Robert Cornwell examines intellectual collapse of the Neocon Movement

Sunday, March 12, 2006

What the neocons failed to foresee about Iraq

By RUPERT CORNWELL
THE INDEPENDENT

It has taken more three years, the loss of tens of thousands of Iraqi and American lives, and the expenditure of $200 billion -- all to achieve a chaos verging on open civil war. But finally the neoconservatives who sold the United States on this disastrous war are starting to utter three small words.

We were wrong.

The second thoughts have spread across the conservative spectrum, from William Buckley, venerable editor of the National Review, to Andrew Sullivan, once editor of the New Republic, now influential commentator and blogmeister.

The patrician, conservative, Washington Post columnist George Will was gently skeptical from the outset. He now glumly concludes that all three members of the original "axis of evil" -- not only Iran and North Korea but also Iraq -- "are more dangerous than when that term was coined in 2002."

Neither Buckley nor Sullivan concedes that the decision to topple Saddam Hussein was intrinsically wrong. But "the challenge required more than (President Bush's) deployable resources," the former sadly recognizes. "The American objective in Iraq has failed."

more at:

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/262583_neoconswrong12.html

Like the one that decided that sacrificing peoples lives for a war that would 'selfishly' solve economic and technological difficulties of the future was a better choice than working hard and investing to solve them.