Democrats have jumped on that distinction, knowing that the American public is averse to "boots on the ground" in Syria, but fail to acknowledge the fact that the Obama Administration long ago involved the CIA and its footwear in the civil war.

It is unclear if President Walker would be any more inclined than President Clinton to advocate for U.S. ground troops in Syria at some future date (the Republican Party coalition is more hawkish than its Democratic analog). Comparisons aside, if Governor Walker's remarks on foreign affairs remain as ill-considered and rhetorically weak as these no one should support his bid for higher office.

The idea that America should be prepared to put boots on the ground "anywhere and everywhere" that Islamist terrorists operate suggests a possibility of restarting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and invading Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Chechnya, Nigeria—I'll stop because it's clear that even Walker doesn't really subscribe to the standard he thoughtlessly put forth. His answer is discrediting because it betrays how little thought he has given these questions.

The position he actually holds is most likely that while it obviously won't make sense to put American boots on the ground in some places where Islamist terrorists operate, there are other countries where ground invasions shouldn't be ruled out, because "when you have the lives of Americans at stake and our freedom loving allies anywhere in the world, we have to be prepared to do things that don't allow those measures, those attacks, those abuses to come to our shores."

What he fails to grapple with are the consequences of following this logic in the recent past. The Bush Administration's decision to put boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan ultimately cost the lives of more Americans than the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And it isn't as if those wars eliminated terrorism from those countries. Iraq is more hospitable to Islamist terrorists today than it was before the war.

At the very best, it is extremely unclear that putting U.S. boots on the ground in Syria would make the U.S. homeland any safer. But it's obvious that it would put some Americans—the young men and women sent there—in far more peril of violent death. The fact that members of the military volunteered themselves to go in harm's way in our stead doesn't mean that they should be sent to be shot or blown up when the end result will very likely be many more U.S. lives lost than saved.

In 2008, President Obama won the White House partly because he made the case against a war that the country had come to view as a catastrophic mistake. His rival, Senator John McCain, continued to defend the Iraq invasion as the right choice.

Democrats won't enjoy that "right about Iraq" advantage if they nominate Hillary Clinton. But whatever the Democratic Party does, the Republican Party will be in a better position if its nominee shows awareness that Iraq was a mistake and can credibly demonstrate that he or she won't make a similar mistake. If Governor Walker sums up his foreign policy as "be aggressive" and "be more willing to put boots on the ground," one wonders how he would reassure voters that he'd perform better as Commander in Chief than George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld, a team with the same instincts and more experience, or Hillary Clinton, whose hawkishness on Syria is also to the right of the electorate.