Dan Drezner’s New Republic column is up, and it’s a good one. If (as Dan thinks, and I agree with him) the neocons were basically right about the value, importance, and stakes of a democratizing reform project in the Middle East starting with Iraq, the administration’s almost-willful incompetence at that project is that much more reprehensible.
While flawed, the neoconservative plan of democracy promotion in the Middle East remains preferable to any known alternatives. Of course, such a risky strategy places great demands on execution, and so far this administration has executed poorly. It would be a cruel irony if, in the end, the biggest proponents of ambitious reform in the Middle East are responsible for unfairly discrediting their own idea.
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