THE EVER-GROWING DISAPPOINTED-IN-BUSH CLUB….Bill Kristol, who’s not just a neocon but a second generation neocon, cranked up his long-festering criticism of the Bush administration’s war efforts today, telling Chris Wallace that “we have not had a serious three-year effort to fight a war in Iraq.” Kristol now joins Francis Fukuyama in the disappointed neocon club, William F. Buckley and Bruce Bartlett in the disappointed normal-con club, and guys like Richard Clarke and Michael Scheuer in the disappointed mega-hawk club. Pretty soon, in one of those weird inversions so common in politics, John McCain is going to be the only friend George Bush has left.
In any case, it turns out that Digby’s reaction to Kristol was similar to mine: doesn’t this sound an awful lot like the old school Marxist lament that you can’t say communism failed since it was never really put into practice anywhere? Given neoconservatism’s Trotskyite origins I suppose this parallel isn’t a surprise or anything, and I look forward to coming across a disparaging reference to “actual existing neoconservatism” someday soon. It should be the start of an entertaining bloodletting.
