After Neoconservatism - New York Times

After Neoconservatism - New York Times

THIS IS A RATHER LONG ARTICLE FROM THE SUNDAY NEW YORK TIMES

A former neoconservative theorist argues that with the Iraq conflict, the ideology that won the cold war has come to threaten peace. Can a movement turn away from militarism and toward a more durable use of power? Francis Fukuyama teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. This essay is adapted from his book "America at the Crossroads," which will be published this month by Yale University Press.

It is actually nice to know that neo-conservatives that begin to employ their thinking capacity can find fault with the Bush administration.

"As we approach the third anniversary of the onset of the Iraq war, it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention itself or the ideas animating it kindly. By invading Iraq, the Bush administration created a self-fulfilling prophecy: Iraq has now replaced Afghanistan as a magnet, a training ground and an operational base for jihadist terrorists, with plenty of American targets to shoot at. The United States still has a chance of creating a Shiite-dominated democratic Iraq, but the new government will be very weak for years to come; the resulting power vacuum will invite outside influence from all of Iraq's neighbors, including Iran. There are clear benefits to the Iraqi people from the removal of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, and perhaps some positive spillover effects in Lebanon and Syria. But it is very hard to see how these developments in themselves justify the blood and treasure that the United States has spent on the project to this point."

In other words, our efforts to "democratize" Iraq is failing, just like the billions we have spent on buffering Israeli-Palestinian conflicts has failed by the rise of Hamas to power in the Palestinian state. We have failed to understand how the Middle Eastern mindset works in terms of government, leadership and religion. In Iraq we are going to see the rise of Shi'ite clerics like al-Sadr, with the support of Iranian money and influences, and that democracy in Iraq will produce two oppressed minorities: Sunni Muslims and ethnic Kurds.

"The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles. The doctrine (elaborated, among other places, in the 2002 National Security Strategy of the United States) argued that, in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, America would have to launch periodic preventive wars to defend itself against rogue states and terrorists with weapons of mass destruction; that it would do this alone, if necessary; and that it would work to democratize the greater Middle East as a long-term solution to the terrorist problem. But successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the future accurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, while America's perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before. It is not surprising that in its second term, the administration has been distancing itself from these policies and is in the process of rewriting the National Security Strategy document."

The Bush Doctrine is doomed to fail because it undermines the rights and influences of other nations, sets the United States above the principles and provisions of the United Nations, and because we are not the super power that can afford to send our troops to every corner of the world. The Bush Doctrine is not a defensive measure. It is offensive and pre-emptive based on faulty intelligence and pre-determined agendas that are even more faulty than the intelligence.

"But it is the idealistic effort to use American power to promote democracy and human rights abroad that may suffer the greatest setback. Perceived failure in Iraq has restored the authority of foreign policy "realists" in the tradition of Henry Kissinger. Already there is a host of books and articles decrying America's naïve Wilsonianism and attacking the notion of trying to democratize the world. The administration's second-term efforts to push for greater Middle Eastern democracy, introduced with the soaring rhetoric of Bush's second Inaugural Address, have borne very problematic fruits. The Islamist Muslim Brotherhood made a strong showing in Egypt's parliamentary elections in November and December. While the holding of elections in Iraq this past December was an achievement in itself, the vote led to the ascendance of a Shiite bloc with close ties to Iran (following on the election of the conservative Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president of Iran in June). But the clincher was the decisive Hamas victory in the Palestinian election last month, which brought to power a movement overtly dedicated to the destruction of Israel. In his second inaugural, Bush said that "America's vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one," but the charge will be made with increasing frequency that the Bush administration made a big mistake when it stirred the pot, and that the United States would have done better to stick by its traditional authoritarian friends in the Middle East. Indeed, the effort to promote democracy around the world has been attacked as an illegitimate activity both by people on the left like Jeffrey Sachs and by traditional conservatives like Pat Buchanan."

The problem is that the ideal that the Bush doctrine and the Bush agenda attempts to put forth is un-American and un-Christian, in direct contrast and opposition to the claims made by Bush, Cheney, Rice, Gonzalez, Rumsfeld and the whole entirety of the ultra-conservative leadership like Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others. It is grounded in ultra-conservative views of Christianity that is more grounded in the messages of the Old Testament rather than the message of Christ himself, as told in the Gospels. So, too, is this form of Christianity dominated by the messages of Paul that focus on minutae rather than the "Good News" and the examples of Christ depicted in the Gospels.

Additionally, the politics of the Bush administration and the ultra-conservtives that support Bush are those of the McCarthy and Col War eras. They are extreme, lacking intelligent analysis, lacking compassionate concern for anyone that has different views, and oppressive of world views other than their own. While the claim is that they are charged with balancing civil liberties with security, the reality is that the entire agenda of the Bush administration is one of oppressing and abridging civil liberties through a paternalistic view of the world that dictates that the average citizne is either not intelligent enough or informed enough to make policy judgements or policy decision. Oddly, this is a direct conflict with the stated platform of the entire Republican party.

The reaction against democracy promotion and an activist foreign policy may not end there. Those whom Walter Russell Mead labels Jacksonian conservatives — red-state Americans whose sons and daughters are fighting and dying in the Middle East — supported the Iraq war because they believed that their children were fighting to defend the United States against nuclear terrorism, not to promote democracy. They don't want to abandon the president in the middle of a vicious war, but down the road the perceived failure of the Iraq intervention may push them to favor a more isolationist foreign policy, which is a more natural political position for them. A recent Pew poll indicates a swing in public opinion toward isolationism; the percentage of Americans saying that the United States "should mind its own business" has never been higher since the end of the Vietnam War.

The war in Iraq has never been about protecting the security, sovereignty or national interests of the United States. There was no connection with terrorism and the Saddam regime. In fact, because of the police tactics of Saddam Hussein, these ultra-conservative religious fanatics were kept mostly out of Iraq or under tight rein. Indeed, the entire Shi'ite population of Iraq was an oppressed minority... and the ultra-religious terrorists are predominantly Shi'ite. This is not to say that all Muslim terrorists are Shi'ite, or that all Shi'ites are terrorists. It only states a fact: many of those that believe in the use of violence to further the cause of an ultra-religious agenda in the Middle East come from the Shi'ite tradition. (It is curious to note that many of the leaders are still Sunni, demonstrating a continued attitude of superiority demonstrated by the example of the Saud Royal Family.)

So, not only has the Bush administration failed to understand the mindset of the Middle East, it has violated American principles, international law, and our own Constitution.

More than any other group, it was the neoconservatives both inside and outside the Bush administration who pushed for democratizing Iraq and the broader Middle East. They are widely credited (or blamed) for being the decisive voices promoting regime change in Iraq, and yet it is their idealistic agenda that in the coming months and years will be the most directly threatened. Were the United States to retreat from the world stage, following a drawdown in Iraq, it would in my view be a huge tragedy, because American power and influence have been critical to the maintenance of an open and increasingly democratic order around the world. The problem with neoconservatism's agenda lies not in its ends, which are as American as apple pie, but rather in the overmilitarized means by which it has sought to accomplish them. What American foreign policy needs is not a return to a narrow and cynical realism, but rather the formulation of a "realistic Wilsonianism" that better matches means to ends.

Our history of regime change is primarily one of failure. It did not work in Korea. It has not work in Vietnam, Cambodia, Libya, Cuba, Iran, Iraq or Palestine. The change in the Soviet Union occurred more out of economic influences and internal strife than anything the West accomplished. But then again, we did not invade Russia. The regime change mindset is doomed to fail more often than not. It is an expensive gamble that undermines our standing in the world, wekens our military readiness for defense and humanity missions, and empties our coffers in a manner that does not leave us with any lasting results. If we spent those billions on health care, roads, bridges, research, international aid, education or something focused on our needs, we would at least get lasting benefits from the effort.

I urge you to read the rest of the article.