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Are you suggesting that there is much ideological difference between Clinton and some of the phoney-balooney types whom the writer is referring to under the heading "neo-cons?"

What you're saying is that the author has lumped together (1) Clinton, and (2) some unnamed "phoney-balooney types", who supported the intervention in Haiti ten years ago, and is calling them all "neo-cons". That's probably true, that *is* what the author is doing. The problem is, you can't just grab a terminology like "neo-con", lump anyone you like under it, criticize them, and expect to be making a valid point about "neo-cons".

If you read the context, you will quickly see that he is not referring to new conservatives.

In other words, he's not referring to "neo-con", since that's a key part what the term means. (I'm constantly amazed by the number of people who seem to treat the term "neo-con" as an empty vessel into which they can freely pour all their perceived ideological enemies... there's a definite "I disagree with you, therefore you're a 'neo-con'" movement proliferating, and I just don't understand it.. )

Clinton's approach to Haiti, using American might to reimpose "Democracy" on the Haitian people, was remakably like that proposed by the Canadian expatriate, out of Yale, David Frum's proposed approach to the Near and Middle East.

I'm not sure I agree with that, unless you count the window-dressing of the term "democracy" as a "remarkable" similarity. Also not sure what the biographical information about (let alone your apparent fixation on) Mr. Frum is supposed to have to do with anything.

Clinton's whole rationalization for threatening the use of American military might to force General Cedras--who had rescued Haiti from Aristide the first time--into exile, was that Aristide had been Democratically elected. It is Frum, who has suddenly pushed himself forward as the champion of the idea of our using our military to impose Democracy on other peoples. I have long opposed that idea. See Democracy In The Third World, where I recently pulled together threads of an argument that I have been making for over 40 years.

I am not fixated on Mr. Frum. He is a convenient subject, to illustrate the absurdity of the dangerous ideas that he has chosen to advocate. Frum and Haiti come together in today's news, and I choose to exploit that confluence to make a point: David Frum To Haiti Project.

William Flax

(I'm constantly amazed by the number of people who seem to treat the term "neo-con" as an empty vessel into which they can freely pour all their perceived ideological enemies... there's a definite "I disagree with you, therefore you're a 'neo-con'" movement proliferating, and I just don't understand it.. )

You already understand it. You've basically nailed it here.