david brooks is "crushingly depressed" over the events of the last few weeks and of the situation in post-war iraq generally.

william safire attempts to lift the spirits of hawks like him and brooks, "those...who believe in the nobility of exporting freedom," under the headline "hold fast, idealists."

maureen dowd unloads on "the administration's demented quest to conquer arab hearts and minds," with their fixation on "making the middle east look more like america..."

it is disturbing to read brooks writing squishy things like "we were blinded by idealism," "we can't do good without losing our innocence," and there's still a chance, if elections are held that "we will have succeeded in doing what we set out to do."

it is shocking to read an old manicheanistic hardliner like safire buy into these terms of debate by chasting brooks and his old weekly standard crowd by reassuring them that "hope for iraqi freedom is in the wings. wait and see."

it is crushingly depressing to be in agreement with maureen dowd (whose email address, b.t.w., is "liberties@nytimes.com").

let's be clear about what should be and then proceed from there.

america should not involve itself militarily in another country, much less wage war, unless its national security is threatened. period.

america won the war in iraq. our military goal was to affect regime change and to capture or kill saddam hussein. we accomplished that.

that should have been the definition of success that all hawks should have accepted.

however, there is no post-9/11 conservative foreign policy doctrine any more than there is a liberal doctrine.

that is what has changed most alarmingly since sept. 11. before that, or i would argue, before 1989, the conservatives had a foreign policy doctrine, a resolute containment of communism first articulated by george kennan.

through the pressures of the sixties and seventies they persevered while the democrats floundered about, lurching from neo-isolationism to nation-building as a justification for military intervention.

since 1989 however, conservatives have kept working within the cold war structures, as by say, expanding nato when the entire justification for the alliance ceased to exist, without changing doctrine to fit a new world and by acting, and reacting, after 9/11 without any doctrinal superstructure.

the point is not just an intellectual one any more than capitalism was just an economic theory or das kapital just a political science book. doctrine dictates policy which dictates strategy which dictates tactics.