The Globe's Marcus Gee: Still drinking the neo-con Kool-Aid.

There are people who have at least a passing acquaintance with reality. Then there's the Globe's Marcus Gee (subscription required):

Neo-con idealists are still right

The title alone of his latest idiocy should be enough to make you want to stop reading and start drinking heavily but, hey, let's tough it out. It's worth it, I promise.

The neo-conservatives are everyone's famous punching bag. Liberals say their America-rules triumphalism helped turn the United States into a global bully. Conservatives say their naive crusade to impose democracy on the Middle East dragged the United States into a quagmire in Iraq. Now, even their brightest backer has turned against them. In a new book, America at the Crossroads, intellectual superstar Francis Fukuyama attacks his former bedmates from both sides.

Gee, of course, is about to disabuse us of those childish, petulant notions by, not surprisingly, revising history in bold and exciting new ways.

Their belief in the universal validity of American values like democracy and liberty led them to overcome their skepticism about social engineering and champion a project to make democracy flourish in the Middle East. Hopelessly ambitious, says Mr. Fukuyama. "You cannot impose democracy on a country that doesn't want to be democratic." Their confidence in American power, combined with their misunderstanding of global terrorism, led them to back the war in Iraq. Disastrous, says Mr. Fukuyama. The result has been to increase, not tame, the terrorist threat.

He's right that building a democratic Iraq out of the ruins of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship has been much harder than any of the neo-cons predicted. But is that because Iraq "doesn't want to be democratic?" The millions of Iraqis who braved terrorist threats to troop to the polls in two elections and a constitutional referendum seem to want it quite a lot. If Iraq has failed thus far to create a stable representative government, it isn't because Iraqis are averse. It's because insurgents and terrorists who loathe the idea are trying to block it.

Ah, yes, the American value of "democracy" -- the kind that inspired its glorious leader, Admiral Bunnypants, to, once upon a time, praise the new Prime Minister of Iraq, only to more recently try to strong-arm him to step down. To revise Gee ever so slightly, "If Iraq has failed thus far to create a stable representative government, it isn't because Iraqis are averse. It's because the neo-con cabal in Washington led them on with promises of actual democracy, then chopped them off at the knees when they tried to actually exercise it." See how much better that reads?

Sadly, Gee just keeps flogging this horse:

Even if the notion of creating a democracy in Iraq fails, you can hardly blame the neo-cons for dreaming it up. Washington didn't invade Iraq to build democracy. It invaded because it believed, with what seemed then like good reason, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. Having overthrown him, it could simply have installed a local client, a common enough American practice in Cold War days. Instead, it decided to give Iraqis a chance to govern themselves.

Ah, yes, the neo-cons gave the Iraqis "a chance to govern themselves." And when those ungrateful ragheads didn't make the right choices, well, that was enough of that little experiment, wasn't it? The final couple paragraphs of Gee's piece are worth reproducing if only to demonstrate the level of utter delusion in Gee's hermetically-sealed neo-con bubble:

Mr. Fukuyama's second claim -- that the neo-cons misunderstand the terrorist threat -- is equally flawed. He says that they overestimated the threat from overseas terrorists with nuclear bombs or other weapons of mass destruction when they should have been focusing on militant Muslims living in Europe and North America instead.

Easy for him to say. After 9/11, it suddenly seemed quite plausible that terrorists, clearly comfortable with the idea of causing mass death, would try to get hold of WMD and use them against the United States and its allies. That is why Washington immediately trained its sights on Iraq and other countries suspected of dabbling with WMD. That was no neo-con plot to remake the world. It was simple common sense. It still is.

But, despite Gee's inane babbling, the neo-cons did not train their sights on "Iraq and other countries." I'm pretty sure Iran and North Korea got a pass while Commander Chimpy and the Chimpettes devoted pretty much all of their time to fabricating evidence of Iraqi WMDs as en excuse to invade, only to later have to admit, "Oopsie. Our bad."

Can I apply for a columnist position at the Globe? Apparently, having talent is not an actual pre-requisite.

AFTERSNARK: It's not like one needs any additional evidence of Gee's utter wankitude, but let's consider this bit of historical revisionism on Gee's part:

After 9/11, it suddenly seemed quite plausible that terrorists, clearly comfortable with the idea of causing mass death, would try to get hold of WMD and use them against the United States and its allies. That is why Washington immediately trained its sights on Iraq and other countries suspected of dabbling with WMD.

Ah, so the deep thinkers in the neo-con movement were terribly, terribly concerned with WMDs, were they? Then why did they make no attempt whatever to secure Iraq's weapons plants immediately after the invasion?

Don't worry, that's a rhetorical question. It's not like I was expecting Gee to answer it or anything.

Where's Colin Mayes when you really need him?

OOOOOOH ... BONUS: Via Liberal Catnip, we get to see just how much the Bush administration really values the whole idea of democracy in Iraq. The answer -- not much (emphasis added):

Democracy In Iraq Not A Priority in U.S. Budget

While President Bush vows to transform Iraq into a beacon of democracy in the Middle East, his administration has been scaling back funding for the main organizations trying to carry out his vision by building democratic institutions such as political parties and civil society groups.

The administration has included limited new money for traditional democracy promotion in budget requests to Congress. Some organizations face funding cutoffs this month, while others struggle to stretch resources through the summer. The shortfall threatens projects that teach Iraqis how to create and sustain political parties, think tanks, human rights groups, independent media outlets, trade unions and other elements of democratic society.

I'm thinking you won't be reading about any of this in a Marcus Gee column any time soon.