neoconsgone-750759.gif

Yep, that’s right — some of the architects of the Bush "pre-emption" doctrine are now saying that it isn’t working.  Of course, they are blaming President Bush for all the failures, but still — the fact that the American Enterprise Institute is saying it ought to be big news here in the US.  Right?  Nope…found this in the FinancialTimesUK (via As seen from Just Above Sunset). 

Neo-conservative commentators at the American Enterprise Institute wrote last week what amounted to an obituary of the Bush freedom doctrine.

“Bush killed his own doctrine,” they said, describing the final blow as the resumption of diplomatic relations with Libya. This betrayal of Libyan democracy activists, they said, came after the US watched Egypt abrogate elections, ignored the collapse of the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon, abandoned imprisoned Chinese dissidents and started considering a peace treaty with Stalinist North Korea.

The neo-conservatives offered no explanation for desertion of the doctrine, other than a desire to make quick but transitory short-term gains. “The president continues to believe his own preaching, but his administration has become incapable of making the hard choices those beliefs require,” they wrote….

Graham Fuller, former diplomat and intelligence officer, suggests the US is suffering from “strategic fatigue” brought on by “imperial over-reach”.

“The administration’s bark is minimised, and much of the bite seems gone,” he writes in the Nixon Center’s National Interest journal. “Has superpower fatigue set in? Clearly so, to judge by the administration’s own dwindling energy and its sober acknowledgment that changing the face of the world is a lot tougher than it had hoped.”…

“In the last few years, diverse countries have deployed a multiplicity of strategies and tactics designed to weaken, divert, complicate, limit, delay or block the Bush agenda through a death by a thousand cuts,” says Mr Fuller.

Even some traditional Republicans are challenging the concept that the global “war on terror” is the paramount issue for generations to come.

So, tell me again about the good news on the Bush foreign policy and his implementation of the War in Iraq.  When the Republican president is abandoned and blamed for failure by the likes of Richard Perle, something is up.  It’s called bad internal polling numbers for the fall elections, I’d bet, and they’ve decided that Bushie will now make an excellent scapegoat.  (Which might explain Kate O’Beirne’s odd performance on last night’s Hardball, where she pointedly referred to the Bush Administration and the GOP as "them" and stated a couple of times that she speaks for conservatives and that the Administration would likely have difficulty with conservative voters who are disenchanted.  Methinks the rats are bailing on the Bush ship of state…)

(This cartoon was just too perfect.  It’s an older one from Mike Lukovich at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.  Thought we could all use a giggle this morning.)

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