In foreign-policy battles, are neocons losing their hold?

[fsbooks]

Secretary of State Colin Powell is on a roll. In a kind of nose-thumbing at neoconservatives' "America first and alone" ideology, the Bush administration's leading protagonist of multilateralism is displaying the power of diplomacy over confrontation.

But others, among them some mainstream conservatives, say this may be only a setback - and not a fatal one - for neoconservative ideology with its emphasis on "good" vs. "evil" and military force. A battle is under way, they say, for the future of GOP foreign policy - something akin to conservatives' feuds over the administration's spending habits.

"The gloves are off and the battle is joined for the soul of the Republican Party," says John Hulsman, a foreign-policy expert and self-described "realist" at the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

"One writes the obituary of the neocons at one's own peril," says Chris Toensing, editor of the Middle East Report in Washington. Noting that "people make policy," Mr. Hulsman says that "if you look at the people staffing the administration, they have changed remarkably little given the debacle in Iraq."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0713/p01s02-usfp.html

I see this as part of the same phenomenon which has all the so-called "moderate" Republicans keynoting the convention. A general tendency to hide the real agenda. Colin Powell is playing his part again - the good cop/bad cops scenario, as before the Iraq invasion his conversion from diplomacy silenced many critics who thought if Colin Powell says it is necessary, it must be OK. They are just playing with us.