzai. Why? Why do we care who runs Afghanistan?

I'll admit, initially, I was scared of our intervention into Afghanistan. How many empires have the Afghans stymied? (Lots. Alexander the Great, the British, and the Soviets, to name only the most prominent.) The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized the problems all those empires had had with Afghanistan: they stayed. Afghanistan is like a hot potato: it's easy to grab ahold of it, but it's hard to hold onto it for long.

Well, I never wanted to hold onto it. In, out, punitive raid, smash some stuff, kill Osama bin Laden, and come back home to a big pulled-pork barbecue.

As for Saddam Hussein? Well, he'd still be feeding people into the wood chipper if I was king, I guess. Monster, yeah buddy, but the world is full of 'em. Tough for the rest of the world, I guess, but no real business of America, so long as vital American national interests aren't too threatened. (And I'd draw a mighty thin list of truly vital American national interests, too.) At the risk of being all Christian, let's remember that Saddam Hussein's government included a Christian as vice-premier, or vice-president, or something like that. Figger the odds on the next time that happens in the Middle East, why don't you.

So here, in brief, is my argument about George W. Bush. He bought into this world changing nonsense that he mocked when he was a candidate. He took his eye off the man who really did hit us on 9/11, to go after targets of opportunity elsewhere. He decided that the mission of the United States was to bring freedom and democracy to the Arab/Muslim world. He decided that if the president does it, that means its not illegal. (Cf., Richard Milhous Nixon.) He let the PATRIOT ACT, a laundry list of power-grabbing by police and intelligence agencies, whip through Congress without review or approval. He's burdened America and Americans with vast new bureaucracies like the TSA and the DHS, and he's used America's striking arm as a police force in civil wars in both Iraq and Afhganistan. He bet that we could change the world, and I think he bet it all on one roll of the dice.

Now, was there a potential upside? Hella yes there was. If we could change the world to make it more like America, that would be a good thing. If we could bring freedom and democracy to the mostly benighted Arab/Muslim world, that would be a good thing. If we could make "them" more like "us" then that would be a very good thing.

I don't know if the things I outlined above would have worked. I'll be honest: they might only not have worked, but they might have worked out worse than what the administration actually did.

I'm just saying, when I express my honest loathing for the Bush administration, don't you drop me into the moonbat wing of the Democratic party category. I've got my own reasons for loathing them, and they're conservative, Christian, libertarian, constitutionalist reasons.