This much seems to be true. Intellectuals on the political Right in America, who have identified themselves as "neoconservatives", have various strongly held views on American Foreign Policy issues, and wrote papers on middle-East policy, regime change in Iraq, the need for war and other related matters.
These views have been thought by many to have strongly influenced the second Bush administration, and Perle and others were insiders during the time leading up to the Iraq War.
Now that the War has clearly failed, positions are being taken as to who is responsible (the "blame game"). A scape goat is needed, and we cannot expect almost anyone (Richard Clark is the one exception that comes to mind), to admit to having made misjudgments and to apologize to the American People. Whatever else fuels the philosophy of neoconservatives, few of them seem to want to believe they could be wrong, or that they have any personal responsibility.
A typical response is Perle's reply to the Vanity Fair press release, in which he maintains his position was correct, and that the War was basically badly prosecuted (gee mom, it was not me that had a bad idea, its the guys who took my idea and could not execute it properly who screwed up). What is interesting to me in all this is a question that never really gets asked, or answered.
It goes something like this: If you have a point of view about what government policy should be, and have influence in this regard, is there not some obligation to actually know something about the matter in question?
See, the reason this question is important can be found in what many polls today find as central to many American citizen's concerns about the War - that is the issue of competence. For some silly reason, the American People seem to expect that people who seek highest office, and the processes by which such people get office and the people that our highest officials choose to employ as thinkers and policy makers - we seem to expect that these folks will know what they are doing.
We trust the process (at least some still do) and we'd like to trust our leaders (at least some still do), but that is not a blind trust which says: go ahead and do anything you want. It is the same trust we give to a doctor when we take our sick child into the emergency room, or the trust we give to the teacher when we let our child off in front of the school.
That child is our most precious obligation, and we need the people who are going to have an effect on that child's life to know what they are doing - to be competent. Doctors get degrees and have codes of ethics. Teachers get degrees and have oversight from supposedly professional administrators. But who has oversight over politicians, their cronies and sycophants and political advisers? What degrees and codes of ethics are they bound too?
I don't think this election is just about changing parties. I don't think this election is about issues of War and Peace. I think this election is about political competence, and that the American People are getting fed up with the fact that their trust is being violated. I think this election is sending a message to both parties: You've lost our trust, and we no longer believe you to be as competent as you pretend to be in your speeches and political ads.
See the thing is ordinary people are not as stupid as advertisers and politicians try to treat them. They are just very busy doing very important things, such as raising children and creating the wealth. There is no America without them - they are America. They are also very tolerant (read the Declaration of Independence: ...all experience has shown, that human beings are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.).
The reality is that government has become incompetent at taking care of the People, and really only works for the benefit of a very few. What the polls leading up to this election are telling us, whatever the result in three days, is that the patience of the American People is wearing thin.
There is no getting back from that. No new lies, no new fears, no new repressions are going to change what is a fundamental and widespread loss of faith in the competence of government. The party is over for the elites of wealth and power. The American People are turning their attention on matters they once felt they could safely trust to others. It really does not make a lot of difference how this election in particular turns out - once disturbed from their true work (raising children and creating wealth), the American People will take up the job of reforming government with the same moral passion and outrage they express when their children are threatened.
Why? Because the two are the same. Government has been given certain tasks, and has failed. Its main task is to: ...form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity,... That "Posterity", that's the children. Mess with my children, you mess with me. The next years are not going to be a good time to be in politics.
