Changing... What course?

The Guardian (UK) is reporting today about an upcoming article in Vanity Fair about Neocon criticism of the Bush administration. Some big name Neocons, some big name guys who are directly responsible for getting is in a war in Iraq are 'coming out' and criticising how the war has been handled. Who is on this illustrious panel of dissent? Well, for one Richard Perle the little prick who sat on the now infamous DOD strategy group (Pentagon office of strategic plans, or defence policy board I believe- can't remember) that sought to massage the intelligence to justify the war in the first place; David Frum, creator of the 'axis of evil'; Michael Rubin, and Kenneth Adelman, who gave us the Iraq will be a breeze article, are also quoted in the article. This is a group of people who either cheered on the idea of war, beating the drums all the way to the Capitol, or had an actual hand in bringing it about. The problem is that aside from Perle's (admittedly shocking) admission that if he could see the mess that his war would cause he would not have gone to war, no one else seems inclined to admit that an error was made.

Now I have not read the whole article and to my knowledge only excerpts are out yet so maybe some others recant their stupidity but the tone so far is not looking good. It seems the only thing these Neocons have a problem with is how the Iraq war has been handled. Over and over they point out the mistakes made, the errors in planning, and the poor leadership by not just Rumsfeld (surprise) but Bush himself. Indeed, Adelman is quoted as going so far as to lay the blame for the entire mess on the incompetence of the Administration and those in it. His only regret in supporting the war is not foreseeing the incompetence of those who would lead it.

I agree with him (partially) on that one. Really, we should have been well aware of Bush's stupidity. This is, after all, the man who could, and continues to barely string together coherent sentences on the campaign trail. I am inclined to say Adelman himself must have been pretty stupid to have believed that these guys could pull this off in the first place. But the serious problem is the failure to admit that the policy of invading Iraq was the wrong policy to begin with regardless of those in charge.

Not one single major (or even minor, really) academic who actually studies foreign policy or international relations backed this war (wait, Fukuyama did and has now admitted the extreme error of his way and recanted even the BS beliefs that allowed him to support the war in the first place). In point of fact, some of the biggest names in the academic field of International Relations pointed out precisely why going to war was not in America's interest and predicted some very dangerous outcomes. Mearsheimer, a professor of IR at the University of Chicago and a man coming from a theoretical tradition that is quite bellicose, wrote an op-ed piece in the NY Times against the war. There never was a solid, sound, coherent and workable strategy to do what was widely believed to be a really bad idea by those in the know. No one, none of us, who study the relations among states and war in particular felt that this war would be a good idea. Yet many of those responsible for it are coming out today and saying the war was merely mishandled by grossly incompetent overlords.

This sort of recantation by the Neocons is unacceptable. They refuse to admit that their vision of the world is flawed. They refuse to admit that there existed no good set of conditions where invading Iraq was in the interests of the US. And they refuse to admit their own culpability in getting us into this war in the first place. The fact that, yet again, prominent current and former figures of the administration are publicly criticising the arrogance and stupidity of the administration's handling of Iraq may actually take a few votes from Republicans. But I refuse to make bedfellows with these sordid individuals in the name of winning an election. They were then and they remain today wholly responsible for this war. The Neoconservative vision is dead and should remain dead.