The Neocons Are Back

Well, actually, they never really went away. They have always played an integral part in shaping the Bush Administration's foreign policy. However, I still think it is quite interesting that the same folks who screwed up Iraq in the first place are now shaping this supposed "new way forward". (From LA Times)

Ever since Iraq began spiraling toward chaos, the war's intellectual architects — the so-called neoconservatives — have found themselves under attack in Washington policy salons and, more important, within the Bush administration...

But now, a small but increasingly influential group of neocons are again helping steer Iraq policy. A key part of the new Iraq plan that President Bush is expected to announce next week — a surge in U.S. troops coupled with a more focused counterinsurgency effort — has been one of the chief recommendations of these neocons since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003.

This group — which includes William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard magazine, and Frederick W. Kagan, a military analyst at a prominent think tank, the American Enterprise Institute — was expressing concerns about the administration's blueprint for Iraq even before the invasion almost four years ago...

These neoconservative thinkers have long advocated for a more classic counterinsurgency campaign: a manpower-heavy operation that would take U.S. soldiers out of their large bases dotted across the country and push them into small outposts in troubled towns and neighborhoods to interact with ordinary Iraqis and earn their trust.

But until now, it was an argument that fell on deaf ears.

Oh, great. So the same folks who predicted that Iraq would be a "cakewalk" are now saying that if everything is just done their way, then the war can be "saved". Perhaps the administration did not execute their policies as competently as they had hoped for, but perhaps the problem is not just with the way the policies were being executed. Perhaps, the problem also lies with the policies themselves. Perhaps, we really can't force "democracy" on other nations by pointing a big, fat gun in their faces.

Sorry, but the neocons' time is up. They took this nation to war over the objections of basically the entire rest of the world. They thought it would easy, but (SURPRISE!) it was not. They had their merry little war, and they failed. They invaded Iraq, and now they screwed Iraq into the ground. So why must we be subjected to any more of their crazed "advice" on how to "save Iraq"?