The Asylum Inmate Who Would Be President

I think it took me a double days to get a full appreciation for the abject nuttiness of Rudy Giuliani in his big article for Foreign Affairs. From the need to capitalize "Terrorist's War on Us"; to its endorsement of a neoconservative foreign policy vision that has been completely wrong for the last 50 years; to its insanity about how we "almost won" in Vietnam; to advocating for 10 new military combat brigades and massive, crushing military spending to sustain all the wars he wants to fight simultaneously; to halting any pretense of preserving civil liberties and instead spying on the whole world three times over; to the rejection of the two-state solution in Palestine which every sane human being, including the Bush Administration and the Quartet, believe is the only sustainable course for stability; to the desire to effectively eliminate the UN and turn NATO into some kind of Justice League fighting whoever we decide not to like; to the only criticisms of Bush's policies being that he was too NICE, it's simply a tour de force of the wingnut id.

I'm not sure which is worse; whether Giuliani has to pander this far to the right to win the nomination of his party, or whether he ACTUALLY believes these things. Either way, it's unbelievably dangerous. Ezra believes we should be very afraid, Matt Yglesias worries about Rudy's ultimate vision of peace through complete military domination and subjugation...

The result of this policy is going to be an endless series of wars, a bankrupt country accounting for way more than fifty percent of world defense expenditures, fewer and fewer countries willing to cooperate with us on key priorities and, perhaps worst of all, more and more nuclear proliferation as countries decide its not safe to live in a world where the Rudy-led USA is the big kid on the block.

(which may be the point, is my fear. Defense multinationals could get rich in such an environment.)

... Jim Henley, in a devastating takedown, highlights a particular paragraph and thinks that Rudy doesn't get the irony...

Aspiring dictators sometimes win elections, and elected leaders sometimes govern badly and threaten their neighbors.

...Fred Kaplan takes Craziani behind the woodshed...

Had it been written for a freshman course on international relations, it would deserve at best a C-minus (with a concerned note to come see the professor as soon as possible). That it was written by a man who wants to be president—and who recently said that he understands the terrorist threat "better than anyone else running"—is either the stuff of high satire or cause to consider moving to, or out of, the country [...]

"Constellations of satellites that can watch arms factories everywhere around the globe, day and night, above- and belowground ... must be part of America's arsenal."

Yes, and while we're at it, let's build anti-gravity machines, mind-reading robots, X-ray-vision telescopes, speed-of-light transporter-beams, time-travel kits, and intercontinental heat-seeking bullets. It's bad enough that so many foreigners believe in the omniscience of U.S. intelligence agencies; it's appalling that a presidential candidate seems to believe such sci-fi fantasies, too.

... and conservative James Joyner completely concurs with everyone.

Essentially, he wants to massively increase a defense budget that already spends more than the rest of the countries on the planet combined so as to buy more submarines and anti-missile systems to protect us against a land-based guerrilla movement. We’re then going to use that military to go in, apparently, to topple every regime we don’t like and to wipe out every instance of non-democratic badness and spend decades occupying those countries. All, of course, while winning friends and influencing people.

We’re going to have a diplomatic policy that finally lives up to the caricature of Bush policy. We’re not going to talk to anyone unless they already agree with us. Our diplomats are simply going to be propaganda instruments from now on. And our media, too! And we’ll win the hearts and minds of Muslims everywhere by allying ourselves even more closely with the Israelis while punishing the Palestinian people.

There are more reviews, all of them abominable. This is a guy so consumed with terrorists that he has them on dartboards in his campaign bus, but in a 6,000-word foreign policy manifesto he never mentions Pakistan, where the terrorists ARE. This at the time when even the Bush Administration understands that this is the Earth's most dangerous trouble spot and that they must try to manage the chaotic situation.

There are some dull Republican candidates, there are some panderers who say only what the base wants to here, there are even some warhawks. NOBODY combines all of these qualities and complete authoritarianism in a package like Giuliani. He's certifiable.

UPDATE: Oh yeah, Rudy's got underpants problems, too.