[Zipporah]

Perle was described by the 'Washington Post' last year as the ''intellectual guru of the hard-line neo-conservative movement in foreign policy'', who enjoys ''profound influence over Bush policies''.

This and Rove is the crux of the problem with the Bush (far from conservative) administration.

[Restorer]

Interesting.

He lists their prescriptions, but seems to feel no need to show why they are wrong.

Presumably any right-minded person already knows why.

I think what they say makes a lot of sense, although it's an awful lot to chew.

[Terpfen]

Nor do such ambitions represent only a tiny minority of Muslims, as U.S. President George W. Bush himself has contended.

When?

[ex-snook]

Neocons are international liberals cross-dressing as Conservatives. Bush got neocon-ed.

[marron]

And just as in the Cold War, they appear to prefer authoritarian to democratic regimes if the latter risks empowering Islamic radicals... democratisation does not mean calling immediate elections and then living with whatever happens next”, they write. ”That was tried in Algeria in 1995 (sic), and it would have brought the Islamic extremists to power as the only available alternative to the corrupt status quo. Democratisation means opening political spaces in which Middle Eastern people can express concrete grievances in ways that bring action to improve their lives.”

Lobe seems disturbed by this because he makes the mistake people often make where democracy is concerned. Democracy is not liberty, those two are quite distinct concepts of course. Democracy in the absense of the rule of law, in the absense of a cultural respect for individual rights, leads straight to dictatorship. One man, one vote, one time, as the joke goes.

In the case of Algeria, the leading opposition movement was Islamist. In their war of rebellion since the elections were canceled they have killed a quarter of million Algerians, mostly civilians. They are famous for cordoning off a beach and killing all of the beach goers, or throwing up a roadblock and killing every motorist that drives by, or entering a village during the night and cutting the throats of every villager, and taking all night to do it.

This only proves that the government was right not to turn the government over to these people. You never enter a democratic contest with people that are determined to rule you, you never enter an electoral contest with people who will kill you if you disagree with them.

You have to recognize that these people are at war with you, and your best hope is to admit it and wage war with them. Never submit to them, not even in the name of democracy, because it may be the last mistake you ever make.

[Southern Federalist]

The only reason to call David Frum a "neo-con" is that he is a conservative Jew.

Frum is not a former liberal (one meaning of neo-con) but has always been conservative.

Another meaning of neo-con is a conservative who accepts the permanence of the welfare state. Frum doesn't. He is a libertarian in economics whose first book, Dead Right, argued that Reagan-era conservatism had essentially failed domestically because it hadn't succeeded in dismantling the welfare state.

Neo-cons are also sometimes contrasted with social conservatives. This is odd, because a lot of the ex-liberals who got that name in the 80's were pushed over the line from liberalism in large measure by abortion and the decline of the family. But it is a perception some people have. But Frum is a social conservative and always has been.

He's only a "neo" in foreign policy if the old "America Firsters" define American conservatism. But the conservative movement that was born after WWII was never isolationist. If Frum is a neo-con in foreign policy then so was Ronald Reagan.

This review is the same kind of whining that the Left used to do about Reagan putting missiles in Europe, working for missile defence, taking out or undermining the Communists in Grenada, Nicaragua etc. Just sending out ultimatums all over the place, how rude, how dangerous!

Frum and Perle want us actually to end global terrorism, not find a way to live with it, just as Reagan (and Perle) wanted to end Soviet Communism. By contrast, the whine-Left wants us to hide behind the UN and send out US Marshalls with warrants to arrest the naughty litterbugs so we can get them social workers; the whine-Right wants us to hide behind walls and fences and slowly curdle into bitter mediocrity.

I don't say I agree with every proposal Frum and Perle make, but they're the sort we ought to be taking seriously and making substantive arguments with -- if we don't want our grandchildren's lives to be lived within limits imposed from Tehran or Damascus or the Pakistani hills.