In an article to be published in Vanity Fair, the principle neocon architects of the war in Iraq wring their hands over the total failure of the policies they advocated. They blame Bush for his incompetence. They blame Rumsfield for his incompetence. They blame Bremer. Never once do they stop and think that maybe they had their heads up their asses to advocate such a cockamamie and utterly immoral idea as preemptive war, in other words a war of aggression. They might as well blame President Cheney too because Bush was merely the Cheerleader-in-Chief, a President prior to 9/11 who was shopping for a legacy and was sold a bill of goods by the neocons, and it was a traditional Republican legacy after all: WAR. Now the neocons such as Richard Perle on the left are backing away from their involvement in designing and promoting a "splendid little war" with Iraq. The reason they were so enthusisatic about it was that toppling Sadam Hussein in their eyes was like shooting fish in a barrel. None of them had the foresight to envision the chaos and destabilization that has occurred.
According to [Richard] 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."
The whole neocon idea of spreading democracy in the middle east by attacking and invading a country in order to change it from a dictatorship to a democracy is a ridiculous proposition on the face of it but that's what the neocons were selling. And the preposterous notion that this was a moral undertaking - it was morally a good thing to do - to bring death and destruction to a nation in order to spread democracy is as repugnant as the notion that Hitler was morally correct to invade weaker countries because the Germans were the most advanced civilization composed of the stongest and best people. The American supermensch, according to the neocons, would advance the Iraqi undermensch to democracy and freedom. Depite the cost in death and deatruction, they would thank us some day. They would throw flowers at the advancing troops much as the Austrians threw flowers at the German army during the Anscluss. The only difference was the Iraqis didn't throw flowers while the Austrians actuallly did.
A President shopping for a legacy was sold a bill of goods by a pretentious, pompous Prince of Darkness, Richard Perle, and others and now they're blaming the Bush Administration for incompetence. If they had only executed their duties flawlessly, Iraqi democracy and freedom would be flowering. With a little American water and fertilizer, whole generations of Iraqis from the old and grizzled to Iraqi schioolchildren would be thanking us and singing our praises. And those who didn't would be the dead enders, the sore losers.
What these ideologue neocons misunderstand is human nature itself, not to mention the history and culture of the Iraqi people. And their disingenuousness belies their true motives which are much the same as Hitler's - to extend American (German) power over a greater part of the world by means of establishing humongous military bases in Iraq and turn Iraqi "freedom" into the free enterprise system (otherwise known as capitalism) goal of extracting oil for profit - said profit not to be shared in an egalitarian manner among the Iraqi people but in the best globalistic tradition put up for sale to the highest bidder whether Iraqi or some other member of the global community (read: BIG OIL).
Human nature is such that you can't invade a country in order to save it; you can't destroy a country in order to save it; you can't subjugate a people who refuse to be subjugated. Neocon doctrine is similar to Hitler era Nazi doctrine: the strong should assert their superiority over the weak. Power should be used and exerted to train and tailor the world to conform to American interests and values: Pax Americana similar to Pax Germana. This is the morality of survival of the fittest: social Darwinism which underlay Nazi as well as neocon doctrine. A nation that has it within its power to use that power to help instead wants to use that power in the interests of enriching and ennobling those who wield the power since they believe they are the natural superiors of everybody else.
Instead of using its military to "help" people, instead of using the forces of destruction to bring about a better life and a better world, America should use its might to bring about a better world by waging peace - what a novel notion! By being constructive rather than destructive, by not using military means to achieve goals, but instead using constructive means, much good could be achieved. But this is an alien notion to right-wing Republicans who have sufficiently castigated and demonized do-gooders. Instead they want the invigorating and masculine action of a fully charged military. Military action will hasten a new day, a day in which all the cobwebs of stagnating inaction have been cleared away. Helping to fight poverty and disease, supplying the basic needs of humanity for Americans (Charity begins at home) and foreign peoples, constructing rather than destructing ennabling rather than enslaving, letting people define themselves instead of trying to define them to themselves - all these things were and are possible. Instead of being a constructive force for peace in the world, America has left it to a few good billionaires and multi-millionaire entertainers to cure disease aand to provide clean drinking water to those who lack even the bare essentials of life while winking at the corrupt politicians and businessmen who have access to the inner circles of power - the nexus between lobbyists for powerful corporations and Team Earmark, the congressional me firsters.
Rome tried to control the world. Pax Romana was defeated by internal corruption and profligate spending as well as miltary overstretch. Then Napoleon tried it; Hitler tried it. And now the neocons have tried to bring about Pax Americana. Just as Hitler blamed the incompetence of his Generals and the unwillingness of the German people to assert their superiority over the undermensch, the neocons are blaming the incompetence of the Bush Administration and the impatience of the American people rather than blaming and questioning the wisdom of their own philosophy which led to their ideology of American aggression. It looks like their Pax Americana is unraveling. The American people have had enough of it. They're not wling to die for the glory of the Bush Administration and its concomitant neocon think tanks.