D-N-A!!! D-N-A!!!

David Brooks on Obama re-envisioning and -invasioning Afghanistan:

After the trauma in Iraq, it would have been easy for the U.S. to withdraw into exhaustion and realism. Instead, President Obama is doubling down on the very principles that some dismiss as neocon fantasy: the idea that this nation has the capacity to use military and civilian power to promote democracy, nurture civil society and rebuild failed states.


Foreign policy experts can promote one doctrine or another, but this energetic and ambitious response — amid economic crisis and war weariness — says something profound about America’s DNA.

What does that even mean? Seriously, what? Are we gonna sequence our national genome in the autoclave of hot Afghan conflict with an electron microscope sticking out of our X chromosomes? What?