Rats jumping ship? U-turns the neocon way Simon Tisdall Tuesday November 7, 2006 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/midterms2006/story/0,,1941232,00.html Battles between US neoconservatives and so-called "liberal media" have hit new depths in the run-up to today's midterm elections, sparking claims of U-turns and partisan opportunism. But beneath the froth a more significant question lurks: whether the neocon movement, extraordinarily influential in formulating Bush administration foreign policy since 2001, is disintegrating. The immediate cause of the furore is last week's publication by Vanity Fair of excerpts from interviews conducted with leading neocons. Richard Perle, a Pentagon insider known as the Prince of Darkness, is quoted as suggesting that the Iraq intervention, which he previously supported, was mistaken. David Frum, Mr Bush's "axis of evil" speechwriter, reportedly believes failure in Iraq is inescapable and the president is to blame. Other well-known neocons also have critical things to say about administration competence. In a furious response collated online by National Review magazine, several interviewees are now claiming their views were misrepresented. Mr Perle does not deny specific quotes attributed to him, but says a promise not to publish his remarks before the elections was broken. For the record, he says, "we are on the right path" in Iraq. Mr Frum calls Vanity Fair's excerpts "dishonest". He says he did not intend to criticise Mr Bush but rather his "malfunctioning" national security council. Contrary to the magazine's Neo Culpa headline, he is not remorseful about past judgments. "Obviously I wish the war had gone better. It's true I fear that there is a real danger that the US will lose in Iraq," he says. "And yes, I do blame a lot that has gone wrong on failures of US policy ... (But) my fundamental views on the war remain as they were in 2003." Leaving aside disputes over who said what and what they meant, the row has exposed ganglions of raw nerves among neocon leading lights angry that Mr Bush and others have failed to implement their ideas with sufficient vigour. They appear convinced that official backsliding and bungling, not ideological flaws in their thinking, are to blame. Most telling, perhaps, is a lament from Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong hawk and neocon icon. "The idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world is dead," at least for a generation, he says. He, too, is scathing about administration incompetence and Mr Bush's security advisers - "these are not serious people". But he appears to point to a deeper failure of confidence in the achievability of neocon aims. According to Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke in their book, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order, the project has three themes. One is "a belief deriving from religious conviction that the human condition is defined as a choice between good and evil". The second is "the fundamental determinant of the relationship between states rests on military power and willingness to use it". And finally,"the Middle East and global Islam are the principal theatre for American overseas interests". The authors conclude that neoconservatism is "an unfortunate detour", a temporary aberration that has undermined traditional international alliance and consensus-building. In their analysis, it belongs to the past. Even neocons seem to accept that their over-simplified and over-militarised approach, while theoretically defensible, has led not to a new American century but a series of dead ends. Author Francis Fukuyama, a former adherent, says US policy needs a new realism "that better matches means to ends". The midterms, in other words, could be the beginning of history.
I think this article is pretty misleading. Francis Fukuyama was never for the intervention in Iraq and his split with some of the other mainstream neo-conservatives was pretty public and not in any way recent. Further, I'm not sure what is a 'u-turn' about saying the implementation of the intervention was bungled. Nor is the accusation a new one from neo-conservatives among others. Personally I think the single greatest mistake was disbanding the Iraqi Army and the neutering of the bureaucracy. Patton made similar observations about the problems of such policies in post war Germany. Had that not been done I think this whole scenario would have played out much differently.
Have you read Woodward's book? If you haven't, prepare to be livid. The mistakes, coming from the very top, stopped dead in it's tracks negotiations with the representatives of the Iraqi army to get the men back in their barracks, with their weapons. Lower echelon officers were in an agreement with the transition team, and were asking for $25 dollars a man to get their people food for their families, and to pay bills until they received military pay again. To tide them over, if you will, and for a pittance from us, but a lot to an Iraqi soldier. Bremer came in and told the transition team that the Iraqi army didn't exist. There were no negotiations, and wouldn't be, and that the order came from the top. The last, best hope of preventing a widespread insurgency was stomped flat by Rumsfeld and the White House, via Bremer... and the transition team, which had done incredible work with limited resources, was basically told to go **** itself. It's enough to make you weep. Keep D&D Civil.
Yep. Like I said, if you look back to the very beginning - they could have been....oh, i dunno....guarding the museum from getting ripped (which started all the 'oh they don't care about us' business). They could have been guarding power stations and keeping the peace in neighborhoods. It was just a terrible mistake, but one I have been criticizing them for quite awhile about. IMO it was the single most costly error in the intervention.
