It also doesn't seem to matter to these elites that many American commoners are fed up with these costly and bloody "regime change" schemes. As Hadley told the Post's Jaffe, "Everyone has kind of given up on the Middle East. We have been at it for 15 years, and a lot of Americans think it is hopeless. ... We think it is not."
But it is not just the Republican neocons and old Democratic hawks who are determined to whip the American people into line behind more war. As Jaffe wrote, "A similar sentiment animates the left-leaning Center for American Progress's report, which calls for more military action to counter Iranian aggression, more dialogue with the United States' Arab allies and more support for economic and human rights reform in the region."
These "liberal hawks" are enthused that now almost the entire foreign policy elite of Official Washington is singing from the same sheet of martial music. There is none of the discord that surrounded Bush's war in Iraq last decade.
As Brian Katulis, a senior Middle East analyst at the Center for American Progress, said, "The dynamic is totally different from what I saw a decade ago." He added that the current focus from all sides is on rebuilding a more muscular and more "centrist internationalism."
In other words, the Iraq War "group think" that enveloped Official Washington before that catastrophe wasn't total enough. Now, there is almost a totalitarian feel about the way the foreign policy elites, coordinating with the major U.S. news media, are marching the American people toward possibly even worse disasters.
No serious dissent is allowed; no contrarian thoughts expressed; no thinking through where the schemes might end up -- unless you want to be marginalized as an Assad "apologist" or a Putin "puppet." And right now, there doesn't seem to be any practical way to stop this new march of folly.
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