NeoCons fading into ignominy

According to EmptyWheel over at the Next Hurrah the Project for the New American Century, which has been the organizational basis of the NeoCons, is fading into non-existence. They are announcing "Goals accomplished" and fading from the scene. EmptyWheel lines up the goals the PNAC attempted to achieve, and then show the results.

Let's see here:

Rallying support for American leadership? Check.

Inattention to the rules of statecraft and inconstant leadership? Check.

Short-term commercial benefits overriding strategic considerations? Check.

Inviting challenges to our fundamental interests? Check.

I'd say they've done a tremendous job ... of bringing about everything they aspired to avoid, including a world in which our chief rival owns our piggy bank and all the change in it.

Which suggests this faux-triumphalism should only invite one response. Constant, specific branding of these problems as Neocon problems. The Iraq debacle? A Neocon debacle. Lost opportunities in Latin America? A Neocon debacle. Alienated old-Europe allies? A Neocon debacle. The embrace of torture and many other atrocities against the rule of law? More Neocon debacles.

It really is rare for a set of political ideas to be so fully implemented as have those of the PNAC. It is even more rare for such experiments to fail so completely.

This has been the result of Conservatism applied to American foreign policy. When a politician advertises that he or she is a conservative, the debacles caused by the PNAC is what they are asking voters to vote for.