Realists Rebuffed - A vulgarized neconservatism in the saddle

[The Crazy Canadian]

December 20, 2004 issue
Copyright © 2004 The American Conservative


Realists Rebuffed

A vulgarized neconservatism in the saddle


By Scott McConnell

How inscrutable the last remaining superpower must seem to the outside world! Only six months ago, informed Washington opinion held that neoconservatism was a spent force. New Republic senior editor Lawrence Kaplan, a shrewd observer of Capitol power flows and a neoconservative himself, announced a “springtime for realism” and a twilight of the neocons. He quoted the once again voguish realist totems George Kennan, Hans Morgenthau, and John Mearsheimer on the futility of armed crusades for democracy and noted the creation of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy as a counterpoint to the already established neocon lobbies. Democrat presidential designee John Kerry was making clear that democracy promotion was less important than the quest for stability. Most troubling, in Kaplan’s view, were signs that the Bush administration itself was cooling on the neocons.

While the president “still often channels Wilson” (neocons frequently style themselves as muscular Wilsonians), Kaplan saw wobbling everywhere. The White House signed off on a raid on Ahmad Chalabi’s headquarters—the neocon favorite who turned out to be an Iranian agent—without first informing Doug Feith or Paul Wolfowitz. Condoleezza Rice formed the Iraq Stabilization Group inside the National Security Council without consulting the Pentagon. Robert Blackwill, a former Henry Kissinger aide, was suddenly wearing the big hat inside Rice’s NSC. The neocons on Dick Cheney’s staff were “consumed” by the Valerie Plame investigation. Cheney himself was soliciting advice from Kissinger. Rice was talking to Brent Scowcroft, the most prominent Bush I official to oppose publicly the invasion of Iraq.

Kaplan was not alone in reading the tea leaves that way. A month before the election, the invariably well-informed Bob Novak forecast that Bush would withdraw from Iraq and “end the neoconservative dream of building democracy in the Arab world.” Pat Buchanan in these pages claimed that the Iraq mess had tempered any Bush lust for further imperial adventures. George Will, probably the most influential conservative columnist of all, began advertising his own disenchantment with neoconservative foreign policy in every other column, mocking the idea that Iraq would be democratic anytime soon (“Iraq is just three people away from democratic success. Unfortunately, the three are George Washington, James Madison, and John Marshall.”) and skewering the notion that democracy could be imposed by force from without. The neoconservative democracy crusaders, Will observed dryly, ought to remember an elemental principle of moral reasoning: “there can be no duty to do what cannot be done.”

That apparent right-around-the-corner return to realism heralded the restoration of a natural order. Around the country are thousands with lifetime Republican attachments who supported or even served in the administrations of Nixon, Reagan, and George Bush I for whom the neoconservative ascendancy was almost too bizarre to be believed. They thought that eventually reality would reassert itself. George W. Bush would talk to his father and mother or to Laura, and they would warn him that American foreign policy was running off the rails. Dick Cheney would understand. Donald Rumsfeld, who had begun to question whether we had a “metric” to know whether we were actually winning the War on Terror, would finally see the light. Yes, the United States went through a trauma on 9/11, and yes, Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith and David Wurmser happened to be right there to dust off and present a Mideast attack plan from a Benjamin Netanyahu/Project For the New American Century coven from the mid-1990s. While Washington was off guard, they saw their opportunity and took it. But Iraq had proved such a mess that the ship of state would right itself. Had to.

....

http://amconmag.com/2004_12_20/feature.html

[Stephanie]

1. Bush's downfall will be his inability to admit when he's wrong.

That's his Achilles heel and it will bring him down. Those neocons are going to jail regardless. Their crimes are already in evidence.

Thanks for a great article - going to read the rest now.

[necso]

2. A nice mix of

out-and-out bullshit and some "insider" insight. -- Not recommended for those who can't tell the difference.

...And it was primarily wishful thinking -- they can't say that they weren't warned. -- You were played, fools.

Well, they get to live with their mistakes... too bad we also have to.

[MissMarple]

3. A vulgarized neoconservatism, if the Arabs don't want democracy, nuke 'em.

Well there is cheerful commentary coming from the "realist" conservatives. Foreign policy heading south much too quickly. The realists "knew" Colin Powell was right? Huh! Much too little and way too late.
...
"What became of the realists? Like the neocons, they are only policy intellectuals and bureaucrats, dependent on the politicians who appoint them. Among educated Americans, they won the foreign-policy debate decisively. No one doubts it. There are scores of bright people from George Will to William F. Buckley to Kenneth Pollack who are born-again realists; no one has recently converted to neoconservatism. But the realists did not win the debate inside Bush’s brain—indeed, there is no sign at all that the president was aware that there was a foreign-policy debate going on. Instead a 51-48 percent victory, a pitiful margin for an incumbent during wartime, is treated as a landslide of Reaganesque proportions and a mandate for the president to promote those whose foreign-policy advice has proved egregiously wrong.

How has the country changed? Two years ago, when National Review editor Rich Lowry said that an appropriate response to a WMD attack on the United States might be to nuke Mecca, there was a fair amount of outrage. But Lowry, recall, was imagining how the United States might respond to a massive terrorist attack. Now the American airwaves and blogosphere are rife calls to nuke those whom military invasion couldn’t turn into democrats. “Could it happen here?” the old question goes. In one sense it already has"

[struggle4progress]

4. Well, the Bushistas had to "play moderate" for the campaign.

Of course, anybody who bought it just hadn't been paying attention.