The Neocons and Iraq

Wall Street Journal ^ | February 16, 2008 | PETER BERKOWITZ

[neverdem]

In the foreign policy establishment, among progressives of all stripes, and even for significant segments of the conservative movement, "neoconservatism" has come to stand for all that has gone wrong in American foreign policy over the last seven years -- especially in Iraq. Yet much of the criticism misses the mark.

For starters, it's worth noting that the president, vice president, secretary of defense, secretary of state and the national security adviser all lacked neoconservative roots. And insofar as neoconservative thinkers influenced Iraq policy, the problem was not with neoconservative principles, but the failure to fully appreciate the implications of those principles.

Neoconservatism was never a well-developed school of foreign policy like realism or idealism. Nor is it a reflex, like isolationism or multilateralism. It was only with the Iraq war that neoconservatism came to be falsely identified by its critics with a single crude foreign policy idea -- that the United States should use military force, unilaterally if need be, to overthrow tyrants and to establish democracy.

Of course, isolating this idea from other considerations -- including the price tag of military intervention, our capacity to rebuild dictator-ravaged and war-torn states, the effect of our actions on regional stability and world opinion -- is a recipe for disaster. At least so would counsel the neoconservative tradition. In crafting policy, it is contrary to the spirit of neoconservatism to select from the variety of goals that commands the nation's attention some single one, and pursue it heedless of costs. Neoconservatism has its origins in a critique of policy making -- in both domestic and foreign affairs -- that fails to take consequences into account.

Two seminal documents, both of which stirred up storms in their day, typify the neoconservative sensibility. In 1965, 38-year-old Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then assistant secretary of...

[Ben Ficklin]

Dictatorships and Double Standards

This essay was rolled into a book by the same name which Kirkpatrick published in the 80s and contained numerous other essays, articles and speeches by Kirkpatrick. Worthwhile reading and much of it was re-hashed by Bork in Slouching Towards Gommorah.

As for Moynihan's report, it was repudiated by Charles Murray's book, Losing Ground