Fukuyama on the failure of Neoconservatism

Much has been written about Francis Fukuyama's After Neoconservatism already. While much of what he said is true MEJ's own Bill in DC reminds us Fukuyama does not discuss the Bush administration's real motives and actual relationship with the neoconservative movement.

I don't think Bush went into Iraq out of ideological conviction at all. I think he did so, with Cheney's and Rove's input, in pursuit of a domestic political agenda, thinking that a quick and successful war would win the country over to Republican dominance for a long time and perhaps for other personal reasons as well--he wanted to go down in history as a "war president"--and he cloaked his aims in Neocon ideology to give them a semblance of legitimacy. He and Cheney put Neocons in important positions because their ideology on international issues matched their own aggressive posturing. When the war started to go badly and it became obvious that Saddam had posed no real military threat to the US, Bush started emphasizing the Neocon ideology--using US military power to spread democracy--in desperation. But Francis Fukuyama is right that the war has demonstrated the folly of the Neocon ideology.