Don't be conned by neocon excuses

Don't blame us for the mess in Iraq.  On to Iran!

Kevin Drum has some good thoughts on The Neocon Rehabilitation Project 11/04/06, the attempts of the neoconservatives who were so influential in the Cheney-Bush administration's disastrous Iraq War policies to alibi themselves:

The neocons have always been idealists, and their ideals saw full flower in the Iraq war.  A show of force in one country, plenty of threats against its neighbors, a disdain for multilateral action, and an occupation designed to be a showpiece of conservative ideology rather than a serious attempt at reconstructing a society.  That's what the neocons wanted, and that's what they got.  The rest is details.

The failure of Iraq is inherent in the naive idealism and fixated ideology of neoconservatism, and shame on us if we let them get away with suggesting otherwise.  This is one rehabilitation project that needs to be stopped dead in its tracks.

Except to note that "idealism" is not the same as "sensible values and goals", I agree with his take on it.  Neocon dogmatism was a disaster, but rank cynicism hasn't proven itself to be a very constructive or defensible approach to foreign policy either, e.g., the CIA promoting a coup against the elected government of Chile in 1973.