Irak 140

De BBC bericht:
'End of the neo-con dream.
By Paul Reynolds World Affairs correspondent.

The neo-conservative dream faded in 2006.


The ambitions proclaimed when the neo-cons' mission statement "The Project for the New American Century" was declared in 1997 have turned into disappointment and recriminations as the crisis in Iraq has grown.
"The Project for the New American Century" has been reduced to a voice-mail box and a ghostly website. A single employee has been left to wrap things up.
The idea of the "Project" was to project American power and influence around the world.
The 1997 statement (written during the administration of President Bill Clinton) said:
"We seem to have forgotten the essential elements of the Reagan Administration's success: a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities."
Among the signatories were many of the senior officials who would later determine policy under President George W Bush - Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams and Lewis Libby - as well as thinkers including Francis Fukuyama, Norman Podheretz and Frank Gaffney.
The neo-conservatives were called that because they sought to re-establish what they felt were true conservative values in the Republican Party and the United States.
They wanted to stop what they felt were the isolationist tendencies that had developed under President Clinton, and even under the pragmatic President George Bush senior.
They saw the war in Iraq as their big chance of showing how the "New American Century" might work.
They predicted the development of democratic values in a region lacking in them and, in that way, the removal of any threat to the United States just as the democratisation of Germany and Japan after World War II had transformed Europe and the Pacific.
Attack
Since so much was pinned on Iraq, it is inevitable that the problems there should have undermined the whole idea.'

Lees verder: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6189793.stm