Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Twilight of the Neocons


Theological historian Karen Armstrong wrote a book called The Battle for God that if I may oversimplify it, attributed the rise in Fundamentalism of all flavors to a reaction against encroaching modernity on the part of antique, faith-based societies. Movements against modernity began in Europe in the late 19th century along with a surge in anti-Semitism in response to the explosion of Science and technology and began in the Middle East later in the 20th century when Westerners with Western values arrived on the sacred sands looking for oil.

Neoconservatism and its quasi-Marxist notion of a historical mandate to create a better world by spreading Western Democracy by force has of course had a great influence on our current Administration, but one of its founders, Francis Fukuyama, who in 1989 published 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.

Mr. Fukuyama, according to a report in The Scotsman, will, in his soon to be released book America at the Crossroads, declare that the doctrine "is now in shambles" and that its failure has demonstrated "the danger of good intentions carried to extremes."

The administration’s hawks, says Fukuyama, "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 practiced by the United States".

What the Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld Neocon crowd failed to foresee was just what history has taught: that the harder you challenge a traditional society to enter the modern world; the faster you push them into abandoning Sharia for secularism, the more rigid and rabid fanaticism you will generate. Our experience in Iraq is teaching this lesson to those who will learn.

Whether this about-face by a forefather of Neoconservatism will have any effect on our administration; whether indeed any of them will read it or anything like it, remains to be seen. Perhaps like Cheney the hunter, their eyes will be so glued to the neocon dream that they will not see who is in the line of fire.

4 comments:

Intellectual Insurgent said...

And if it's Bush, he still has to finish the book about pet goats before getting to Fukuyama's tome and that may be a while.

Capt. Fogg said...

Long before he pays someone to digest it for him, they will have swift-boated the author.

Fukuyama used to Date Jane Fonda you know and he was a desciple of Leon Trotsky and. . . .

Crankyboy said...

If these f-ing geniuses were wrong abour neoconservatism why the f should we listen to anything they have to say in any forthcoming book even if it is about neoconservatism being wrong?

Capt. Fogg said...

Because I love irony. They act as though the US were on the verge of Communism, while pushing a violent historical imperative like Lenin. I've been calling these guys bolsheviks all along and now that one of their leaders calls it the same way, I'm a happy guy - even if it does no good.

This administration has been great for irony lovers - he cuts alternative energy funding while preaching alternative energy, cuts mine safety budgets while pretending to be concerned about mine safety, allows people who actually did have ties with Osama to direct port security while linking al Qaeda with everyone else on the planet.

You can't make this stuff up