March 7, 2006 at 16:02:12

Conservatives Are Jumping Ship: Bush Is Going Down

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By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers (about the author) Page 2 of 4 page(s)

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He now says that neo-conservatism has "evolved into something I can no longer support," and should be tossed onto history's pile of discredited ideologies. The doctrine, which has demonstrated "the danger of good intentions carried to extremes...is now in shambles," and needs to be replaced by a more realistic foreign policy.

For example, though he once supported regime change in Iraq, he now believes the war there is the wrong sort of war, in the wrong place at the wrong time. "The most basic misjudgment was an overestimation of the threat facing the United States from radical Islamism. Although the new and ominous possibility of undeterrable terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction did indeed present itself, advocates of the war wrongly conflated this with the threat presented by Iraq and with the rogue state/proliferation problem more generally...

"By definition, outsiders can't 'impose' democracy on a country that doesn't want it; demand for democracy and reform must be domestic. Democracy promotion is therefore a long-term and opportunistic process that has to await the gradual ripening of political and economic conditions to be effective."

THE CHENEY-RUMSFELD CABAL

Then we go to a long-time Administration stalwart who couldn't take it any more: Lawrence Wilkerson, ( www.iht.com/articles/2005/12/23/news/profile.php ) a retired U.S. Army colonel who was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made," Wilkerson said in a well-publicized speech at the New America Foundation last October. "And you've got a president who is not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either."

Wilkerson has also focused attacks on the Bush administration for condoning torture, setting lax and ambiguous policies on treatment of detainees that inevitably led to the scandal of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and elsewhere.

BUCKLEY BUCKLES TO REALITY

Onward to the intellectual godfather of the modern conservative movement, National Review founding editor William F. Buckley Jr. ( www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley200602241451.asp ), who concludes that what may have started as a decent move has evolved into disaster:

>>"One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed. ... Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols. ... Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy. ... The kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat."

THE TROOPS WANT OUT, SOON

Speaking of the troops in Iraq, recent polling ( www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=1075 ) reveals that nearly 3 out of 4 of U.S troops in Iraq think the U.S. should exit the country within the year, and more than one in four say the troops should leave immediately. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admits also that the Iraqis want us to leave "as soon as possible." ( http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=78921 )

Here are some pertinent comments by a U.S. soldier ( www.dailykos.com/story/2006/2/28/121245/538 ) in Iraq, writing as "djtyg," about why the desire to leave that country:

>>"We need to get out because our military cannot take much more of this. We are stretched too thin and it's about to get worse. ... Soldiers are frustrated. Every soldier I have talked to says that they are getting out of the military when they get home. Every. One. Of. Them. Regardless of rank, experience, or time in, they all want out. There has not been a single Soldier I've talked to that says they want to stay in. This includes officers, NCOs, and rookies who are on their first tour of duty. We need to get out of Iraq because Iraq is the reason why the military is shrinking. We, like Cindy Sheehan, are curious as to what 'noble cause' we are fighting for. We can't seem to find one. This is weakening America. At the rate we are going, we are going to have a military that can't fight because it has old and broken down equipment, and no troops to fight a war with."

SEN. HAGEL LOWERS THE BOOM

Then there are key Republican senators who are willing to stick out their necks by talking truth to power about Iraq. For example, Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel ( www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111501450_pf.html ), who said the U.S. is losing in Iraq and raised a parallel to an earlier conflict.

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Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked for two decades as a writer-editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (more...)

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