As campus protests turned violent, necessitating police operations to clear illegal encampments, the true agenda of the activists became apparent. Initially, the demonstrations were presented as saving innocent lives in Gaza with a cease-fire and humanitarian aid. Within this demand lurked the desire to save the Hamas terrorist group from defeat; a group that was using civilians as human shields. They charged that Israel was conducting “genocide” in Gaza with its offensive to clear out the thugs who had purposely massacred civilians in Israel on October 7, 2023. However, the genocide issue quickly shifted as the campus radicals openly embraced the Hamas objective of destroying Israel “from the river to the sea.” Indeed, the only side in this conflict calling for genocide is Hamas.

Israel has shown incredible restraint in trying to separate Hamas fighters from the general Gaza population, using its excellent intelligence capability to direct precision strikes and targeted raids. Civilian casualties are a tragic part of any war, especially in urban areas where the people are openly in support of Hamas. But again, only Hamas has genocide as its declared policy backed up by brutal behavior. So, when activists declare “I am Hamas” and fly their flag and repeat their genocidal slogans, no sympathy can be accorded them.

It is no surprise that leftists would take this stance. There is a large network of well-funded organizations that side with every enemy of the West. Most date back to the Cold War when the Soviet Union was seen as the main global “restraint” on the American Empire. Israel has long been a target, being seen as a Crusader State or “white colony” planted in the Middle East by Western imperialism. That there were Israelites 2,000 years before Mohammad was born, making the Jews an indigenous people to the region, is written out of “progressive” history.

The surprise, one that is incomprehensible to those of us who have spent our careers working on national security policy on the conservative side of the aisle, is the rise of similar sentiments on the supposed “far right.” It wasn’t just the “far left” Democrat Squad members who voted against aid to Israel, but 21 Republicans as well. And just to make their point clear, the core of this group of disgraceful GOP House members also voted against the Antisemitism Awareness Act in partnership with 70 Democrats. Thus, we have the shocking scene of Representatives Andy Biggs, Lauren Boebert, Andrew Clyde, Eli Crane, Warren Davidson, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Thomas Massie, Ralph Norman, and Chip Roy voting alongside Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Pramila Jayapal, Rashida Tlaib, and Maxine Waters against both bills.

At first, GOP opposition to providing much-needed assistance to countries under attack or threat of attack (Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan) by common enemies of the United States (Russia, Iran, and China) was cast as a legislative tactic to pressure changes in Biden administration border policy. The demand was that defending the U.S. border should be part of a bill to help other countries defend their borders. There was a certain logic to that. The “open border” policies of President Joe Biden have generated massive economic and crime problems for American communities, as well as a national security danger as tens of thousands of military-aged men from hostile countries have infiltrated our country. The threat level has risen from terrorism to invasion.

But just as the humanitarian veil on the Left dropped to reveal open support for the enemy, the border security veil has come off among the “far right” extremists as they have also embraced our foreign enemies. The strategy of linking these issues was always flawed. The GOP approach was to match Democratic failure at the border with Republican failure overseas. Choosing which party could screw up the worst was not an optimal situation.

Ukraine was the centerpiece of the original debate and posed the greatest risk of catastrophe not only for Western security, but also for the GOP. Biden could have, but did not, deter the Russian attack. Vladimir Putin waited weeks to see what Biden would do before launching his war of conquest, moving only when Biden opened the door by abandoning years of partnership with Ukraine to declare the country outside NATO concerns (which it had never been for obvious strategic reasons). The valor of the Ukrainian people fighting an existential war against a known enemy with a genocidal record brought Biden slowly on board with other major NATO allies to provide support to Kyiv. Had Putin’s “useful idiots” been successful in halting further aid to Ukraine, the blame for any bad outcome would have shifted from Biden’s early failures to the Republicans as the party of defeat. And defeat is a political killer.

Yet, the GOP radical Surrender Caucus wants defeat. This can be seen in their continued campaign to denigrate Kyiv as a corrupt regime that is destined to lose to a stronger Russia, a Russia than some have even championed in the same way the Progressive have championed Hamas. Rep. Greene went so far as to say Russia is "protecting Christianity" and echoed Moscow’s claim that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy (a Jew) leads a Nazi regime. Where is the conduit for this Russian propaganda into the party of President Ronald Reagan? Reagan’s policies won the Cold War and liberated hundreds of millions of people, including the Ukrainians. Who would want to see that triumph reversed?

Washington has many think tanks devoted to American national security, the Free World, and the preservation of a world order in which we can live and prosper. The Hudson Institute, the Institute for the Study of War, Center for Security Policy, American Enterprise Institute, National Review, and The Jamestown Foundation are familiar to conservatives and Republicans with a sincere interest in professional and expert analysis. They all support Ukraine (and Israel and Taiwan). Speaker Mike Johnson said he was persuaded to finally let the aid bill come to the floor (where it was always going to pass; 3-1 in the House and 4-1 in the Senate) after a briefing from the intelligence community. There have also been hearings where our military commanders had called for immediate aid to Kyiv. The chairmen of the House Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, and Intelligence committees also backed the aid package. Only a concerted effort to avoid wise counsel by backbenchers with no knowledge or experience in national security policy or global strategy can explain this radical cult’s ignorant behavior.

Libertarians have always been a cancer in the party on defense and foreign policy. They draw on classical liberal theory which has produced some of the most ridiculous ideas in the history of international relations theory. Thomas Paine, for example, thought all warships should be converted into merchant vessels as trade would bring people together. This was the idea behind globalization, the damage from which we are trying hard to recover. Will Cain on Fox News suffered intense blowback after having libertarian David Sacks on his show. Sacks is a venture capitalist with no background in anything other than stuffing money into his pockets. And he doesn’t want anything larger or more important to distract him, so he wants an isolationist policy -- the most discredited of all policies. The last time the U.S. went down that dead-end road was in the 1930s which left us unprepared to meet the rising totalitarian threats. Weakness invited aggression, as it always does. There were people then who embraced Benito Mussolini as the wave of the future, a gentler version of fascism than Adolf Hitler and more appealing than the “socialist” FDR.

Rep. Gaetz is even less intellectual. He called his anti-Ukraine bill a “Fatigue” resolution. He is tired of American leadership; it is too much work to make American great again. Yet, a look at the degenerates pulled from their encampments gives us a look at what a world based on different principles under the thumb of hostile powers would create. Not on our watch!

William R. Hawkins is a former economics professor who has worked for conservative think tanks and on the Republican staff of the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee. He has written widely on international economics and national security issues for both professional and popular publications. 

Image: Ted Eytan