How’s this for an endorsement?

“Whispering to boys in corners” … “cannot defends it beliefs before the tribunal of reason” … “preaches only to the converted” … “manipulative” … “eschews the truth in favor of lies and deceptions.” Remarkable descriptions that capture almost all the causes for the shitty intelligence and unrealistic assumptions on the Iraq war. Had any of Fukuyama’s PNAC friends presented their rationale for the war openly we would not have gone to war. Had they allowed the intelligence professionals who weren’t converted to their plans to present their views, we would not have gone to war. Had they presented the truth rather than the lies of Chalabi, we would not have gone to war. As I say in an old post on Neo-Conservative Utilitarian Postmodernists:

OSP didn’t get fooled by Saddam or by Chalabi, as Habbakuk suggests. Rather, the critical deception was not Saddam’s or, by itself, Chalabi’s. It was that of OSP, which knowingly propagated Saddam’s and Chalabi’s deceptions to accomplish their goal–military intervention.

With their statements about postmodernism, S[chmitt]&S[hulsky] reveal their awareness of the implications that deceptive statements have for democracy. But they neither renounce their own brand of deceptive statement nor do they posit an alternative to democracy. And in the context of this awareness, they argue for a different kind of intelligence. Given this background, it seems S&S are arguing for an active, intelligence-producing role rather than intelligence gathering and analysis, no matter the method. And given what Shulsky’s OSP produced (literally, produced), this seems to be the more accurate reading.

Fukuyama admits that the second generation of Neo-Conservatives espouses coercive change. But he doesn’t recognize (or doesn’t admit) how that coerciveness makes them at fault. Instead, he tries to persuade that the backlash against such over-reaching is as harmful as the over-reach itself.

By ignoring the true nature of his PNAC comrades, Fukuyama is trying to divorce ideology from personnel.

Great post bmaz!

Great comments!

Poor Francis feels only the remorse of a most intellectual sort.

The ‘tarnish’ on his ‘reputation’ he finds vexatious, and, in his mind, ’tis all quite ‘unfair’ since, so far as he can discern there is no dirt on his well-manicured hands …

An overblown pomposity, Poor Francis must needs, now, scurry around, all a-twitter, cheerfully chirping about how awful, how terribly awful, things have gone, though he, of course, had nothing whatsoever to do with any of this shameful, destructive behavior.

Heaven forbid that any might suspect that he did.

Francis is just bright enough to grasp that ‘consequence’ can even befall giants of his stature, and unlike Kissinger, he might well live, however comfortably, long enough to get caught up in the ‘verdict’, and owing to the complicity his mind desperately rejects, his ‘guts’ inform him that he could, for real, be brought to account, even if it is, apparently to be held, in the next administration, that “political behavior should not be crimminalized”.

Poor Francis is starting to sweat (to put it in the non-ivory tower venacular).

Good article, great artwork. Just one thing about Fukuyama’s description of the financial crisis. We.Have.Not.Nationalized.Any.Banks. We have given them billions and billions, as the late Carl Sagan might have quipped. But we have not taken them over or asserted the authority of a competent owner or savvy creditor. Only those Old Brits and Europeans and Japanese sink to that level. We prefer “market-based solutions to market-based problems”, don’t we, Milton?

We have not, for instance, fired senior executives or cut their compensation, much less asked for a lot of it back. We have not stopped those execs from rewarding themselves with more champagne, manicures, money, spas, and luxury golf and beach outings. We have failed to institute new accounting, audit, lending, and reporting requirements.

Hank Paulson hasn’t even asked his beneficiaries what they’ve done with all our money! He doesn’t want to know, and spends even more of it by outsourcing the very act of giving them our money. Mr. Paulson already knows we won’t get it back, and that his “borrowers” will shortly ask for a lot more. Come next February, I expect to read about his new job, as chief lobbyist for a new trade association: Wall Street Bailouts ‘R US.

While Fukuyama and others may have been staunch supporters of the war in Iraq, you have to go back to the Nixon era to fully understand why we went to war. With all the other noise in the media in the late 60s and early 70s, few probably focused on what in today’s lingo would be called the “neocons.” Paul Wolfiwitz, Dick Cheny and Donald Rumsfeld, Abrams and others always wanted to invade somewhere in the Mideast or “Arabia” to secure America’s oil future. It wasn’t until “W” was anointed as President that this intimate little group were able to persuade W to create drama and force the resolution of it by invading Iraq.

Amazingly, Senator John Kerry, Ma. is the only public figure I have ever heard that gave Wolfiwitz his true credit for initiating the war. Wondering what type of character Wolfiwitz could be, Michael Moore’s movie about the war answered that question for me. Wolfiwitz was about to speak somewhere outside, probably around Washington DC. Prior to approaching the microphone and unbeknownst to him that he was being filmed, he took out his comb, spit on it and then drug it through his greasy, dandruff laden hair. Being somewhat surprised at this derelict behavior, I wrote a letter to Donald Rumsfeld and asked how much Michael Moore had to pay Wolfiwitz to display such degenerate behavior, I never got a reply.