February 23, 2006 / by emptywheel

 

Francis Fukuyama, You Got Duped by an Ignoble Lie

Francis Fukuyama wants you to know that he’s no longer associated with Neo-Conservatism. Nope, he’s done with it.

Neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something I can no longer support.

I appreciate the public disavowal of the movement. But Fukuyama still doesn’t get it. He imagines the intentions of the Neo-Conservatives were good, and that it was just dumb luck and inaccurate intelligence that doomed those intentions, and with them, the credibility of the movement.

But successful pre-emption depends on the ability to predict the futureaccurately and on good intelligence, which was not forthcoming, whileAmerica’s perceived unilateralism has isolated it as never before.

This is a convenient self-deception, that the shitty intelligence and the inaccurate predictions were unmotivated. Here’s Paul Pillar in Foreign Affairs, a journal I’d wager Fukuyama reads quite closely.

Copyright © 2006 emptywheel. All rights reserved.
Originally Posted @ https://www.emptywheel.net/2006/02/23/francis-fukuyama-you-got-duped-by-an-ignoble-lie/