An open letter to a Neo Con (Assuming there are any left in the US)

My Dear Neo Con friend,

As we come to the end of the sixth year of the reign of King George the Usurper, I am emboldened and encouraged by the fact that the country is finally waking up to the machinations of this deceiver and his coterie of cunning counselors. The Houston Houdini seems to be fast running out of tricks.

This Administration which has used fear and division to greatly expand the power of the executive branch since September 11, 2001 seems to finally be getting some payback. Rove, aka Bush’s brain, parlayed the United States worst terrorist attack into a tawdry political strategy based on scaring the pants of the American people to ensure that his party stayed in power. This strategy worked in 2002 and in 2004 but even he couldn’t turn it into a hat trick in 2006 where he finally got his comeuppance.

I need to ask you my dear neo-con friend to tell me what your thoughts are now on the conservative revolution. Is it dead or merely sleeping? Has Robespierre been guillotined or is this a temporary blip on the way to making the US even redder than it currently is? In particular I want you to tell me what you think of the much vaunted Iraq strategy that you were pushing as the panacea to all the problems in the Middle East. It is in tatters. Moqtada al- Sadr has an even chance of becoming the next President of a free Iraq. There are no Jefferson's of even the “movin on up” variety on the Baghdad landscape.

Is it still too early to judge or has the time come to call this adventure for what it is....a total debacle; dreamed up by ideologues and directed by a not so intelligent commander-in-chief? Was this an appropriate expenditure of nearly a trillion dollars and three thousand American lives and God knows how many Iraqi lives? Does the road to Jerusalem lead through Baghdad? Or does the road to Jerusalem lead thru Jerusalem and Gaza and Ramallah and Washington DC and London and Cairo and Riyadh??

Some true believers are frequently heard saying that we can’t judge Bush's "grand" strategy in terms of "CNN Time" - is this still true? Do we have to wait till say 2050 or so to pass judgment on this?? This war is now longer than America’s involvement in WW II - so is that not long enough for the greatest army in the history of the world to say secure Baghdad?

Isn’t it ironic that Bush had to meet Prime Minister Maliki in Amman because even after 3000 Americans lives and one trillion dollars capital of Iraq is not yet secure? If Clinton (or God forbid Gore) presided over such a screw up wouldn’t the GOP faithful and Rush Limbaugh be screaming to have him drawn, quartered and fed to hyenas? Probably so.

Also now that we have a full scale civil war, is the much quoted flypaper theory still valid? Most of the people fighting America in Iraq are native Iraqis who are not Al Qaeda jihadis. More nationalist I would think. Another neo con theory discredited.

The Taliban are pretty much back in full force in Afghanistan and Osama is still alive therefore was it a good idea to redirect resources to Iraq before Afghanistan was stable?

We are now considering talking to Iran, Syria and NK (this was the Clinton approach that the neo cons led by Cheney pretty much spat on)

So just like Hezbollah showed the limitations of Israeli power has Iraq shown the limits of US Power.....Is George Bush really the best thing that has ever happened to the Mullahs in Teheran?? I would say yes. I guess us timid Liberals who wet our pants and don’t know anything about dealing with terror turned out to be right on this one.

In general the big lesson learned is don’t go off on foreign military adventures with untested military theories based on LIES and try to force democracy at the barrel of a gun on people who have been warring with each other since Moses Bar Mitzvah.

You don’t need to go to Harvard or read the WSJ to know it.... Its really hard to not gloat BUT every single theory for the war in Iraq (which you so vehemently defended and in some cases with a massive dose of unnecessary vitriol) has been disproven and discredited 3 years in:

So let u summarize how wrong you and your other Neo Con friends have been:

WMD - Wrong

Flypaper theory - Wrong

Road to Jerusalem leads through Baghdad - Wrong

War will pay for itself with oil revenue - Wrong

US greeted as liberators -Wrong

Saddam nexus with Al Qaeda - Wrong

Iraq the shining light for the rest of the ME - Wrong

Rumsfeld doctrine vs. Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force - Wrong

Assuming that Arabs had the same idea of American democracy and liberty - Wrong