The worm continues to turn. Admitting one’s mistakes goes a long way in our society, in any society. Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld and the rest should heed the call of this prominent Neoconservatist Francis Fukuyama.
Francis Fukuyama, who wrote the best-selling book The End of History and was a member of the neoconservative project, now says that, both as a political symbol and a body of thought, it has “evolved into something I can no longer support”. He says it should be discarded on to history’s pile of discredited ideologies.
Neocon architect says: ‘Pull it down’.
Mr Fukuyama once supported regime change in Iraq and was a signatory to a 1998 letter sent by the Project for a New American Century to the then president, Bill Clinton, urging the US to step up its efforts to remove Saddam Hussein from power. It was also signed by neoconservative intellectuals, such as Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and political figures Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the current defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
However, Mr Fukuyama now thinks the war in Iraq 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,” he argues.
“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.”
Mr Fukuyama, one of the US’s most influential public intellectuals, concludes that “it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention [in Iraq] itself or the ideas animating it kindly”.
Going further, he says the movements’ advocates are Leninists who “believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States”.LINK
Glad I don’t have to pronounce his name- Francis Fukuyama (fuck-yo-mama)
LMAO…I love to see a big fish try to imitate a crawdad ; )
good poll…just one point left out….can we the people pull the switch on his chair????
peace…glad to see you still slugg’n there slugger
Feeling pretty good. Found out my chronic kidney failure is only in Stage 3 out of 5 stages, so no dialysis or surgery for quite awhile. Feels like a new lease on life LOL-Lease On Life- Huh?? I made a new acroynym LMAO!
I’m so glad neocons give me hives so I read this diary and saw your good news. May you spend years and years spoiling the heck out of your grandkid.
That is great news! So, now when’s the BT kayak meetup? 🙂
this is the dude I was talking about last night.
I noticed that…
I’m delighted for you.
Wonderful news :o)
Happy, happy news.
tho we don’t know each other here, I am glad to hear your health is a worthy LOL.
best to you.
Is right!…Good news!
Peace
Now there’s an understatement. We won’t even have to wait for history. The judgement is already pretty clear but don’t tell that to George Bush. He could care less about that judgement or what history will say about this and the coming war with Iran because he says…
and
Mr. Fukuyama’s change of heart is touching. I’m pretty sure though that the families of the tens of thousands of dead Iraqis would not be so touched.
People like this should be kicked out of a cab in the middle of Sadr City and left to explain to the victims of their ideology why their life should be spared.
But I’m not bitter.
I came over here to check to see if this had been posted yet. Glad to see you’ve put this up because this is, imo, BIG NEWS.
Why? Because, as the article from your link in The Scotsman states,
He says it [neoconservatism] should be discarded on to history’s pile of discredited ideologies.
Fukuyama IS considered a “thinker” on the right and is respected for this…he wrote The End of History and the Last Man
…in which he argues that the progression of human history as a struggle between ideologies is largely at an end, with the world settling on liberal democracy after the end of the Cold War and when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.
Sooo, he’s calling neoconservatism an ideology, not a part of the idea of a liberal democracy that he saw as the outcome of the end of Communism. (of course, he sort of ignores that liberal dem. is also an ideology in political terms, but…) Now, you can easily argue that one basic problem of conservatism is that they were so focused on the threat of communism that they couldn’t see straight…they couldn’t see that the USSR was failing as a state, imploding on its own.
…no matter how much they want to credit Reagan, (and, yes, he gets credit…for TALKING to Gorbachev…as much as Reagan detested the commies (esp in Hollywood.) But Emmanuel Todd was looking at demographics and, in 1979
wrote a best-selling book titled La Chute finale (The Final Fall), predicting the imminent fall of the USSR. He based his projection, in large part, on a careful study of the increase in infant mortality in that empire, one of the leading indicators of the health of a nation.
Now, he wrote this book when Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rummy, etc were appointed Team B by CIA director Bush, and they (wrongly) told Reagan and then Bush Sr. that the Russians were coming! the Russian were coming! spend money on useless weapons!! (btw, the Parry interview at the Bush Sr. link is REALLY good.) …Team B claimed the CIA was underestimating the Soviet threat…which was absolutely wrong…and their solutions were also absolutely wrong. (btw, this is the same group that stovepiped evidence to justify the invasion of Iraq, and again blamed the CIA for being too blind to see the big threat in Iraq…while Generals, etc. were warning of civil war as the outcome of such an invasion.) —just an aside, but why haven’t Cheney, Rummy and Wolfie resigned from public life since they are such repeated failures?)
Todd also wrote a book that is one of the best I’ve read over the past three years about the issues facing both America and Middle Eastern countries, called After The Fall.
as Booklist notes:
[Todd] has written what may be the most important work since Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man (1992), positing that the U.S., despite its apparent position as the unipolar power of the planet, is overextended–our trade deficit is currently $500 billion per year, which means that the rest of the world is financing our consumerism. Todd is above all a demographer, and he bases much of his opinion on statistical elements–declining birth rates in the Soviet Union first cued him in to the country’s approaching doom. So he notes some disturbing American phenomena, such as rising stratification based on educational credentials, and the “obsolescence of unreformable political institutions.”
this is my take-
…in other words, according to people who listen to what Fukuyama has to say, Todd’s book is as important as Fukuyamas…which was VERY influential for a time, and influenced conservatives who were not on the road to Armaggeddon (and let them crow about how right they were), or who were not in the pocket of Likudniks, like those in Bush’s administration who were working for extremist right wing Likudite Netanyahu.
Todd’s book takes on both Fukuyama AND Chomsky–polar opposites–who Todd says give too much credence to the idea of American power. The wars against weak nations (Grenada, Iraq) demonstrate, according to Todd, that US military superpower intervention is a guise for a failure to deal with real issues, and such militarism contributes mightily to the disparity in wealth in America, as well as the lack of funding for essential programs like education for kids, as well as adult education to retrain a workforce for different tasks…BUT one of Todd’s BIGGGG points is that the offshore profit pirates of corporate America have effectively suffocated American infrastructure (along with far right Republican policies) and have weaken our nation as a result…
…and THIS is the reason that America will go the way of Russia, unless we put power back into this nation by empowering its citizens.
Todd does not believe this can happen because the govt right now is wedded to destructive policies that kill empowerment, except for a very few.
I, for one, think that such empowerment can and should begin at the local level with infrastructure to power offices and businesses and homes with alternatives to fuel…this would create LOCAL jobs, would create LOCAL power, and would address needs of an area according to what their best resources might be…wind in Chicagoland, Sun in LA, hot air in DC…just kidding….offshore wind for the Gulf area… state, local citizens in co-ops, along with businesses could form a new model for the way biz can be done effectively for all.
Look at the Bush administration. They are the most Stalinst bunch of incompetents we’ve ever had. Same with Congress…it’s no longer a separate power, it seems, when the repub-bots will go along with anything Bush says, and when the dem-bots do not fight hard to back a different way of governing…but maybe that’s because they aren’t smart enough or brave enough to do so.
But Fukuyama gives an “intellectual” backbone to Republicans to stray from the neo-con flock. Fukuyama calls them “Leninists!”
Mr Fukuyama, one of the US’s most influential public intellectuals, concludes that “it seems very unlikely that history will judge either the intervention [in Iraq] itself or the ideas animating it kindly”.
Going further, he says the movements’ advocates are Leninists who “believed that history can be pushed along with the right application of power and will. Leninism was a tragedy in its Bolshevik version, and it has returned as farce when practised by the United States”.
-note to dems: quote Fukuyama. boot the neo-lib/dlc dinosaurs. join the twenty-first century.
MOST INTERESTINGLY AND IMPORTANTLY…he must have read Todd’s book, After the Fall, because he basically parrots what Todd had to say by noting:
“Radical Islamism is a by-product of modernisation itself, arising from the loss of identity that accompanies the transition to a modern, pluralist society. More democracy will mean more alienation, radicalisation and – yes, unfortunately – terrorism,” he says.
This could be a direct quote from Todd’s recent book about America, because he also looks at the Middle East right now as a place in a crisis of modernism, and looks at rates of birth and education as indicators for how well one place or another is doing. (hint: high birth rates and low education rates for women is THE biggest indicator of the health of a nation in upholding democracy.)
Fukuyama goes on to say:
“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.”
…which is what critics on both the right and the left have said about neocon ideas from the start. And, as Todd’s analysis notes, BUTTER (or more to the point) BOOKS, not guns hold the greatest power for democratization and peace and stability.
So, our “ally” Saudi Arabia, which forbids women’s education, which uses its schools to teach violent jihad, which has a monarchy with absolute power that uses Wahabbist Islam to impose religious terror upon its people…THEY are the ones who need to accept, as Gorbachev did, that the USSR’s doctrines were failing its people.
And all these things are different parts of a whole. Energy self-sufficiency gives more leverage with oil producing nations…as in…how can we do biz with you when woman aren’t treated as full humans?
And infrastructure in new energy (and bulding and way of life) in the states can be a boon to the American economy…and if farmers could grow hemp, for instance, we could do much to stop a lot of deforestation so that we’d still be getting the benefits of forests. (for oxygen/co2 conversion, for temperature moderation, for soil erosion, and on and on….
THIS IS THE TIME to let go of dead ideology and work toward a real “New American Century” that is as life altering as the space program once was…but the great changes are for right here on this planet and on American soil.
I like the timeline implied in this essay, up to the present day & the conclusion offering the best way forward.
Very good.
John Bolton and the catfish-
how about one is a bottom feeder and fairly worthless? –and the other is a catfish…
As far a Fukuyama- maybe he is just spouting more b.s. –but his statements are a smack down over the idea of a “war on terror” b/c he basically admits that terror is going to happen and the way it’s been handled thus far is a failure.
I think he sees the elite smackdown coming to Bushco and the Talibornagains. Or maybe I’m just too naively optimistic. Or maybe I have to be able to envision a way out of this mess.
Great news Rosee! I am doubly thrilled now.
Good to hear. I remember reading something a while back about him changing his mind with the war, but I can’t seem to find it on google. This is all I found.
Also a few days ago in the NYT Frank wrote a lenthy article titled “After Neoconservatism”.
Call me crazy, but I find the guys right-wing Marxism somewhat interesting.
Thanks very much for your post, roseeriter — & for sharing your own good news!
Btw, a friend in Edinburgh says: ‘Don’t read the Scotsman! It’s right wing!’
My reply: it’s still preferable to what we’ve got ..
I was planning to write something about Fukuyama’s latest spiel too. My motivation for doing so is that whenever a prominent neocon talks or writes at such length they are up to something devious and deceptive
With this in mind I’m reading through Fukuyama’s piece a third time now, and noting things I find “interesting”. My sense is that Fukuyayma wants the readers to believe he’s repudiating the neoconservative ideology when in fact he’s not actually doing so so much as he’s finding fault with how the Bush gang implemented their aggressive strategies and tactics in the Middle East.
In any case, I regard Fukuyama’s piece as a major bit of propaganda; seemingly a repudiation of the ideological constructs at the heart of the neoconservative dogma, but actually merely a smear on how Bushco misinterpreted that dogma and wound up creating such a mess. I think Fukuyama is laying the groundwork now for how the neocons in the government are going to disperse by 2008; how they’re going to set up and control any number of smaller organizations/cells, (similar to Al Qaeda), and from which groups they’ll continue their work of destabilizing the Middle East and beyond.
My guess is that he is merely defending globalization under an Anglo rubric and he is tired of the sidelong glances he gets in the faculty room at John Hopkins for having signed the founding PNAC document.
You might be right, but I tend to think there’s a whole lot more to it.
Fukuyama’s colleague at John’s Hopkins, ace neconservative extremist and longtime Defense Policy Board member Eliot Cohen had this piece in WSJ just a couple of months ago.
Fukuyama and Cohen seem to agree at least on one point, that being that relinquishing power back to the “realist” crowd, (i.e. the Carlyle Group type gang typified by Baker, Scowcroft, Carlucci, Kissinger, Bremer), from whom they seized power in the first place; that yielding to these guys would be the kind of real defeat of their hapless and delusional ideology that they simply wouldn’t be able to handle.
But whatever dissent might be brewing within the neocon circle, I believe they’re getting ready to sacrifice some of their own, hoping that by doing so the survivors might retain at least enough veneer of legitimacy so that some of them can remain involved in the power structure of government.
I would not be at all surprised to see the heads of Rumsfeld, Hadley, Wurmser, Bolton, and several others on the chopping block soon.
Forgot to include the link to Cohen’s piece. Here it is.
Legal Fiction looked at the NYTmag article and saw a move away from idealism to materialism…the Marxist version of the term.
the blog entry also compares Fukuyama now v. 1989.
it’s an interesting read.
-from the WSJ article you mention…the piece is about the mixture of idealism and realism…and ends with realism.
The upshot, of course, is that the United States will find itself accused of cynicism, inconsistency and moralistic fatuity. So be it. At our best, we are a country of unillusioned idealists, of the Lincolns and Roosevelts, in which true realism consists of understanding the dangers of hunting monsters–but also the dangers, to ourselves and others, of failing to do so.
What I read in this piece is that the “reality-based” wannabe wing of the neocons is admitting that their idealistic vision of transformation of the middle east is a failure.
I see it as a admission that the real politickettes are about to take the stage with high kicks to boot Cheney…maybe there’s a realization that Fitzmas may be coming and BushCo is going to get fake yellow cake in their stockings.
I tend to think, by reading Fukuyama’s near quote of Todd, that at least one neocon accepts some of Todd’s data.
I read Cohen’s piece, and fukuyama’s also, somewhat differently.
Cohen, while making the distinction between the idealism of the neocon and the pragmatism of the “realists”, doesn’t actrually come out and repudiate, or even disparage, the neocom approach. Sure he refers to the “problems” rising out of the implementation of the neocn approach, but he says, essentially; ‘So what! We’re just a bunch of clear headed idealists so it’s inevitable that we’ll get lots of heat from everywhere for hunting the monsters we perceive.’ Cohen, it seems to me, is embracing the neocon approach fully, saying basically that the flack is just the price one pays for being right. And here Cohen displays the singular arrogance that true megalomaniacs always have in abundance, because he’s saying also; “We don’t care what any of the rest of you think. We’re going to do what we want to do anyway!” (Leo Strauss would be enormously proud of Cohen for this bit of soaring neocon rhetoric, so emblematic of the superiority-complex they all suffer from so mightily.)
The other thing about both Cohen, Fukuyama and the rest of the neocon menagerie of gasbags is that in their lexicon, “realists” is not a generic term in the way a normal person would use it. It’s part of their secret lingo, (another clever Straussian construct), in that the term is used specifically to denote the gang of people who previously ran US foreign policy for decades, and from whom the neocons wrested the reins of power from in 2000. That’s the Baker, Scowcroft, Bush the elder Carlyle Group gang. As I said above, the worst defeat these nuts can imagine is one where the Carluccis and the Scowcrofts regain the power.
I don’t think Cheney is their target. they don’t really care about him all that much, and cheney has his own sick pathology independent of the neocon dogma anyway. But I do think Cohen, and Fukuyama, and increasingly many of the main neocon spokespeople are going to be orchestrating the sacrifice of some of their own, and soon. (I think I mentioned this above also.) William Kristol, for instance, has been trashing Rumsfeld for years now, and I suspect he’ll be ratcheting up that rhetoric even more very soon. The true neocons, (of which Cohen and Fukuyama are definitely a part), need to protect their less visible and more effective, stealth operatives, (like Addington, Eliot Abrahms, and a bunch of others), so they’ll just lop off the heads of the ones in the spotlight; the ones they’ve groomed all along as sacrificial lambs.
you obviously know more about this than I do, but, yes, I do know that Scowcroft and the other realists are anathema to the neo-cons.
But I really do not know where to place Bush Sr. Is he a realist? Then why did he put in Team B?
When Bush Sr. covered for Ronni Moffit’s murder on embassy row in the U.S.–whose side was he one then? Eliot Abrams and Negroponte and North or …just covering his own butt?
I suppose I find that a coup is a coup…whether it’s Kissinger and Chile or Wolfowitz and Saddam. Maybe the difference is that the realists had a strong man who could enforce a military police state while the neocon idealists believed every lie Chalabi told them.
Bush Sr. was basically a tool used by Ford to help make the CIA invisible and scandal free again in the public eye. (congressional investigations and testimony by Colby had really made the CIA look bad, (an honest and accurate look at their atrocity-laden behavior was visible for all to see). (Bush Sr. was not the preferred man for the CIA job; he was a second or third choice.)
But the gang who became known as Team B had their genesis before Bush at CIA. Colby got rid of them and waged a more or less constant battle to keep their militant war-mongering out of his arena. And by the time Bush got to CIA, these hawks had a lot more support in congress and the press for launching their campaign for so-called “independent review” of CIA activities. And Bush, loyal but not particularly bright servant that he was, went along, knowing that his job was to see that no “waves were made” by the CIA, and because he was not smart enough to understand that when you give a gang of relentless warmongers any authority to do anything at all, they’re most certainly going to make trouble. So, basically, Bush SR. was just “along for the ride” with these nuts back then just like his imbecile kind is now.
But, when Bush Sr. became president, his powerbase made sure to get rid of these neocons from positions of real influence as soon as they started stirring things up, just like Reagan’s gang did. Neither the Reagan or Bush Sr. administrations let these future neocon loonies have any real control or direct influence on policy at all. (And this is why the neocons are so obsessive about those “realists” today. They can’t forgive the defeat they suffered at their hands.)
As far as Bush Sr. handling of the Letelier/Moffit murder coverup, he had to help conceal the broader US complicity in facilitating notonly Pinochet’s murderous regime but also “Operation Condor”, the 6 nation dissident assasination program implemented by Pinochet and his neighbors. Not a neocon thing per se, just plain old fashioned CIA aided and abetted atrocity.
I didn’t realize there was no link to Fukuyama’s recent piece in the NYT in the diary.
Here it is.
I was going to do a diary on another rightwing propagandist who’s turned on Bush. Today’s Fresh Air show on NPR had an interview with Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan staffer and rightwing economics ideolog. The title of his new book says it all: “Imposter: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy.” The whole interview is well worth hearing at he link above. He faults Bush for economics, Iraq, and more. Music to the ears.
This poor sap thought the Republican Party was all about principles, so he’s shocked, shocked that Bush and the gang seem to be more interested in power than political purity. I’d almost feel sorry for him if he didn’t still think Reagan was a great president.
Here’s some of his take on Bush:
Looks like the worms are turning in lockstep. Maybe impeachment won’t be so uphill after all.