What War Costs the Right

Another casualty is cognizance of opportunity costs. The right can be counted on to remember that it isn't enough for domestic spending to do some good—the case must be made that taxpayer money is being spent in the best possible way by government, and better than it could be spent by the American people.

Apply that mind-set to the current debate about troop levels in Afghanistan.

Fighting Islamic terrorism to safeguard American lives should be a high priority. It isn't one we're overspending on. Are tens of thousands of additional troops in Afghanistan the best means of achieving that end?

The fact that General Stanley McChrystal wants more troops isn't enough to make that case. He is a man understandably focused on the narrow aim of maximizing success in his theater. Conservatives keen on granting his request must make a broader case: that investment in that effort, as opposed to any other, makes us most safe. It is a proposition that should be argued for, not assumed.

Unfortunately, the conservative movement's impulse is to afford military leaders too much deference. Take its stance on our nuclear arsenal. After the military presented a plan to reduce it, President Obama signaled his displeasure by demanding more ambitious cuts. "Obama knows more about weapons requirements than the military now?" conservative blogger Dan Riehl wrote, echoing many on the right. "I think it's time to start ringing the alarm bells with this guy, folks."

Conservatives respond quite differently when domestic-affairs bureaucrats claim special knowledge. Expertise in education, or welfare spending, or environmental stewardship is afforded some respect. Deference is tempered, however, by the understanding that people aren't very good at judging the relative importance of their own work, and that every institution is reflexively opposed to shrinking itself. Should our nuclear arsenal shrink? I haven't any idea, but a better counterargument is required than "the military knows best."

Lastly, conservatives upset at taxpayer funds spent on a corrupt organization like ACORN should summon the same outrage when money is allocated to war contractors guilty of misdeeds that are far worse.

"Whether it be soldiers electrocuted by cheap, poorly installed showers by KBR and Triple Canopy, the vodka- and drug-fueled pimping frat boys from the Armor Group or the gang rape of a female American contractor by her fellow KBR employees, there is seemingly no end to evidence that the proliferation of privatization has created a runaway Frankenstein of venality, arrogance, avarice and corruption and downright evil," Kelley Vlahos wrote in The American Conservative. "Take this latest bit about the Armor Group. Thanks to the Project on Government Oversight, which had the wherewithal to FOIA the goods on this group, we now know that there has been unfettered depravity—including, we heard last week, the procurement of imported, unwitting Chinese girls for sex—at our U.S embassy."

This behavior is anathema. Unlike the ACORN case, however, the sordid facts aren't provoking an outraged response, due in part to the right's curious habit of minimizing government misdeeds and excess when they relate to foreign affairs. This holds true even when misconduct threatens the war effort, as at Abu Ghraib, or squanders public money, as when subcontractors were caught overcharging for their work.