The New Republic

I always considered it exaggerated, too. I recall trying to explain to a long-time friend of mine a number of years ago why the "sweet neo con" reference to George W. Bush in the Rolling Stones song by that name was not on target. The song was about his administration in general, of course, but it obviously targeted him and Dick Cheney, too, with the reference to Halliburton. Cheney is not a neocon, either, but more a plain conservative, whose interests coincided with those of the neoconservatives concerning the invasion of Iraq.

- liberal reformer

August 11, 2010 at 12:10pm

I sense that as the current GOP continues its slide into Full Tea Party Crazy Jacket, everyone will begin to miss Bush and establishment GOPers more and more.

- MrCookie1

August 11, 2010 at 12:31pm

But the neocon case for bombing Iran was basically realist in nature: a limited military campaign designed, however poorly, to achieve concrete and limited national interests. This, Bush opposed. Yet the neocon project that Bush did embrace, the invasion of Iraq, was an example of purely idealistic messianism: an unlimited military campaign to topple a regime, impose new governing and social systems on a distant alien people, and thereby (it was hoped) spark the total transformation of an entire region's political culture. So when the neocons behaved like realists, Bush was agin 'em, and when the neocons behaved like neocons, he was for 'em.

- rhubarbs

August 11, 2010 at 2:13pm

How long before George W. Bush is re-cast as a vicious anti-Semite?

- DC Spence

August 11, 2010 at 3:08pm

Rhubarbs: fair point, though (internally) part of the case for Iraq was the realist case, right? I know the neocon POV was the main one in the media but it's my impression that Cheney and Rumsfeld were more interested in just going in and getting Saddam and didn't care about rebuilding society. That's why Rummy sent so few troops in at first, he didn't get the memo that Iraq was going to be a half paranoid realist/half neocon project.

- Simon Greenwood

August 11, 2010 at 4:44pm

Fair point, Simon, and indeed Condi Rice's academic association with the realist school should be taken into account as well. However, the realist case for invading Iraq was absurd on its face, at least within the context in which America was already fighting, and not winning, a defensive war. So I've always assumed that the realist case on Iraq, being so monumentally stupid, was not persuasive, and thus was not determinative at the highest levels of power. I may very well have been optimistic on that score!

- rhubarbs

August 11, 2010 at 5:03pm

It doesn't take a lot of brains to realize that the foreign policy of the neoconfederates is maniacal. Their domestic preferernces of depressing wages and taxing the middle class, isn't much better. Even Bush figured that out.

- OscarPeck

August 11, 2010 at 6:21pm

Leave it to the barb to label the neoconservative idealists as realists. And what the hell is a limited military campaign in Iran going to look like? The likelihood that the theocrats of Qom would ratchet up a confrontation with the US or Israel is stratospheric, e.g., attacks on Persian Gulf shipping, firming up Hezbollah and Hamas, etc. And the barb is - as we well know - quite gullible, too. The original justification for the Iraq War was along the lines of raison d'etat. When no WMD were found, the Bushies did a quick switch, talking about bringing democracy to Arab world. So b. is the unlikely stooge of P. Wolfowitz and company; they were the ones brought on center stage by the White House to confect a new and improved narrative that would justify the original invasion and continued war in Iraq.

- liberal reformer

August 11, 2010 at 10:05pm