Foreign Affairs magazine has been running a series of essays from the presidential candidates on what their foreign policy goals would be during their administration if they were elected.

I think it significant that Mike Huckabee is one of the last candidates to make an appearance on the august pages of this highly respected magazine. No doubt, the editors were hoping that Huckabee would have seen the utter futility of trying to fool people into thinking that he had thought much about the subject let alone come to any conclusions that wouldn’t reveal himself to be, well, a former governor of Arkansas with as much business being entrusted with the fate of the planet as my pet cat Snowball.

And at least Snowball has the good sense not to stick his nose into things he knows little or nothing about.

This essay is an embarrassment. To aver that Mike Huckabee is unprepared to assume the office of president is to state the obvious. Kevin Drum referred to the Huckster’s thoughts as a combination of “barstool ignorance and internet-email-list credulity.” Indeed, the FA piece reminds me of some conversations I had in taverns when I was a kid, half in the bag, holding forth before an audience of equally soused neophytes as we sought to solve the problems of the world. It was an easy enough task as long as you didn’t know what you were talking about and your views were informed by reading Time Magazine and High Times.

I wonder what Huckabee was smoking when he came up with this:

As president, my goal in the Arab and Muslim worlds will be to calibrate a course between maintaining stability and promoting democracy. It is self-defeating to attempt too much too soon: doing so could mean holding elections that the extremists would win. But it is also self-defeating to do nothing. We must first destroy existing terrorist groups and then attack the underlying conditions that breed them: the lack of basic sanitation, health care, education, jobs, a free press, fair courts—which all translates into a lack of opportunity and hope. The United States’ strategic interests as the world’s most powerful country coincide with its moral obligations as the richest. If we do not do the right thing to improve life in the Muslim world, the terrorists will step in and do the wrong thing.

Good luck and God Bless, President Huckabee. It’s one thing to propose the impossible (” calibrate a course between maintaining stability and promoting democracy”). It is quite another to forget to tell us how we’re going to accomplish it. Holding elections “too soon?” What kind of nonsense is that and what makes Huckabee think we’d have much of a say in when any country holds elections – especially if our army isn’t there to force the issue? Who’s to say it’s “too soon” to hold elections? What criteria do you use to determine such an idiotic policy?

Huckabee refers to US unilateralism in the world today as “arrogant.” What if the rest of the world has an entirely different idea of what constitutes elections held “too soon” than we do? Pretty steep price to pay for not being thought of as “arrogant.”

And I thought we had disabused ourselves of the idea that “underlying conditions” in the Middle East created terrorism. Perhaps someone should remind the candidate that the profile of your average suicide bomber who attacks the west is far from the dirt poor, uneducated rabble who make up most of the region’s citizens. The typical terrorist is most often university educated, comes from families that are relatively well off, and has probably lived for a time in the west.

We will be a long time destroying “existing terrorist groups” – especially since the more we confront them, the more recruits they seem to attract. This is true in Iraq and elsewhere such as the Philippines and Somalia. It would seem to put the Huckster’s attack on “underlying conditions” on hold since he insists on accomplishing the former before tackling the latter.

Contradictions abound in Huckabee’s scribblings. Daniel Drezner found this beaut:

American foreign policy needs to change its tone and attitude, open up, and reach out. The Bush administration’s arrogant bunker mentality has been counterproductive at home and abroad. My administration will recognize that the United States’ main fight today does not pit us against the world but pits the world against the terrorists. At the same time, my administration will never surrender any of our sovereignty, which is why I was the first presidential candidate to oppose ratification of the Law of the Sea Treaty, which would endanger both our national security and our economic interests.

Drezner pulls no punches:

Really, you just have to stand back and marvel at the contradiction of sentiments contained in that paragraph. It’s endemic to the entire essay—for someone who claims he wants to get rid of the bunker mentality, Huckabee offers no concrete ideas for how to do that, and a lot of policies (rejecting the Law of the Sea Treaty, using force in Pakistan, boosting defense spending by 50%) that will ensure anti-Americanism for years to come.

Increase defense spending by 50%? Why? What are you going to spend it on? Huckabee is talking about increasing the defense budget from roughly $500 billion to $750 billion. Did he just pull that 50% number out of thin air?

The increases the Pentagon itself wants amount to around 25% over three years. That includes the ambitious goal of increasing the size of the army by 65,000 and Marine Corps by another 27,000. Most experts believe that any further increase in the size of the army could necessitate a draft – unless standards were lowered further and incentives raised significantly. Just what does Huckabee plan to buy to justify those stupendous increases?

Drezner also points to this bit of sophomoric thinking by Huckabee:

Sun-tzu’s ancient wisdom is relevant today: “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” Yet we have not had diplomatic relations with Iran in almost 30 years; the U.S. government usually communicates with the Iranian government through the Swiss embassy in Tehran. When one stops talking to a parent or a friend, differences cannot be resolved and relationships cannot move forward. The same is true for countries. The reestablishment of diplomatic ties will not occur automatically or without the Iranians’ making concessions that serve to create a less hostile relationship.

Perhaps a good beginning would be to ask the Iranians not to order the chant “Death to America” at every mosque in the land after Friday prayers. Then, we could politely inquire as to whether the regime would drop their insistence on “wiping Israel off the map.” Those two “concessions” will never be forthcoming because anti-Americanism and the destruction of Israel are defining characteristics of the regime. It would be like asking the US to give up promoting freedom around the world.

And don’t you love the comparison of our little spat with Iran to that of an arguement with a friend or parent? The difference being, of course, our estranged friend is not likely to be considering the idea of building a nuclear weapon in his backyard. Nor is it likely that a dispute with a parent would end up having our mother sic a suicide bomber on us.

Simple minded sophistry.

If you take the time to read this piece, you will be struck by how much it fails to resemble anything Ronald Reagan, George Bush #41, or any other notable Republican of recent vintage would have come up with. It is a mish mash of unrealistic notions of America’s place in the world along with a cloying appeal to a moralistic international order that doesn’t exist, never existed, and will probably never be realized.

But I’ve nearly given up pointing out Huckabee’s transparent and frightening shortcomings. It’s obvious that nothing in this guy’s past, nothing he says, nothing he stands for will affect his support. He is going to have to be defeated the old fashioned way; one of the other candidates is going to have to appeal to a larger segment of the Republican party than Huckabee. And the question is, by the time that happens – by the time enough candidates have dropped out and it’s a two or three man race – will it be too late to stop Huckabee from getting the nomination?

UPDATE: FROM OUR “OH MY GOD” DEPARTMENT

See-Dubya did a little fact checking and found this gem. Apparently, Huckabee has been communing with Vito Corleone:

At first I read that and thought, Sun Tzu said that? I always thought that quote was from…

But Governor? Foreign Affairs. Policy article. Time to impress the swells. Do a little fact checking.

Time to go to the mattresses, Mikey.