Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying

As President Bush puts the "final touches" on his "new" Iraq policy this weekend, Washington waits with bated breath for the fight to come. Having called up his Surgin’ General, David Petraeus, Mr. Bush is ready to embark on his Iraq escalation against the will of the American public and its elected Congress.

It is time to consider the consequences of Mr. Bush’s policy of escalation in Iraq.

It has been widely reported that Mr. Bush’s policy is based on the ideological fantasies of the neo-conservatives at the American Enterprise Institute. The neo-conservative of the moment is AEI’s Fred Kagan. In his report, entitled "Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq", he lays out the "new way forward".

Throughout history, when small minds have attempted to think big, the results have been catastrophic for the world. This period of history is proving no different.

Mr. Kagan declares in the first lines of his report:

Victory is still an option in Iraq. America, a country of 300 million people with a GDP of $12 trillion, and more than 1 million soldiers and marines can regain control of Iraq, a state the size of California with a population of 25 million and a GDP under $100 billion.

Pride is not a strategy. The strategy in Iraq should not be based on a need to demonstrate the might of the American military-industrial complex. The strategy in Iraq should be based on the long term national interest of the United States of America.

Mr. Kagan continues:

Iraq has reached a critical point. The strategy of relying on a political process to eliminate the insurgency has failed. Rising sectarian violence threatens to break America’s will to fight. This violence will destroy the Iraqi government, armed forces, and people if it is not rapidly controlled.

Victory in Iraq is still possible at an acceptable level of effort. We must adopt a new approach to the war and implement it quickly and decisively. [Emphasis added by me.]

He has reached the opposite conclusion from most sane observers of the fiasco in Iraq. It is precisely our reliance on a military solution, and not a well thought-out political process, that has led us to this point in Iraq. Our failure to plan for "Phase IV" operations after toppling Saddam Hussein has contributed to the chaos in Iraq - and the time for a do-over has long passed.

So, what will be the consequence of the Kagan delusion, if implemented? If the Kagan plan fails, we will have sacrificed Iraqi and American lives for another stab at the ideological pie in the sky. However, the real danger lies in the success of the Kagan plan. Most observers have so far argued that his plan will fail and therefore should not be attempted. I believe the greater danger lies in the plan’s success.

Fred Kagan’s plan is a strategy for ethnic cleansing. If implemented, the Bush Administration will actively participate in a policy of ethnic cleansing in Iraq. They will make the American military and the American people complicit in their policy.

Mr. Kagan’s plan focuses on Baghdad as the center of operations. His plan is to clear, or "ethnically cleanse" if you will, the Sunni parts of Baghdad:

We must send more American combat forces into Iraq and especially into Baghdad to support this operation. A surge of seven Army brigades and Marine regiments to support clear-and-hold operations starting in the spring of 2007 is necessary, possible, and will be sufficient.

These forces, partnered with Iraqi units, will clear critical Sunni and mixed Sunni-Shi’a neighborhoods, primarily on the west side of the city.

The Shia government of Nouri al-Maliki and the Shia militias of Moqtada al-Sadr and Abdul Aziz al-Hakim have been quietly following this policy for well over two years now. Finally, they will get some American help.

As the United States debates what to do in Iraq, this country’s Shiite majority has been moving toward its own solution: making the capital its own.

Large portions of Baghdad have become Shiite in recent months, as militias press their fight against Sunni militants deeper into the heart of the capital, displacing thousands of Sunni residents. At least 10 neighborhoods that a year ago were mixed Sunni and Shiite are now almost entirely Shiite, according to residents, American and Iraqi military commanders and local officials.

To prepare for the American assistance, the Maliki government this weekend unveiled their plan for ethnic cleansing, or "fighting terrorists", as they like to call it:

Maliki’s words appeared intended to counter the perception that the plan would focus on combating Sunni insurgents. An aide to Maliki, Hasan Suneid, a Shiite Muslim lawmaker, told the Associated Press that the Iraqi army would devote 20,000 additional troops to the capital and begin by combating Sunni insurgents in western Baghdad.

…

Maliki’s speech provided few details about the tactical or strategic changes guiding the forthcoming effort. But his aides described an effort that relies on U.S. troops to combat Sunni insurgents on the outskirts of Baghdad. Those areas are where the Sunni insurgents plan and manufacture the deadly explosives that detonate regularly in the city.

"Maliki believes that it is in this ring that the attacks are coming from," one of his aides said.

The Iraqi forces would target the most violent neighborhoods, and commanders would have a greater degree of autonomy in their assigned sections of the city, Askari said.

Maliki believes that if the additional troops can effect a decrease in violence over the next two months, then he can negotiate more effectively with Shiite militia leaders in the city and improve his chances of disarming them, his aides said.

Mr. Maliki and Mr. Kagan are in complete agreement. The way to secure peace is to decrease the violence by ethnically cleansing Baghdad of Sunnis. Then, the Shia militias will make nice and peace will reign. Call me biased, but having lived through such a plan of "pacification" in my own life, I can smell ethnic cleansing better than most.

Baghdad is important. It is important because the sectarian fault lines of Iraq run through it. Throughout the American occupation, Baghdad has been coming apart along sectarian lines. Once mixed neighborhoods are being slowly ethnically cleansed into Shia and Sunni neighborhoods. Now Mr. Kagan is advocating helping the Shia eliminate the remaining Sunni neighborhoods west of the Tigris River. When Iraqi forces and militias go into Sunni neighborhoods they will go in to settle sectarian scores, not to hunt "terrorists". The United States government should take no part in this.

The path to national reconciliation in Iraq does not go through Baghdad - only the path to Iraq’s disintegration goes through Baghdad. The path to a stable Iraq goes through Iraq’s oil fields in the South and in Kirkuk, appeals to shared Arab nationalism, and access to the Persian Gulf through the Shatt al-Arab. A smarter man than Mr. Kagan would consider how oil revenue sharing, pipelines to the Gulf, and interests of Iraq’s neighbors such as Iran in said access to Gulf can be weaved together into a way forward that does not lead down a path of further violence. Instead, a small mind has come up with a recipe for ethnic cleansing - and Mr. Bush is set to endorse it.

It is up to the newly muscular United States Congress to prevent American complicity in the ethnic cleansing and massacres to come. A massacre of Iraq’s Sunnis will push us toward that regional war that everyone claims they fear. It is time for Congress to step up and prevent any further loss of American and Iraqi lives in the service of ideological midgets.

 [Cross posted at Taylor Marsh]

I recall quipping to a friend a few weeks ago that I thought the way out of Iraq for this Administration was through Iran. What I meant at the time was that since this Administration had haplessly shifted the center of gravity of Iraqi politics to Iran, without Iran having to fire a shot, that the only way to exit out of Iraq with "credibility" was to attack Iran. Iran then becomes a continuation of a larger war "on terror" and it can then not be said that Iraq was lost since it will only become an unfinished chapter in a larger war.

I of course was being cynical. I knew then that there have been people within and outside the Administration who have been advocating for an attack on Iran from the time that "Mission Accomplished" was declared in Iraq. Neo-conservatives had focused their attention on Iran as the next domino in the new American Domino Theory. Some of the most rabid of the neo-cons advocating war were the usual suspects such as Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney and Charles Krauthammer. But I had calculated that the appetite for war had waned in Washington due to Mr. Bush’s flagging approval ratings, the disaster in Iraq, the Congressional scandals, and the overextension of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan. I had obviously underestimated the hunger for war in Washington.

Today the Washington Post reports that the United States is planning for a nuclear strike on Iran. This report comes nipping at the heels of Seymour Hersh’s tour de force in the New Yorker magazine on the same topic. Mr. Hersh has been doggedly pursuing this story for some time, with a report in January that the United States was already engaged in covert action inside Iran.

The drumbeat for war with Iran has been ongoing for some time. The rhetoric and the diplomatic doublespeak is eerily reminiscent of the run up to the Iraq invasion. But what is different this time is that the United States is considering using nuclear weapons as a first strike option against Iran. Apparently the civilian leaders in the Administration have surveyed the options against Iran’s nuclear facilities and concluded that a conventional attack will not cause the requisite amount of damage. So like any group of people bent on destruction, they have decided that if the bomb you are using is not big enough, get a bigger bomb - in our case, a nuclear bomb. This is the kind of thinking I have been able to coax my five-year-old out of over the last year. My daughter has matured to a point where she now tends to utilize thought and consider more the longer-term consequences of her actions instead of first resorting to brute force when confronted with a difficult task.

There is likely to be much discussion of this story in the days, weeks, and months to come. Instead of focusing on the primary story which I suspect will be widely discussed in today’s talk shows and on the web, I would like to use the remainder of this post to highlight two aspects of this story that are particularly frightening.

Seymour Hersh’s writes about Mr. Bush’s determination and motivation in attacking Iran:

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.” [Emphasis added by me]

It has been widely reported and speculated that Mr. Bush sees his mission in remaking the Middle East very much in biblical terms. If Mr. Hersh’s source is accurate in his assessment then we are confronted with a President with messianic and evangelical zeal that will not be tempered by reason or the facts. In this case, war with Iran is inevitable. This is a frightening development, and the dangers may actually increase as Mr. Bush’s popularity slips further. He may feel that the urgency to accomplish his mission becomes greater as his position in office become more tenuous.

The Washington Post reports on a possible timetable for attack and Israel’s role in setting that timetable:

Israel is preparing, as well. The government recently leaked a contingency plan for attacking on its own if the United States does not, a plan involving airstrikes, commando teams, possibly missiles and even explosives-carrying dogs. Israel, which bombed Iraq’s Osirak nuclear plant in 1981 to prevent it from being used to develop weapons, has built a replica of Natanz, according to Israeli media, but U.S. strategists do not believe Israel has the capacity to accomplish the mission without nuclear weapons.

…

Israel points to those missiles to press their case in Washington. Israeli officials traveled here recently to convey more urgency about Iran. Although U.S. intelligence agencies estimate Iran is about a decade away from having a nuclear bomb, Israelis believe a critical breakthrough could occur within months. They told U.S. officials that Iran is beginning to test a more elaborate cascade of centrifuges, indicating that it is further along than previously believed.

"What the Israelis are saying is this year — unless they are pressured into abandoning the program — would be the year they will master the engineering problem," a U.S. official said. "That would be a turning point, but it wouldn’t mean they would have a bomb." [Emphasis added by me]

The Israelis have been pushing the notion of a point of no return, or "turning point", for quite some time, arguing that even though the actual bomb may be sometime away the date on the calendar that we should be concerned about is much sooner when the Iranian program reaches a technical threshold that once achieved cannot be reversed. Israel has chosen a timetable for attack by the United States by the end of this year by indicating if this attack does not happen, they will launch the attack unilaterally. Israel has also been at the forefront of the nuclear strike option.

The timetable set by Israel for the United States dovetails nicely with the November Congressional elections. An attack on Iran would politically rescue Mr. Bush and the Congressional Republicans from the disaster in Iraq. The actual attack does not have to occur before the elections, in fact it is better politically that the attack take place after the elections. The drumbeat to war and the tension and fear it will generate for the public is much more useful as a political tool than the war itself. By this time in early November, with any luck for the Republicans, the daily death toll in Iraq, the Congressional scandals, the NSA spying and the fallout from the NIE leaking should all take a backseat to the coming war with Iran. With these constraints, the likely strike date on Iran will be in late November or early December of this year, just in time for the Christmas season.

In many ways, war has already begun with Iran. The conversation has changed. It should give all of us pause that on this day in the 21st Century we are considering the possibility that the greatest experiment in Democracy in the history of the world is about to launch a nuclear first strike against another sovereign state. May our children forgive us.

On looking back I have written a fair share of posts on Charles Krauthammer from immigration to Iraq. For those, who like me, can’t get enough of Mr. Krauthammer, I offer a veritable feast of Krauthammer:

• Charles Krauthammer Builds A Wall
• Charles Krauthammer’s Neo-Conservative Moment - Or Francis Fukuyama As The Oracle
• Charles Krauthammer Chokes On A Chicken Hawk
• More On The Charles Krauthammer Column
• Charles Krauthammer Lunches With The Ladies Of Bull Run

Ok, maybe the attention I pay Mr. Krauthammer is a sign of hidden affection for this Oracle of the right. I confess to being an avid reader of his columns. So in return here is a big wet kiss.

These guys put the chicken in chicken hawk. Enjoy your journey into the healing powers of delusional thinking.

Here’s a small sampling from the very tasty chicken hawk menu:

Daniel Pipes
	Claim to fame: Founder of the Middle East Forum Former board member of the US Institute of Peace (recess appointment by President Bush) Muslim basher and all around xenophobe Japanese internment supporter Palestinian hater Iraq War champion
Notable Quotes:  "Mohammed Atta, one of the hijackers, met with an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague. Two of his co-conspirators met with Iraqi intelligence officers in the United Arab Emirates. Bin Laden aides met with officials in Baghdad. Further, Saddam may be behind the recent military-grade anthrax attacks, suggested by the presence of bentonite, a substance only Iraq uses for this purpose. " -"On to Baghdad?: Yes - The Risks Are Overrated" in the  New York Post, 12/3/2001 "Saddam Hussein represents the single greatest danger to the United States, not to speak of the rest of the world. Today, with Americans mobilized, is exactly the right moment to dispatch him." - New York Post, 13/3/2001 "A famous American victory in Iraq and the successful rehabilitation of that country will bring liberals out of the woodwork and generally move the region toward democracy. (Saudi leaders are already leaking their plans to establish electing assemblies, something totally unprecedented in their kingdom.)" -New York Post, 2/11/2003 "The United States cannot pass up a unique chance to remake the world’s most politically fevered region. Sure, the effort might fail, but not even to try would be a missed opportunity." - New York Post, 2/11/2003 "Oh, it was a success. We got rid of Saddam Hussein. Beyond that is icing." -Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 4/1/2006 "The ingratitude of the Iraqis for the extraordinary favor we gave them — to release them from the bondage of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny. They have rapidly interpreted it as something they did and that we were incidental to it. They’ve more or less written us out of the picture. " -Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 4/1/2006

Richard Perle
	Claim to fame: Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan Chairman of Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee under President Bush "Prince of Darkness" Member of the Project for a New American Century Signer of 1998 Letter to President Clinton advocating overthrow of Saddam Hussein Alleged to have behaved unethically for financial gain Iraq War champion
Notable Quotes:  "Because the thing that many of us have speculated about is happening. There is that interchange. It is likely that chemical weapons, biological weapons in the possession of the Iraqis derived during the cold war from the Soviet Union are now being disseminated to terrorists." -PBS interview, 7/11/2002 "Saddam is in the terrorists business. The easiest thing for intelligence organizations to do is unconsciously slip into a world-view that becomes a filter that causes you either not to look, or even when you see, to ignore and fail to register information inconsistent with that world-view. And it has been the view of the intelligence establishment for a long time now that Saddam, who is secular and not a religious fanatic like Osama bin Laden, behaves in a manner different from the terrorists. So they’re not looking. Even when there’s evidence; they tend to discount the evidence. I think they’re simply wrong about this." -PBS interview, 7/11/2002 I noted there were widespread media reports saying an attack would require up to 250,000 troops. These soldiers could not all be air-dropped into Iraq. They would have to come from somewhere, such as Saudi Arabia. And a military action of this size would need extensive logistical support nearby. Forget the 250,000 figure, Perle said: "The Army guys don’t know anything. They said we needed 500,000 troops in 1991 [for the Gulf War]. Did we need that many to win? No." What’s the Perle Plan? I asked. "Forty thousand troops." he said. - David Corn interview, 5//10/2002 "The problems in Iraq are ahead of us, but we’re doing better than people think. And a year from now, I’ll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they’ve been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation."  -AEI Luncheon 9/23/2003

Ken Adelman
	Claim to fame: Assistant to Donald Rumsfeld from 1975 to 1977 Arms Control Director under Ronald Reagan Member of the Project for a New American Century Ken "cakewalk" Adelman  Iraq War champion
Notable Quotes:  "I believe demolishing Hussein’s military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk. Let me give simple, responsible reasons: (1) It was a cakewalk last time; (2) they’ve become much weaker; (3) we’ve become much stronger; and (4) now we’re playing for keeps. " - Washington  Post, 2/13/2002 "Hussein constitutes the number one threat against American security and civilization. Unlike Osama bin Laden, he has billions of dollars in government funds, scores of government research labs working feverishly on weapons of mass destruction — and just as deep a hatred of America and civilized free societies. " - Washington Post, 2/13/2002 "We urge you to seize that opportunity, and to enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world.  That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power.  We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor." -PNAC letter to President Clinton, 1/26/1998 "I have no doubt we’re going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction". These weapons are likeliest to be found near Tikrit and Baghdad, "because they’re the most protected places with the best troops." - Washington Post, 3/23/2003

Zalmay Khalilzad
	Claim to fame: US Ambassador to Iraq Former US Ambassador to Afghanistan King maker of Iraq and Afghanistan Member of the Project for a New American Century Signer of 1998 Letter to President Clinton advocating overthrow of Saddam Hussein Initially supported the Taliban in Afghanistan as a force for stability Negotiated with the Taliban on behalf of Unocol to for a proposed natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan Iraq War champion
Notable Quotes:  "The Taliban do not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran" -1996 while working for Unocol on the Afghan gas pipeline proposal

Frank Gaffney Jr.
	Claim to fame: President of Center for Security Policy Assistant Secretary of Defense under Ronald Reagan Member of the Project for a New American Century Signer of 1998 Letter to President Clinton advocating overthrow of Saddam Hussein Frank "Connect the Dots" Gaffney Iraq War champion
Notable Quotes:  "Under present wartime circumstances, though, the United States has the ability — and, indeed, an urgent responsibility — to take more comprehensive action against Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya. Unless the two networks adjust their behavior so as no longer to act as the propaganda arm of our enemies, they should be taken off the air, one way or another." - Fox News, 9/29/2003 "The [9/11 Commission] staff’s statement concerning Iraq and Al Qaeda (search) is internally inconsistent; it ignores key facts; it selectively addresses others; and it effectively condemns as incredible the considerable amount of evidence that suggests Saddam Hussein and Usama bin Laden did indeed have a collaborative relationship – as President Bush and Vice President Cheney have insisted." -Fox News, 6/20/2004 "I was thinking actually about effecting regime change through the use of military force. There are other ways to effect regime change as well. The problem with not replicating the Iraqi (Israeli?) Osirak attack, which also had a desired effect on Iraq, is it is no longer possible, given the lessons the Iranians learned about concealing and dispersing their nuclear weapons program. I think to do that very discriminate, precise military strike, you’re gonna have to change the regime, and I think the good news here, John, if there is any, is that I believe the Iranian people want that every bit as much as we do, if not more."-John Gibson interview, 11/24/2004, already advocating attacking Iran in 2004 "The connections between the Nazis and the Islamofascists are rooted in more than shared ambitions of world domination and violent methods."…"Consequently, as a practical matter, we have no choice but to fight the Islamofascists, both abroad and at home. Surrender, whether in Iraq or elsewhere, is not an option." -Renew America 3/20/2006

Elliott Abrams
	Claim to fame: Deputy National Security Advisor to President Bush Special Assistant to the President under President Bush Pled guilty to two counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress during Iran-Contra Member of the Project for a New American Century Signer of 1998 Letter to President Clinton advocating overthrow of Saddam Hussein Iraq War champion
Notable Quotes:  Does damage mostly with actions.

So, what do you do with a chicken hawk after the thrill is gone? Apparently you can now race chicken hawks.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I had initially decided not to get too deeply involved in Charles Krauthammer’s tantrum (it is probably best to stay out of the way when you see a man foaming at the mouth). But, I have since changed my mind for two reasons:

• Francis Fukuyama was online today at The Washington Post website answering questions about his book and the Krauthammer column
• Krauthammer’s column has generated substantial debate in the blogosphere

So, I thought I would address the substance of Krauthammer’s charge in his juvenile column more directly. Krauthammer’s column, it seems to me, is basically arguing the following:

1. Francis Fukuyama lied in the Preface of his latest book about a speech Krauthammer made (nana-nana-boo-boo!)
2. Francis Fukuyama in "America At The Crossroads", by making unconvincing arguments,  proves Krauthammer correct that there was no alternative but to attack Iraq (nana-nana-boo-boo!)
3. Francis Fukuyama is a sheep who changed his mind on Iraq after public opinion turned against the war. And everyone knows no self-respecting neo-con can doubt the rightness of one’s cause even against overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (nana-nana-boo-boo!)

There, I think I have captured the essence of Mr. Krauthammer’s bile. Sheesh, these guys don’t like it when they think they are misrepresented. All that venom, and its not even about the book, its about the Preface to the book. Now, that is petty.

I will address each point in turn and, to confuse the reader, I will address them in reverse order. But first, it is well worth pointing out that long before Prof. Fukuyama published his book, he wrote an essay in June 2004 entitled "The Neo-Conservative Moment" for the National Interest critiquing Krauthammer’s speech. In this essay, Fukuyama offers a convincing and compelling critique of Krauthammer’s vision of American dominance in a unipolar world. It is a long essay and I will not attempt to summarize it here. Please read the essay as you may find it remarkably prescient and well informed about our entanglement in Iraq.

In one part of the essay, Fukuyama knocks down one of Krauthammer’s (and Mr. Bush’s) favorite talking points: "Where is it written that Arabs are incapable of democracy?". The implication is that we have a lack of respect for the Arabs when we say this. Fukuyama responds sharply:

It is, of course, nowhere written that Arabs are incapable of democracy, and it is certainly foolish for cynical Europeans to assert with great confidence that democracy is impossible in the Middle East. We have, indeed, been fooled before, not just in Japan but in Eastern Europe prior to the collapse of communism.

But possibility is not likelihood, and good policy is not made by staking everything on a throw of the dice. Culture is not destiny, but culture plays an important role in making possible certain kinds of institutions–something that is usually taken to be a conservative insight. Though I, more than most people, am associated with the idea that history’s arrow points to democracy, I have never believed that democracies can be created anywhere and everywhere through sheer political will. Prior to the Iraq War, there were many reasons for thinking that building a democratic Iraq was a task of a complexity that would be nearly unmanageable. Some reasons had to do with the nature of Iraqi society: the fact that it would be decompressing rapidly from totalitarianism, its ethnic divisions, the role of politicized religion, the society’s propensity for violence, its tribal structure and the dominance of extended kin and patronage networks, and its susceptibility to influence from other parts of the Middle East that were passionately anti-American.

 There, in two short paragraphs, is a concise and coherent reason for not invading Iraq. But, Fukuyama is not breaking new ground here. This is an obvious line of reasoning that the Administration should have seriously contemplated before embarking on our disastrous misadventure in Iraq. Instead, they were drinking Krauthammer’s blood red Kool-Aid.

 Now, to get back to those charges in Krauthammer’s column.

As to the third charge, Fukuyama was against the Iraq invasion publicly from the summer of 2002. Krauthammer is simply misinformed.

As to the second charge, we don’t even have to look at Fukuyama’s book. Fukuyama’s essay outlines many reasons to not invade Iraq (one I mentioned above), not the least of which is that Iraq was not an existential threat to the United States and it therefore did not justify a pre-emptive strike. There were many options on the table for the United States. The argument made after one bad option was exercised to suggest that there were no other plausible alternatives is nonsensical. It is more appropriate to say that Krauthammer saw no other alternative in his own mind because his analysis was clouded by his belief in the certainty of the Iraq mission’s legitimacy. Krauthammer fooled himself, and still fools himself, into believing that his course of action was the only course of action. This is not really about policy, but more about his psyche and best left to the likes of Wittgenstein.

As to the first and obviously the most irksome charge, Fukuyama did not contend that Krauthammer’s speech was about Iraq. Fukuyama’s point was that Krauthammer, in 2004, did not recognize that the failures in Iraq had undermined Krauthammer’s "democratic globalism". Here are the relevant paragraphs from Fukuyama’s critique of the speech:

The 2004 speech is strangely disconnected from reality. Reading Krauthammer, one gets the impression that the Iraq War–the archetypical application of American unipolarity–had been an unqualified success, with all of the assumptions and expectations on which the war had been based fully vindicated. There is not the slightest nod towards the new empirical facts that have emerged in the last year or so: the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the virulent and steadily mounting anti-Americanism throughout the Middle East, the growing insurgency in Iraq, the fact that no strong democratic leadership had emerged there, the enormous financial and growing human cost of the war, the failure to leverage the war to make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian front, and the fact that America’s fellow democratic allies had by and large failed to fall in line and legitimate American actions ex post.

The failure to step up to these facts is dangerous precisely to the neo-neoconservative position that Krauthammer has been seeking to define and justify. As the war in Iraq turns from triumphant liberation to grinding insurgency, other voices–either traditional realists like Brent Scowcroft, nationalist-isolationists like Patrick Buchanan, or liberal internationalists like John Kerry–will step forward as authoritative voices and will have far more influence in defining American post-Iraq War foreign policy. The poorly executed nation-building strategy in Iraq will poison the well for future such exercises, undercutting domestic political support for a generous and visionary internationalism, just as Vietnam did. [Emphasis added by me]

 Fukuyama is quite clear here that Krauthammer does not mention Iraq in his discussion of "democratic globalism" nor does Krauthammer realize that his thesis is not supported by the facts on the ground (does that sound familiar?).

So, it appears to me that Krauthammer has gotten bent out of shape about nothing. He is focusing on the minutia of a Preface of a book to somehow gain the upper hand on an already lost argument. It is truly frightening that the last holdouts of a debunked application of a flawed theory believe so much in the rightness of their cause, that they go to great lengths to deny the reality all around them. Again, it may be time to trot out Wittgenstein.

In the battle of Fukuyama versus Krauthammer, it is safe to say that Krauthammer was knocked out at the opening bell. Compared to Fukuyama’s reasoning, Krauthammer’s thesis sounds downright childish and naive. That is not to say, of course, that Fukuyama is correct in his arguments. But, at least, he is making well thought out arguments that are open for debate amongst reasonable people. And, most importantly, his vision is informed by some connection to reality. As for Krauthammer, it is time to cut back on the Kool-Aid.