Idol Speculation
There has been a cascade of interesting reading on the Foreign Policy adventures of the administration recently. Best of the lot was a post in the web log Whiskey Bar:
Twilight of the Neocons? I came across that in Metafilter thread on
Stop Loss Orders in and of itself a minor issue - if you're in uniform your enlistment ends when the army says it does, not before.
Whiskey Bar speculates whether James Baker"s successful mission(s) combined with recent decisions to effect a hand over of sovereignty in Iraq in advance of a constitution - mean that the period of neoconservative ascendency in the administration is over. The original post was a web log master piece and the writer one 'bilmon' held in through a week of comments responding at edifying length to everyone who voiced in. Web logging at its finest.
I read this a few days after absorbing three articles in last Sundays Washington Post:
Threats Force Retreat From Wide-Ranging Plans for Iraq,
In Iraq, Pace of U.S. Casualties Has Accelerated two front section news stories and a piece by a senior editor Robert Kaiser
Iraq Isn't Vietnam, But They Rhyme. Reading all of these together gives some credence to Whiskey glasses tentative conclusion that the neo cons are in the dog house. Personally I don't think so. I think that this war (on Iraq and on terror) has given them everything they really needed out of it, and with some minor caveats it hasn't gone that badly - from their perspective.
Whiskey glass does an excellent job of distinguishing the flavors of republican foreign policy and trying to line up the players. I agree with his generally assessment of VP Richard Cheney. Though most of the conventual media mark him as a old guard republican, Considering his actions and staffing decisions across several administrations, whether you call him a pseudo-realist or crypto-neocon, he belongs with the adventurers. Also acknowledging that Nat. Sec. Adviser Condeleeza Rice's main value to President Bush is that her principle loyalty is to him and not some faction is astute.
Referring to Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld as a ruling troika is an interesting idea, as far as that goes troika is probably a better word than triumvir. Considering the notion of using 'regent' to refer to the Bush/Cheney relationship; Bush was born in 1946, Cheney in1941. The two men are much closer in age than most people seem to think. Eminence Grise (gray eminence) is the better fitting term.
The people writing in to comment made one assertion repeatedly I differ on; that is the assertion that this kind of article could never get published in the mainstream media this is not true. Both the New York Review of Books Neocons in Power, and Christian Science Monitor
Special: Empire Builders (also note this articles intregal sidebars)[flash-warning all] have published extensive examinations of this lot, the Boston Globe as well -- even if the Washington Post and New York Times notably haven't. The Post in particular often gives the impression its editors would rather be locked in a cage with a rabid and distempered wolverine than write about the plays and players of the Bush Administration.
I have two log entries in the same vein as the items above I've been trying to complete for a month, I think I'll try to weld them together and finish it. Why let Bob Kaiser have all the fun?
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