Whether the subject is raining down freedom bombs on our little brown brothers or ridding America of the scourge of illegal drugs, it's kind of a misnomer to call them either "liberal" or "hawks" because what they really are is authoritarians. Now I know a lot us on the left normally associate that term with right-wing crackpots, but liberals can also be authoritarians by excessive deference and even fealty to whatever governing authority is in charge of the country. Why would self-styled "liberals" resort to this? Simple. Because after you've nailed down a sinecure at some Beltway policy shop like Brookings, or scored a twice-weekly op-ed at the Times or the Post, and been feted by all the other Serious Persons in Washington, you become, by default, the governing authority's in-house policy analyst. The governing authority' fate, then, is intertwined with your own, so it's only natural, when the the governing authority's decision-making comes under intense public scrutiny, for you to stand up to its defense and to strike back at its accusers.
That's the real reason why neoliberal interventionists like Cohen and Friedman and Pollack and O'Hanlon resorted to relentless hippie-bashing in the run-up to the Iraq War and its immediate aftermath---not because they necessarily agreed with the neocons of the right, but because their authority---like their government's---was being threatened by the unwashed masses who dared to claim that their governing authority was full of shit and intentionally lying America into a needless war. Only a fool or a Frenchman would say that! That's also the reason reason why you'll never read some Serious Liberal Centrist like Tom Friedman urging his readers to go out and burn down every Bank of America branch until they give us back all the money they stole from us, and why people who do, like Matt Taibbi, can be relegated to the league of the Deeply Unserious. Basically, it's all about defending their own jobs, which happen to depend on securing the blessings of authority, and preserving the corporatist status quo. Makes sense to me!
---Vitelius
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