A thoughtful post about a thoughtful review of a thoughtful book.
-"He posits that the neocons were completely unable to adapt following the fall of the USSR"
-"many neo-cons, like many of the jihadists, experienced a high when the Soviet Union came crashing down in 1991, for somewhat analogous reasons and with distressingly analogous results"
-"the stated importance of democratization of Iraq championed by the neocon intellectuals and pundits was not seen as that important by Bush and Cheney"
-"So “Bringing democracy to Iraq” is simply a ruse, a tale to be told to keep the sheeple from figuring out what is going on... It’s simply about raw, brutal power, domination of the weak by the powerful, it is imperialism in all its worst forms, and it is our legacy."
Powerful truths. But the notion that Bush and Cheney were remiss in following the neocons more noble plans - the standard cry of the neocons as they jump from the sinking ship is not compelling. They're just more able to get to the life jackets. Most German veterans of WWII claim to have been pressed into service and fought only on the Eastern front.
Francis Fukuyama is a signer of the 1998 Project for a New American Century letter to Clinton outlining the whole Iraq thing. That will be his legacy along with fellow signer, Donald Rumsfeld...
Posted by Mickey at November 25, 2006 05:14 PMI agree with you and the reviewer, but my opinion of Fukuyama remains increibly low. Ever since he posited 'the end of history' was at hand, I've viewed him as a showman, an enabler, and an arrogant faux-historian more in love with his mirror than anything else, and eager to be the first rat off a sinking ship, condemning all the others.
Posted by Kevin Hayden at November 25, 2006 05:48 PMIraq war has ‘unleashed a maelstrom’, inflaming the anti-American extremism it was ostensibly launched to quell.
The belief that this was the almost certain outcome of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was the central objection to the invasion by those of us who opposed it. We were branded as naive, disloyal, weak and anti-American.
Questions for Fukuyama and his cohort of Neo-Cons:
Will you ever simply admit that you were wrong and that those who opposed you, those you villified, were right?
If so, when? If not, why not?
Why should anyone listen to anything you have to say?
Given the widespread death and destruction wrought by the policy you insisted upon, and given that there will be a lot more of both to come, how can you live with yourself?
Posted by James E. Powell at November 25, 2006 06:06 PMA lot of people are dead because our president committed the stupidest and most evil strategic act in American history.
If I screw up on my job and someone doesn't like it, even though no one is hurt, that affects me personally because I try to do a good job. If I killed someone through personal ineptness, I would not be able to live with myself.
If I killed tens or hundreds of thousands of people, either through ineptness or accident, I would have to kill myself immediately, because I could never sleep another night for the rest of my life. If I gave assent to someone who did that in my name, my personal code requires me to take responsibilty for their actions, and I could never live with that degree of personal failure.
These people cannot begin to confront the evil they have done, because no human being with a soul would want to draw another breath with that on his conscience. They have to comparmentalize it, and wall it off from the rational part of their being, and place it outside any standard of morality because the consequences or looking at it are so horrific.
Still they have to discuss it, because it won't go away, and the effort to disconnect the event from its history, their relationship to it or the logic surrounding it makes for some stilted, twisted torture of language and thought, fully isolated from reality. For all they are contributing to the issue at hand these guys might as well be debating how many angels can dance on a pinhead.
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[Editor: ignore=off]@Burrito-Dick.
Oops! Someone left the Jargonator on again, I see...
Yeah, it was pretty clear to me at the fall of Baghdad, when the city and all of its hospitals, museums and government offices (With the exception of the Iraqi CIA-equivalent and their Oil Ministry). A bureaucrat without an office is like a sailor without a ship. Not of very much use. Clearly, the Bush Administration didn't really give a rat's butt as to reconstruction.
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Bendito, only an idiot could compare the highly centralized Comintern with the scattered and decentralized jihadists of the ME.
bendito must have a high emotional investment in Iraq. I've noticed that he babbles more often on this than any other subject. He may lose completely it as reality become undeniable.
Posted by herbal tee at November 25, 2006 08:43 PMYou know, you liberals might be more interested in spreading democracy in Iraq if you weren't Racist idiots
Posted by shoelimpy™ at November 25, 2006 09:52 PM"They don't care" has been what I've been telling
people for several years now. And it DOES explain everything in a succinct way. However, it's not just the war-they don't care about anything but power and money for their friends. There's no accountability
"Many neo-cons, like many of the jihadists, experienced a high when the Soviet Union came crashing down in 1991, for somewhat analogous reasons and with distressingly analogous results"
You mean like proclaiming it, 'The End of History', Francis?
Posted by Kyle at November 25, 2006 11:01 PMPosted by Bendito at November 25, 2006 07:53 PM
Posted by shoelimpy™ at November 25, 2006 09:52 PM
The 101st Chairborne chickenhawk cowards are really coming out of the woodwork tonight.
Everything will become magically better in Iraq if you just TURN RUSH UP LOUDER.
Posted by Mike G at November 25, 2006 11:07 PM"That unfortunate naiveté of the administration regarding the viability of establishing a democratic form of government in the formerly socialist/illslamic sheikdom in no way indicates the malicious intent that the lying left consistently alleges."
Right Benito. Naive? If you believe that this Administration was deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgment, then you sweetie are the one who is naive.
Does that help you sleep at night Benito? Cheney naive? Rumsfeld naive? Military naive? Give me a f*cking break. (Note that I left Bush out. Bush isn't naive either. He is just plain stupid).
Posted by Judith at November 26, 2006 04:05 AMto me..the scariest part of this administration and it's followers is that no matter how bad they fuck it up ..they never ever admit to a mistake..and it doesn't matter how many people have to die..we went for oil..we thought stealing it would be easy..we have created an unmitigated disaster..it's as plain as the nose on your face..what they're doing now is trying to figure out how to keep the oil and get out at the same time..until they figure that out..people will keep dying..from george kissing and holding hands with the saudis..and dickless over there on his knees right now..the discussions are about oil..and our longlasting "friendship" with the saudi royalty..not the people mind you..the royalty..saudi kings speak for the royal family..bin laden speaks to the saudi people..
Posted by dennis at November 26, 2006 04:47 AMHa-ha, so now even the tarnished (ex?)neo-con rats like Fukuyama think that "democratisation" in Iraq was a ruse, cynically deployed by Deadeye Dick to get his little invasion. The spurned lover!
Perhaps in a great final irony the humiliated neo-cons will now start arguing that Bushco really did invade Iraq for the oil! And then the press will finally start covering this obvious fact.
But apparently Francis the Fool doesn't yet question that there was literally NO possibility that a highly sectarian, authoritarian, courtier-class, oil-wealth society like Iraq could have "democracy" immediately grafted onto it by an outside invader---no, instead "democratisation" just wasn't handled "seriously" and competently by Bushco. The theory remains viable.
The neo-cons have "learned" nothing (they're too deeply invested in this crap), and our "media" has not discredited them in any real way. The Republicans will be back bleating their neo-con nonsense within another 10 months because they know it is the basis of our continuing insane militarism---the endless existential "danger" to America and our moral "duty" to spread divine "democracy". Our militarist people will continue to lap up this shit until the economy is in ruins and our future utterly destroyed.
Hadn't run across that von Rumsfeld quote before: "Eventually they will tire of being killed". Could one dream up a more callous, viciously abstract, immoral attitude? Pure "ends-justify-the means". It verges on the psychotic. He really was a prince of darkness. And to Nitwit in Chief, von Rumsfeld was "superb"---what appalling judgement.
Posted by euzoius at November 26, 2006 05:21 AM