The 'smart power' mirage

 Jim Geraghty:

...As the U.S. mission in Afghanistan ends in disaster and the Taliban returns to rule with wanton and widespread cruelty again, it is time to once and for all cast away the notion that the Democrats are the party of “smart power” abroad.

The Foreign Policy ‘Smart Set’ Leads America to Defeat Again

Every four years, a Democratic presidential candidate pops up and reminds us that he — or, one cycle, she — represents the smart party when it comes to foreign policy. These Democrats boast that they’re not isolationist, like Donald Trump, and they’re not unilateralist cowboys, like George W. Bush. They, and their top advisers, assure us that they are right, tough, smart, nuanced, and sophisticated. And every four years, the U.S. foreign-policy establishment — think-tank wonks, retired diplomats, columnists and authors, certain retired generals — almost uniformly swoons at these Democratic presidential candidates’ keen grasp of a complicated and dangerous world.

And these top Democrats are not shy about telling us how they understand the world better than anyone else does.
...

There is much more.

It now should be clear that these people are not smart.  Not even close.  What they think should be "normal" is really grossly abnormal.  What they do not like about Trump is actually much better than what they do like. 

BTW, it is worth reading the whole piece as a reminder of the serial disasters of Democrats' "smart power" from the Clinton administration to the present.

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