Three years ago, Barack Obama was campaigning against dumb wars while John McCain was musing about staying in Iraq a hundred years. Now Republican hopefuls pound the President about military moves in the Middle East even as John Boehner warns him to get Congressional approval for his action in Libya by this weekend or face being in violation of the War Powers Act.

Behind this scramble of traditional hawks and doves is the emerging theme for 2012: Everything Obama does is wrong, including going to war and getting out of it.

A New York Times report puts it politely: “The hawkish consensus on national security that has dominated Republican foreign policy for the last decade is giving way to a more nuanced view…

“A new debate over the costs and benefits of deploying the military reflects the length of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, the difficulty of building functional governments and the financial burden at home in a time of extreme fiscal pressure.

“The evolution also highlights a renewed streak of isolationism among Republicans, which has been influenced by the rise of the Tea Party movement and a growing sense that the United States can no longer afford to intervene in clashes everywhere.”

Sounds good as far it goes, but politics, which used to stop at the water’s edge, is in the depths of demagoguery and sound bites on a subject that deserves serious debate.

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