Neocon architect says: 'Pull it down'
ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON

NEOCONSERVATISM has failed the United States and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy agenda, according to one of its prime architects.

Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has "evolved into something I can no longer support". He says it should be discarded on to history's pile of discredited ideologies.

In an extract from his forthcoming book, America at the Crossroads, Mr Fukuyama declares that the doctrine "is now in shambles" and that its failure has demonstrated "the danger of good intentions carried to extremes".

In its narrowest form, neoconservatism advocates the use of military force, unilaterally if necessary, to replace autocratic regimes with democratic ones.

Mr Fukuyama once supported regime change in Iraq and was a signatory to a 1998 letter sent by the Project for a New American Century to the then president, Bill Clinton, urging the US to step up its efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power. It was also signed by neoconservative intellectuals, such as Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and political figures Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the current defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

However, Mr Fukuyama now thinks the war in Iraq is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

"The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism," he argues.

"Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally."

Mr Fukuyama, one of the US's most influential public intellectuals, concludes that "it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention [in Iraq] itself or the ideas animating it kindly".

Going further, he says the movements' advocates are Leninists who "believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States".

Although Mr Fukuyama still supports the idea of democratic reform - complete with establishing the institutions of liberal modernity - in the Middle East, he warns that this process alone will not immediately reduce the threats and dangers the US faces. "Radical Islamism is a by-product of modernisation itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalisation and - yes, unfortunately - terrorism," he says.

"By definition, outsiders can't 'impose' democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective."


This article: http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=266122006


Let's be clear about what happened....

A bunch of very rich bullies had been frustrated for years about the world for two reasons:

1. Whenever a terrorist attack happened to our civilians or military abroad,
We would make a 'proportional response' instead of wiping the enemy
Out, which, the Neocons felt, was encouraging the terrorists to
Continue...and not exacting the right kind of revenge.

2. They felt that an unruly world order was getting in the way of global
Commerce, which promised much heavier wealth within their crowd...

These old boys thought their chance was handed to them on a silver platter with Bush I., but he disappointed, and they went back into their hole.

Then, they got a chance to control a president who was not a scholar, nor an intellectual...

A president who would be unusually lost in the presidency due to his disregard of study into the depth of foreign and domestic issues, and who justified his style by saying that, as an MBA in business management, he knew how to delegate tasks within a business model, and give people a sense of ownership of their positions: All management theory...

The bottom line: A puppet president...

So the Neocons ran unchecked in foreign policy, and if there were ever a chance that some of their philosophies would ever be widely accepted, like The Christian Right sadly bought hook line and sinker, there is no chance any more...

Neoconservatism has failed...just ask one of its creators.

And the Neoconservatives who put this country in our current position should all face legal jeopardy...

Their true intentions were hidden from The American People, and they should pay for that...
intangible child Reviewed by intangible child on . Neoconservatism has failed...a view from its creator. Neocon architect says: 'Pull it down' ALEX MASSIE IN WASHINGTON NEOCONSERVATISM has failed the United States and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy agenda, according to one of its prime architects. Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has "evolved into something I can no longer support". He says it should be discarded on Rating: 5