VD Hanson asks
Will Neocon Ideas Return?
Somebody should inform the "eminent" scholar that for something to return, it first has to leave. Neocon thought and ideas are well and thriving in the Republican presidential field. Short of Ron Paul, they all toe the line when it comes to the neocons pet projects.
Hanson, of course, does his best to try and camouflage what neocon ideas actually are so he can pretend the Democrats are coming over to their side:
As fear of defeat in Iraq recedes from the political landscape, look to a growing consensus elsewhere. "Neocon" - the term often used to describe "new" conservatives who today support fostering democracy in the Middle East - may still be a dirty word.
But if you take the anger about George Bush out of the equation, along with the Iraq war and the fear of any more invasions by the U.S., why not support democratic reform in the Middle East? We know the alternatives only play into the hands of terrorists.
That's why presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., recently said that America needed to support democracy and pressure Gen. Pervez Musharraf to restore elections in Pakistan.
Few Democrats or Republicans would disagree with his idealistic rhetoric. Although Obama wouldn't express the same support for the struggling Iraqi democracy, he sort of sounded like a softer neocon - more worried about the lack of freedom in Pakistan than the fact we might undermine a strongman with nukes and a restive population.
See! We neocons support "fostering democracy", and that makes Democrats who think we should support democracy just "softer" neocons.
Of course, neocons only want to "foster" democracy after first making their target countries orphans. Thier philosophy isn't about supporting democracy, but about imposing democracy by force.
And further, as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and most recently Pakistan have shown, they're only about democracy "support" when the country in question opposes the US-Israeli hegemon. When it comes to dictators who are allies, the neocons are suddenly willing to accept platitudes about "support for democracy" that don't have to be matched by actions. (Or, they can go completely delusional like Bush and pretend that dictators are democrats! Really!) That glaring hypocrisy, added to an ever-eager willingness to use force to try and solve every problem, is what neoconservatism has come to stand for.
And its that philosophy that most people would be very happy to see the back of.
