The End of the Neo-Cons - article

[RACooper]

The End of the Neo-Cons
With the ill-advised Iraq invasion now an error-ridden quagmire, the Bush regime’s version of American exceptionalism is sinking fast. Not even Republican hawks want to have much to do with it anymore, writes David Olive

“America! America! God mend thine ev’ry flaw;
Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law!”
Katherine Lee Bates,
“America The Beautiful” (1893)

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...=1162595434813

… and so begins a long, but frankly intriguing article providing an interesting insight into the Canadian intelligencia and academia’s view of the decline and fall of the Neo-Cons. While obviously coming from a liberal standpoint on the political spectrum, it does a very interesting job of examining the rise and fall of the Neo-Cons over this past decade – I would highly recommend it for people of any political leaning to read, as it raises some interesting points, and at the very least should provoke some actual intelligent debate (well more intelligent than the Moore/Coulter/O’Reilly/Dobbs sound-bites and mediawhoring).

As further incentive to at least glance over the piece, here are some highlights from the article:
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/Con...=1162595434813

The neo-con’s starting point, of course, was the Americanization of Iraq – the “easy win” that would trigger rogue states from the Middle East to the Korean peninsula to fall in line with American values of capitalism, democracy and pro-Israel policies.

“Mr. Kristol certainly wants to make (Lebanon) our war,” Odom said. “He’s the man with remarkable moral clarity. He tends to forget the clarity he had on getting us into the mess in Mesopotamia. I think if you look at his record, you’d wonder why anybody would allow him to speak publicly anymore.”

Frum echoes Michael Ignatieff (currently running to become head of Canada’s Liberal party – Rob), who, like many liberal hawks on Iraq in 2002-03, has since taken refuge in the proposition that no one could have foreseen that “the Americans in Iraq would make every mistake possible.”

The smug moral superiority of which Canadians are accused on occasions when they dissent from U.S. foreign policy has nothing on Americans’ self-regard as upholders of supreme moral authority in the world.

No reasonable person would urge a return to the U.S. isolationism that characterized the GOP as recently as the 1990s. When not under the sway of a Robert McNamara or Dick Cheney, America is indeed the “indispensable nation” of Bill Clinton’s description. And Clinton proved it more than once by ending a Balkans genocide after years of dawdling by European powers, bailing out Mexico after a short-lived peso crisis, and brokering peace in Northern Ireland and East Timor.

Now agree or disagree with the above quotes, at least read the article before spouting off in favour of or against the points brought up – lets at least make an attempt using the college/university education all of us on this board should have.

It’s been linked twice above – and don’t worry the sire is free and you don’t need to register (at least last time I checked).