Getting Everything Wrong

To follow right up on my last post, Juan Cole has a stunning and succinct takedown of Perle, Feist, Kristol and the rest of the neocon movement in Salon. I don't know that I've read a better summation of the criminal wrongheadedness that brought us to this point. Maybe most alarming is that the current situation in Gaza is an afterthought to the end of the tragic Bush era, mainly due to the fact that our own economy dominates our thoughts and headlines.

Cole's conclusion:

The neoconservatives had prided themselves on their macho swagger, their rejection of namby-pamby Clintonian multilateralism, and on their bold vision for reshaping the Middle East so that the Israeli and American right would not have to deal with existing reality. In the cold light of day, they look merely petulant and arrogant. The ancient Greek poet Bion said that boys cast stones at frogs in sport, but the frogs die in earnest. The neoconservatives were the boys, and the people of Iraq, Israel, Palestine and Lebanon have been their frogs. The biggest danger facing the United States is that there will be no true "Clean Break" -- that the neoconservatives will somehow find a way to survive the Bush administration, and continue to influence American foreign policy.

Frogs die in earnest. Indeed.

Read the whole thing, it's illuminating.

Of course, the brutal war in Gaza had become convenient fodder for the Hannity/Beck/NRO wing of Muslim haters, which should not come as a surprise. Lost amidst their bloodthirst is the simple truth that war is all hell, and that the tragedy of Gaza will not be transformed by the wonton loss of Palestinian life.