Out of curiosity, does Frum have a position on the War on Serbs? His country also fought for the Bosnian and Kosovan Jihads.

Theodore Rosoevelt couldn't win the GOP nomination in 1912 or 1916, so why anyone thinks we could have won it in 1920 even if he was still fit and fiddle is beyond me. His was a nationalist opposition to the Treaty of Versaillies and the League of Nations, not patriotic one. The candidate whom GOP voters in 1920 turned to were not Roosevelt clones like Leonard Wood or Hiram Johnson, it was to a simple, homespun man from Marion, Ohio, Warren Harding. He was nominated and elected because who he has and what he stood for represented the mood of the voters and represented the mood of the times.

I'm sorry that Mr. Frum feels as though the American voter let him and friends down back in 1920 but as per usual, it wasn't them who's sons died on the battlefield in useless war or will still stationed in Russia at that wars end or who helped spread the Spanish flu epidemic of 1919. Americans had their fill of parades and glorious war and progressive golden ages that led to inflation, rationing and prison for those who dissented. They wanted normalcy and they got it.

FDR wanted to help the British, but many Americans including Charles Lindberg thought we should stay out of it. Roosevelt also didn't like the way Japan was throwing its weight around in Asia. And it appears that FDR wanted to use Japan as a way to put Americans into a belligerent frame of mind and he cut off supplies of iron and other material we were shipping to Japan and set up our forces at Pearl Harbor.

FDR also surreptitiously approved the American Volunteer Group and sent them to defend China before the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But the Japanese knew it was happening.

In hindsight we can also say that at the close of WWI we made humiliating demands on Germany and then didn't enforce them when Hitler came to power and ignored the limits set on how much of a military Germany would be allowed.

So there is a lot of blame to go around.

Actually our "nation building" --- or I should say "democracy-building" worked rather well at the end of WWII. McArthur designed a pretty good constitution for Japan and under our guidance West Germany developed a working democracy. If we had just walked away after the War, that would have produced a catastrophe. So the "Marshall Plan" deserves credit for helping to bring Europe back to a functioning civilization.

Maybe Bush II has better intentions than he has been given credit for. I know--- "The road to hell is paved. . . ." Certainly he and his advisors have misunderstood the motives and tenets of Islam and consequently misnamed this war we are in.

Does nobody find it interesting that a former Trotskyite communist is now interested in free trade?

Frum on BBC's Question Time leading up to the war in Iraq stated that France and Russia supplied Saddam with chemical and biological weapons not the US although a congressional investigation in the early 90’s confirmed that the US did give him chemical and biological weapons to fight Iran.
Russia or the USSR only supplied him with conventional weapons.

But the main point of Frum and these other Neocons is whose interests are they perusing the US or another foreign body and why are they willing to shed US blood and money to do it?

Very good point, Mr. Collins

Most trade policy realists aren't asking for Free Trade to be completely abandoned. They simply wish our trade policy was more pragmatic, like other developed countries.

For instance, what is the good of having "Free Trade Zones" when goods originating from countries outside that zone have little or no duties imposed on them?

Wouldn't it make more sense to limit imports to industies not in the vital national interest, and to countries which it is in our interest to help develop economically (Mexico, but not China, for example)?

Looks like Frum would have called T.R. a socialist.