I heart Glenn Greenwald

And he says this so much better than I could:

[V]irtually every column David Brooks writes is grounded in one of two highly misleading tactics and, on special occasions, like today, are grounded in both. That's all there is to him. He just re-cycles these same two themes over and over in different forms.

The first tactic is merely the most commonplace conceit of the standard Beltway pundit: Brooks takes whatever opinions he happens to hold on a topic, and then -- without citing a single piece of evidence -- repeatedly asserts that "most Americans" hold this view, and then bases his entire "argument" on this premise. Thus, the only way for Democrats to have any hope of winning elections is to repudiate their radical, rabid Leftist base and instead follow Brooks' beliefs, because that is "centrism"...

The other Brooks tactic is also a defining feature among pundits and a central prong in the Washington Establishment's orthodoxies. No matter what polls or elections show, Brooks' overriding goal is to "prove" that "most Americans" favor a "hawkish" foreign policy whereby America will rule the world by military force, most importantly in the Middle East... According to Brooks' most common claim, that the U.S. will continue to rule the world by military force is an unchallengeable belief spanning both parties, one that is so widely accepted that it is even beyond the reach of what can be debated.
Hence, the warmongering principles of Brooks and his former employer, The Weekly Standard, not only endure regardless of changes in party control, but they can never even be subject to examination in the mainstream. And that is the standard Beltway belief -- to be Serious, one must affirm America's right to rule the world by force. The only ones who reject that view are the Unserious -- the radical Leftist bloggers and, increasingly, the "isolationist" weirdos on the Right.