Neocon Boomerang?
Last night I read an interesting article from The New Republic--the most consistently hawkish and pro-war of the "liberal" outlets--about domestic perceptions of the war and what has gone wrong. Basically, the writer asks the question of whether it was the concepts behind the war that were flawed, or the implementation. He concludes that the doctrine of pre-emptive war and "transformation" in the middle east makes quite a bit of theoretical sense, but was so badly mishanded by the neocons that the entire concept is probably discredited for the foreseeable future.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the first assumption--it does seem to fit into the broad tradition of Wilsonian idealism to which I've always been partial, but also is sufficiently underscored by arrogance and ethnocentrism that I'm skeptical--but I have no doubt about the second.

...the political problem for those sympathetic to democratization is that even if fault does lie with the implementation--which may well be the case--Americans are likely to blame the strategy that got us involved in Iraq rather than the nuances of how we carried it out. Most voters don't have time to reach sophisticated conclusions about the competence of the government's post-war planning; they will therefore respond to our setbacks in Iraq by writing off the neocons' big idea altogether, concluding that democracy promotion in the Middle East was a pipe dream. Without public support, the grand strategy of reforming the Middle East will inevitably fall by the wayside, no matter who wins the upcoming election.

As I've said for awhile now, history shows us that support for military commitment steadily declines over time. I think we're moving into a period that will be very frustrating for war supporters, as every piece of "bad news"--whether in the form of more prisoner abuse revelations, news that Chalabi was exchanging friendship bracelets with Iran's ayatollahs while pocketing U.S. taxpayer money, or the inevitable casualties from insurgent attacks--reinforces the notion that the whole exercise just wasn't worth the cost in blood and treasure. Whatever good news there is, by contrast, will have to hurdle the bar of skepticism raised so high by all the misleading and dishonest statements from the administration and their enablers in the media.

Here's more from the article, in defense of the "vision." I do think this is an argument liberals can't just ignore; none can argue that things were going just swell in that part of the world before we invaded.

Say what you will about the neoconservatives' skills at manners or management; their big idea cannot be dismissed lightly. There is a compelling logic to the argument that the primary source of frustration among Arabs in the Middle East is a sense of powerlessness. Trapped in a region littered with authoritarian and corrupt regimes, they are encouraged by these regimes and their Islamic critics to blame their situation on Israel and the United States. This is an ideal environment for fomenting terrorism. Creating an open society in Iraq would put the lie to this kind of hate-mongering.

To be sure, democracy promotion is far from easy. Indeed, regime change in the Middle East looks like a lousy, rotten policy option for addressing the root causes of terrorism, until one considers the alternatives--appeasement or muddling through...

For all their criticism of Bush's grand strategy, Europeans and left-wingers have offered very little in the way of alternatives to his vision. Some say that American soft power could bring about change in the Middle East. But decades of alternately coddling, cajoling, and ostracizing Arab despots has not led to liberalization or democratization. We have showered Egypt with aid, but have succeeded only in propping up an authoritarian monster in Hosni Mubarak. We have tried to isolate Syria, but have only strengthened that country's anti-American credentials. Maybe U.S. soft power is part of the solution to the Middle East's woes, but soft power alone cannot accomplish our desired ends.

The problem is that in a democracy, you can only go to the well every so often with this kind of ambitious project, and you'd better make sure you do it right. Putting aside for a moment the merits of the Iraq incursion, it's becoming clear that the administration neither committed sufficient resources to do the "nation-building" part of the job, nor did an adequate job of communicating the true costs and scope of the effort to the electorate.

Now they're starting to pay the price for these errors. It's ironic, and it also couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of guys.