IF bush means it he's an extremist? (See bolded paragraph.) These guys are slow on the uptake.
Bush Pulls 'Neocons' Out of the Shadows
Sat Jan 22, 7:55 AM ET
By Doyle McManus Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — In the unending struggle over American foreign policy that consumes much of official Washington, one side claimed a victory this week: the neoconservatives, that determined band of hawkish idealists who promoted the U.S. invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) and now seek to bring democracy to the rest of the Middle East.
But on Thursday, Bush proclaimed in his inaugural address that the central purpose of his second term would be the promotion of democracy "in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world" — a key neoconservative goal. Suddenly, the neocons were ascendant again.
On the other side of the Republican foreign policy divide, a leading "realist" — an exponent of the view that promoting democracy is nice, but not the central goal of U.S. foreign policy — agreed.
"If Bush means it literally, then it means we have an extremist in the White House," said Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, a conservative think tank that reveres the less idealistic policies of Richard Nixon. "I hope and pray that he didn't mean it … that it was merely an inspirational speech, not practical guidance for the conduct of foreign policy."
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=2026&e=3&u=/latimests/bushpullsneoconsoutoftheshadows