Former neocon denounces neoconservatism

From the NY Times:

America at the Crossroads" serves up a powerful indictment of the Bush administration's war in Iraq and the role that neoconservative ideas — concerning preventive war, benevolent hegemony and unilateral action — played in shaping the decision to go to war, its implementation and its aftermath. These arguments are made all the more devastating by the fact that the author, Francis Fukuyama, was once a star neoconservative theorist himself, who studied with or was associated with leading neoconservative luminaries like Paul D. Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Albert Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom, and whose best-selling 1992 book, "The End of History and the Last Man," was celebrated (and denounced) as a classic neoconservative text on the end of the cold war and the global march of liberal democracy.

Mr. Fukuyama predicts that "one of the consequences of a perceived failure in Iraq will be the discrediting of the entire neoconservative agenda and a restoration of the authority of foreign policy realists." He writes that "neoconservatism, as both a political symbol and a body of thought, has evolved into something that I can no longer support." In its place, he calls for a "realistic Wilsonianism" that would involve "a dramatic demilitarization of American foreign policy and re-emphasis on other types of policy instruments," the jettisoning of incendiary rhetoric about a global war on terrorism and the promotion of political and economic development abroad through "soft power" ("our ability to set an example, to train and educate, to support with advice and often money").

The ability of the current Bush administration "to fix the problems it created for itself in its first four years will be limited," Mr. Fukuyama writes near the end of this tough-minded and edifying book. "Repairing American credibility will not be a matter of better public relations; it will require a new team and new policies."

It's ashame that it's taken the deaths of over two thousand of our troops and thousands of Iraqi civilians for many to realize that neoconservatism is flawed. Yet that doesn't stop the Bush administration from beating the war drum over Iran. From Yahoo News:

While blaming sectarian violence on the "enemies of freedom" in Iraq, Bush also pointed the finger at Iran, saying some of the homemade bombs wreaking havoc in Iraq had been traced to its eastern neighbor.
Locked in a test of wills with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, Bush said: "Coalition forces have seized IEDs (improvised explosive devices) and components that were clearly produced in Iran."

Bush is beginning to sound like he did before he invaded Iraq. Surely the american people will not fall for that again? To quote President Bush, "Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."