If you haven't read Charles Kesler's sorta-traditionalist conservative critique of neoconservatism and its support of the war in Iraq, you should. First of all, you should because it's a thoughtful critique, not an attack. Frank-Meyeresque fusionism must live--conservatives and neocons continue to have plenty of things in common. Second, he makes interesting points. Some don't surprise--he suggests that the neoconservative belief in Wilsonian democracy-promotion as key to American foreign policy is not a departure--it goes back to neoconservatism's founders. But he emphasizes the problems with promoting democracy, especially the tendency to slide down the slippery slope to utopianism ("we can make the whole world democratic!"), and the fact that establishing democracy in a place like Iraq is just flat our darned difficult, more difficult than many neocon supporters of the war thought. (and perhaps way more difficult than President Bush thought). Kesler thus thinks that the Bush Doctrine is going to have to be re-thought, scaled back...or at least, made more "realist"-friendly, though at the same time he believes that the war on Islamic terror still must be supported.
Interesting. In a way, I think many supporters of the war in Iraq, even those connected with the administration, have already been heading Kesler's way, in the sense that many now talk about an American goal of establishing a stable government in Iraq, one that hopefully would promote freedom and liberty etc...or at least have those elements in it. But staying in Iraq until a government is established there that meets ALL the requirements of being a democracy? You don't hear that so much anymore. Myself, I have no problem with that.
