Ruling the world

The American Prospect Online features a longer version of an article in the current print edition, which is a discussion between Bernard-Henri Lévy and Anatol Lieven. Lieven of the New America Foundation says of the neoconservatives' boundless faith in American military might:

The occupation of Iraq has crippled both America's ability to use its military might elsewhere in the world and the willingness of the American people to support further such interventions. Far from being omnipotent to shape the world, the United States can't even control Fallujah. (my emphasis)

And he says of the neocons' ideology of spreading democracy through Napoleonic "wars of liberation":

The problem with emphasizing democratization in this way is that it is radically incompatible with the actual policies of the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, as fully encouraged and supported by the neoconservatives. This contradiction between ideals and realpolitik was always there in U.S. policy. The neoconservatives and the Bush administration, however, have raised this contradiction to surreal, virtually Orwellian heights. They believe in spreading human rights and the rule of law? So they kidnap suspected terrorists and have them tortured in illegal U.S. prisons and in those of Muslim dictatorships whose human-rights records they publicly profess to despise. They want to bring democracy to the Muslim world? So they act with brazen contempt for the opinions of the vast majority of ordinary Muslims in democracies like Turkey and Indonesia.

The Bush administration and the neoconservatives believe in free elections? So every time this seems likely to bring victory for Islamist forces, they veer back to support for dictatorship. They respect ordinary Iraqis and believe they are ready for democracy? They respect them so much that they try to foist Ahmed Chalabi on them as a U.S.-backed dictator, and they share the general approach of the U.S. military, which respects them so much that it doesn't bother to count how many of them it accidentally kills. (my emphasis)

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