Charles Krauthammer refuses to let neoconservatism die. Neoconservatism provided the philosophical underpinnings for the Iraq war. The neocons thought they could reshape the international landscape through military action designed to spread their ideology, an idea closely related to Trotskyism, a communist school of thought that many of the neocons adhered to in their early days. The neocons envisioned American troops marching through the Mideast delivering international capitalism and crony democracy in exchange for roses from the welcoming natives. This vision became a farce, but Krauthammer refuses to it let go. In Maliki votes for Obama, Krauthammer has to abandon the latest conservative talking point, that Obama’s Iraq plan isn’t supported by those on the ground, since the President of Iraq, with a fair amount of “on the ground” experience, endorsed Obama’s plan. Instead of repeating this discredited line, Krauthammer has to reinvent the rationale for the war… once more. First, we had to get the weapons of mass destruction.. until we found none. Next, we had to liberate the population from an inhumane regime… until we became one. Then we had to fight to stop the insurgents who destabalized the country, but Maliki thinks Obama’s plan will address this best, so Krauthammer needs a new rationale for the war: Now, he claims, be must fight for a foothold in the Mideast to combat Iran.
If Iran were such a problem, we should have attacked them first. If we considered Iran the major Mideast threat, we should not have crippled their greatest enemy. Krauthammer overlooks these details. He just falls back on the neocon arguments of 2003: a Mideast country might have WMD, and we need to spread our values to the Mideast by force. Krauthammer decides to rehash the same “noble lie” used to bring us to war in 2003 and combine it with the same defunct ideology that convinced the elites that we needed war. Bad ideas do not improve with age; they remain as rotten as ever.
