The death of Hitchens left a gaping hole in the conservative armature, but the demand has produced the supply in the person of Niall Ferguson, another Oxbridge graduate who has decamped to the States [...]
Is it newsworthy that Ferguson, who backed McCain-Palin in ’08, supports Romney-Ryan? Yet the focus on him may signify that few conservative intellectuals can step up to the plate and with verve back the Republican ticket. Those who are not ranters, birthers or flat-earthers keep their heads down. Ferguson keeps his head up. He is a gift for conservatives.
This only begins the list of military actions over which Ferguson enthuses. He cannot wait until Israel, with American naval support, bombs Iran’s nuclear facilities. Pooh-poohing any doubts, our Harvard general posits that the bombing will usher in a period of “creative destruction” in Iran. He also suggests we should have used force in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab Spring, “which incidentally John McCain would have actively pursued had he been elected,” to orchestrate the emergence of American-friendly regimes. How military intervention in Libya or Egypt or Yemen would aid democratization is not spelled out. Perhaps Ferguson longs for a few more Iraq-type wars.
Ferguson is a provocative historian, but he is sometimes a shady numbers man and always a sunny militarist. “I am a fully paid-up member of the neoimperialist gang,” he declared some years ago. His prominence can be explained by his British charm and articulateness, but also by the dearth of credible and public conservative intellectuals.
Dan Canuckistan
AnonAF
greenstarnews
