Iraq has taken the steam out of conservatives, especially ones that have a neocon-friendly view of foreign policy. With 20-20 hindsight, their cockeyed optimism over how the US would be received by the Iraqi people proved to be a bit off. Even though Ahmed Sixpack liked us better than Saddam, we underestimated how nasty both the Sunni and Shia hard-cases would be.
The conventional wisdom is that the neocons got cold-cocked in the last election. It's time to get off the mat, let the ref do a standing eight-count, and get back into the fight.
The problem that I see is that the establishmentarian "realists" are being pushed back into power as Dubya has to manage relations with a Democratic Congress. Often, those "realists" don't understand the reality of militant Islam and want to treat them like they treated the USSR and China back in the day.
Calling the ISG crew "surrender monkeys" is a bit over the top, even if those pictures of Baker and Hamilton as chimps is cute. They're actually diplomatic orangutans, not surrender monkeys. In the Planet of the Apes milieu, the orangutans were the intellectuals who wanted to avoid conflict; this Wikipedia piece described them as pedantic.
IIRC, when the gorillas wanted to pull rank and stage a coup, the 'rangs were impotent to do anything about it, combat not being part of their nature. I'm fearful that the new realist bunch coming on board likewise doesn't have the spine to do the job against our foes abroad.
I'm still looking for the US to lead and to try and make the world a better place. It's going to be harder to export democracy and human rights than we thought, but that doesn't mean we stop trying. We just need to work smarter, do a better job of picking our fights, and adjusting our expections.
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