Neoconservatives Turn on Bush and His Incompetence

[YouWantitWhen????]

Posted: 11/3/06 at 6:46pm

Well, now everyone is trying to jump off of the sinking ship otherwise known as Bush's failed Iraq policy. Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others go after Bush for his failures and mismanagement in Iraq.

Here a sample from Richard Perle:

"According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President George W. Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty."

Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' … I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have."



Neo Culpa

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 1:20am

Well, I guess you could say it didn't take them as long as Robert MacNamara. I guess.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 2:14pm

Obviously the neo-cons are "morally and intellectually confused"
I always thought so, but I guess now it is no longer treason to think it.

[Plum]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 2:47pm

It's easier to blame the execution of your ideology than question the ideology itself, I suppose.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 2:50pm

Can you imagine Frum saying: "Oops, I guess we wrong about that whole, bring democracy to the savages by war thing"

[Plum]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 2:53pm

You can believe in the Kantian democratic peace theory- be a liberal in the international politics sense- and still think encouraging the spread of democracy through force is incredibly stupid. I guess they haven't quite made that leap.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 2:55pm

Of the spineless lot of them, Frum is at the top of my list. He's the most arrogant, patronizing and finger-wagging (and the "architect" of the phrase, "axis of evil".) As is the Frum Frau (whom I've met--such a "superior" ordinary woman Daniellle C., with her loathing of feminists and working women.) He has spent the entire era of the Bush regime lecturing us idiots, informing us of our ignorance and his brilliant perception of the truth.

I particularly resent mega- elitists like Frum (and the Times' David Brooks) talking down to Democrats for being ... elitist. They send their kids to private school, live in rich enclaves, and get teary-eyed about the 'real' Bush people in exurbia. They're always so darned touched by someone in a pick-up with a "W" sticker, a "real American." If they had to spend any real time among the NRA crowd, they'd running screaming back to Manhattan and Chevy Chase.

[smartpenguin78]

Posted: 11/4/06 at 2:57pm

The problem was always at the gratitude for someone outside holding a gun to your head and saying "You are free."
I do believe that fundamental equality and freedom are good things, but the grand push really has to internal. It can be assisted from outside forces, but no great historical advance has been accomplished in the way they advocate.