Sunday, February 19, 2006

Everybody is wising up

Francis Fukuyama, a "dyed-in-the-wool neoconservative", recently wrote the following:

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. The so-called Bush Doctrine that set the framework for the administration's first term is now in shambles.

Looks like even hardcore right wingers are starting to see Bush's folly.

Read the entire article here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I must admit that I was surprised that I agreed with much of what Fukuyama says in his article, After Neoconservatism. But I still think he is deluded about Regan winning the Cold War-it is a very reductive view that discounts internal factors that brought the iron wall down.

Eric said...

Agreed. However, you can't expect a conservative to get smart all at once. They have a lot of folderol to unlearn.