The delusion is somewhat over a century old now. It originates from factions within the military community (vs. politicians) and there's nothing particularly conservative about it -

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Mitchell#Post-war_advoca...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bomber_Mafia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_hawk

Big picture, I'd categorize the problem as human nature and "sounds too good to be false".