Civil War

The neocons are already responsible for the bloody civil war in Iraq. We are about to see another civil war brought to us by those same neocons; this one domestic. Iraq was never really a country but a group of assorted tribes, religious and ethnic groups held together by a series of ruthless tyrants. The Republican party is not really a party but a group of theocrats, imperialists, corporatists and libertarians with conflicting goals and ideologies. They have been for the most part held together by the political tyrant Karl Rove. That tyrant is about to fall. Glenn Greenwald explains:

Finally, if the Republicans lose this election, there is going to be another bloodbath and Civil War -- this one within the Republican Party -- as they all turn on each other, seeking to identify and stigmatize the culprits who led this country into this unparalleled disaster.

I agree except I think it will occur even if the Republicans should manage to hold onto the House which is unlikely. Greenwald continues:

Blame-casting efforts like this one have been going on for some time among Republicans, but they have simmered more or less quietly. If the Republicans lose, efforts to assign blame amongst themselves are going to explode. Neocons, in particular, will be very vulnerable to the most vicious attacks, and that is only just and right.

But this will in a sense be a dishonest fight.

But the reality is that the Republican Party itself bears responsibility not just for the strategic disaster we have wrought in Iraq -- a disaster that will take years if not decades to recover from (and that's if it ends sometime soon) -- but also for the entire Bush debacle, the destruction of our country's credibility, and the grotesque distortion of its character. Anyone who supported this President, particularly in 2004 when it was glaringly evident what he was, is culpable. With very rare exception -- way too rare to matter -- it was "conservatives" and Republicans who embraced this President eagerly and enthusiastically and enabled his empowerment and the pursuit of these policies.

The vicious civil war they will have amongst themselves might be enjoyable to watch and well-deserved, but it will also be deeply dishonest. Anyone (including in the pundit and political classes) who supported this presidency and the Bush movement -- regardless of which specific policies motivated that support -- are all to blame for what this administration has done to our country, and it's important not to allow these last-minute, ship-jumping conversions to obscure just how pervasive and widespread the culpability is.

As I mentioned the other day the neocons have had their way for six years and nothing has worked out the way they planned. Their desire for a powerful unilateral US has not been realized and in fact the US now has less influence in the world than it has at anytime since WWII. Of course they can point at the incompetence of the Bush administration for this setback but I think many see it as a repudiation of the neocon ideology. That includes many who think of themselves as Republicans. Like the Sunnis in Iraq the neocons will find themselves fighting for their lives in the next couple of years.