End of the Neo-Cons by David Olive - The Toronto Star (long read)

[applegrove]

End of the Neo-Cons
Nov. 5, 2006. 08:16 AM
DAVID OLIVE
Toronto Star


"Every dogma has its day."
— Abraham Rotstein

"America! America! God mend thine ev'ry flaw;
Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law! (italics added)
— Katharine Lee Bates, "America The Beautiful" (1893)

"Whether or not the Republicans lose control of one or both houses of the U.S. Congress on Tuesday, the neo-conservative vision that has guided American foreign policy since 2001 has run its course. The neo-cons' grand design lies in ruins, having accomplished nothing other than to shrink America's stature in the world.

The great unwinding of the American "benign global hegemony" first heralded by neo-cons William Kristol and Robert Kagan in 1996 will commence after the election, when America's political leadership will abandon Iraq and the neo-cons.

The neo-cons' starting point, of course, was the Americanization of Iraq — the "easy win" that would trigger rogue states from the Middle East to the Korean peninsula to fall in line with American values of capitalism, democracy and pro-Israel policies.

But the Iraq conflict has proved unwinnable. And as handmaidens to a $300-billion (U.S.) catastrophe in Iraq that has cost the lives of at least 400,000 Iraqis and almost 3,000 American soldiers, and which ranks as the worst American foreign-policy disaster since Vietnam, the neo-cons have irretrievably lost their credibility.

........SNIP"

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1162595434813&call_page=TS_SundayIdeas&call_pageid=1105528093962&call_pagepath=Weekly/SundayIdeas&pubid=968163964505

[acmavm]

1. I wonder. After Nixon they dug holes and crawled in and pulled

the dirt on top of them. And waited. Patiently waited. And when the people who got rid of Nixon got old and tired and lazy, and when those that got rid of Nixon neglected to teach their young about the dangers of men like this, they came back. They came out of their holes and they latched on to a pitifully foolish drug and alcohol addled buffoon to front for them. All their front man wanted was to pretend he was running things, and that served their purpose very well. Someone to take credit for being a 'guy you could sit down and have a beer with' who knew absolutely nothing about foreign policy, or anything else for that matter, who didn't have one scrap of integrity in his entire being, and who would revel in being the 'Decider' while others all around him made the decisions, as catastrophic as they have been. And someone who would be the one to take the 'blame' for all their disastrous policies, and the theft of the country's riches, and the dismantling of the country's Constitutional government, and the murder of nearly 3,000 Americans and how many hundreds of thousands of Iraqis?

We can't take our eyes of these people, or their offspring. Because just like junior came from an evil mixture of sperm and egg from two dispicable people who come from a class of people who feel it is their 'destiny' to rule, others will come after him, equally as arrogant, equally as nasty, equally as amoral and compassionless.

[yurbud]

2. problem is the Democrats are too quick to forgive and forget instead

of saying "never again."

And of course they work of some of the same people and don't want to insult them by calling them what they are.

[Demit]

3. Thanks for the link. Good article.

Let's hope that Tuesday is the permanent discrediting of the neocons. As Andrew Sullivan said, "This isn't an election—it's an intervention."