Bush's 'neocons' in crisis after midterm election rout

[Ron Burgundy]

AFP - Neo-conservatives, who laid out the intellectual underpinnings for US President George W. Bush's foreign policy, are in disarray following the Republicans' midterm election defeat.

Already battling with each other over continuing US military setbacks in Iraq, "neocons" are now more divided than ever following Tuesday's election nightmare which saw Republicans lose control of both houses of Congress.

Many voters have said they cast ballots for Democrats in protest over how the Bush administration has managed the war in Iraq.

Neo-conservatives essentially believe in America's ability to shape the world in its own image, and see the United States as a "benevolent hegemony" with the power to compel other nations to adopt liberal democracy.

That ideology was extended to Iraq which was supposed to become ultimately a bastion of democracy in the Middle East.

But following the Republicans' steep November 7 election losses as bloodshed and chaos in Iraq continue, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- who executed the administration's Iraq policy -- was ousted from power.

Some neocon proponents -- especially those who believe that their vision for Iraq was on target, but poorly executed by the administration -- believe his departure was necessary.

"Huge mistakes were made, and I want to be very clear on this -- they were not made by neo-conservatives, who had almost no voice in what happened, and certainly almost no voice in what happened after the downfall of the regime in Baghdad," said noted neocon Richard Perle in an interview with Vanity Fair magazine.

Another top neocon, Ken Adelman, had assured the administration in February 2002 that "liberating" Iraq would be a "cakewalk," but today disavows all responsibility with how the venture has turned out.

"I just presumed that what I considered to be the most competent national security team since (president Harry) Truman was indeed going to be competent. They turned out to be among the most incompetent teams in the post-war era," he laments in the same Vanity Fair piece.

David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter who achieved fame for having coined the term "Axis of Evil" to describe North Korea, Iran and Iraq in an address delivered by the president before the war, downplayed the significance of neocons in the government.

"The administration has often been described as 'neoconservative.' In fact, people with neocon CVs were prominent in second- and third-tier positions -- defense, state and so on -- but the top jobs went to people with a more personal relationship with Mr Bush," he said Thursday in comments published in the Daily Telegraph.

Joshua Muravchik, a leading conservative scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, agreed that the neocon role has been overstated.

"In reality, of course, we don't wield any of the power that contemporary legend attributes to us. Most of us don't rise at the crack of dawn to report to powerful jobs in government," he said in an article in Foreign Policy magazine.

"But it is true that our ideas have influenced the policies of President George W. Bush, as they did those of President Ronald Reagan. That does feel good. Our intellectual contributions helped to defeat Communism in the last century and, God willing, they will help to defeat jihadism in this one."

Even well-known proponents are beginning to back away from the neocon label, most notably Francis Fukuyama in his recently published book "America at the Crossroads, Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy."

"I have concluded," he writes, "that neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something that I can no longer support.

"Neoconservatism has now become irreversibly identified with the policies of the administration of George W. Bush in his first term and any effort to reclaim the label at this point is likely to be futile."