Why Is This Evil Little Man Smiling?

By now you've heard about the Vanity Fair article that has great gnashing of teeth among prominent neo-cons. It's a must read, even if it is little more than a series of quotes at the moment (the proper article will be in the January issue, available in early December).

What's amazing here is that the majority of these people still (still!) believe they were right. The take absolutely no responsiblity for creating and promulgating the philisophy and "intelectual" underpinning of the adminstration's Iraq policy, they simply say (for the most part) that it was the execution that was all wrong.

Well, the execution was and is all wrong, of course. But the very philosophy is deeply, dangerously flawed. Its a sort of dark Wilsonian vision of imposed democracy that these people still believe. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, they continue to believe that the United States can impose its will by force on other nation-states. And they are still out there talking about.

These are the people who rationalized the first war of open agression in the United States' History. They've dismanteled the moral authority of the nation on the world stage, and eliminated a vast degree of the power of the US. And they don't even really know it.