Start at the end with Max Boot (with whom I am utterly unfamiliar), the "self-described neo-conservative." His heroes: Wilson and Kissinger. Wilson????? Wilson was a schizophrenic politico with support from Klansmen like McAdoo on the one hand and grand visions of the League of Nations on the other. Wilson was an internationalist and no sort of conservative. Kissinger, Mr. Detente???? Mr. SALT???? I don't think so. Not a conservative but another internationalist. I will tell you out of the gate that if the ONLY alternatives were internationalism, more properly speaking "globaloney" and isolationism, then isolationism is number 1 with a bullet (you should pardon the expression) on this week's top 40. Fortunately, isolationism is a very distant second when outpaced by interventionism (on US terms when we feel like it for reasonable causes).
To Walter Russell Mead of the, ahem, Council on Foreign Relations, and no mere member but a frequent spokesthing, this conservative and most whom he knows would undress at high noon in the public square (offending public taste as well as public morals) before aiming for democracy in the Middle East. A conservative must be at least a skeptic on globaloney agendae and probably its outright enemy in 90%+ of cases. Given the wild popularity of the looney tunes led by Muhammed el Rootie Kazootie and his legion of child butchers by homicide bombings of school buses, I am not eager for Middle Eastern "democracy" any time soon. I miss the Shah of Iran. He was a far better model.
Michael Ledeen can call himself whatever he wants to call himself. He shifts around so much that he probably doesn't know what he is. In any event his quote is his opinion on what history has been and not what he thinks it SHOULD have been.
Donald Kagan will probably take Robert Kagan to the woodshed if he reads that nonsense about "liberal internationalism" much less the support for Lieberman/McCain.
As to other points, benevolent hegemon, perhaps. Empire???? No! Favor forcing regime changes? You bet! Remaking East Kaboomistan in the American image??? No! Rebuiilding East Kaboomistan with American money???? Absolutely not!
Conservatives and neocons favor a robust American military AND the willingness, yea, the eagerness to use America's unrivalled military strength reactively but preferably pre-emptively in interventions where desireable. Paleos do not. Paleos and conservatives do NOT favor nation-building, nor the abuse of the military and its personnel as social workers in Haiti or Kosovo or anywhere. Neoconservatives may favor nation-building. The old folks did work for LBJ and the Great Society in the pre-communist, pre-pervert Democrat Party and it would be in line with LBJism as reflected in his goofier Vietnam speeches. None of these groups favor empire.
Aggression and NOT appeasement and NOT containment (other than temporary while busy elsewhere) are indeed the conservative policy toward states and movements hostile to US interests and have been since Pearl Harbor and ever will be. High tech weaponry, reconfiguration for rapid deployment, greater flexibility, preventive strikes: Absolutely. Not limited to the Middle East, Central and Southeast Asia, either.
The "neo-con" explanation started with crypto-anti-semitism selective identification with certain supposed Jews in the administration. This was generated by La Rouche and perhaps a Buchanan piece or two. Confronted with non-Jews like Cheney and Rice, and unable to sustain a totally paranoid racist discourse holding that Ledeen, et al. is pulling Cheney's strings (though some Arabs and English can maintain this fiction), some libs adopted the "neo-con" rubric, but expanded it to Cheney, etc. Perhaps the commonest characteristic of this identification/definition project is the avoidance of asking any of these people if they are "neo-cons", let alone analyzing their views in context of Wahhabism, Caliphatism, ME politics, Kashmir, etc.
The historical parallel of the retinue of ideas they define is not only Wilson, but other self-identified non-conservatives such as JFK and LBJ. Also, the views of the defined "neo-cons" is not different than modern libs who want to "change" the world, they just don't like the tactics, and protraying America as a beneficient or even neutral actor interferes with their meticulous grooming of their anti-american historical narrative, a project which is threatened by reality and pesky foreign actors who aren't saying what they wish they would say.
And the difference is?
Favor forcing regime changes? You bet! Remaking East Kaboomistan in the American image??? No! Rebuiilding East Kaboomistan with American money???? Absolutely not!
"Regime change" may or may not work, but your recipe looks like a prescription for disaster. The country that invades "East Kaboomistan" and conquers it and doesn't contribute to the rebuilding will naturally be hated, and the mess that it's helped to create will simply breed further terrorism.
Kristol, Boot and Kagan clearly wouldn't be taken seriously if they simply said "nuke'em till they glow," nor could they put in a good word for isolationism and expect to win support for their cause in establishment circles. And there are limits as to how far they can go in preaching pure self-interest unmixed with altruistic rhetoric. Their statements which you criticized have to be understood in this light. Even if they wanted the US to act like an predictable "mad dog," they couldn't say so publicly. Interventions can be so risky and the results so uncertain, that they need to be given a "Wilsonian" veneer of human rights and democracy to win support.
As for Ledeen, what grounds do you have for charging him with inconsistency? He may be embarassing or extreme, but his views have been fairly constant over the years.