by Zwackus
Tue Sep 14th, 2010 at 02:01:58 AM EST
In a several day old Salon thread, on a thread about the legacy of Bush, Cheney, and the Project for a New American Century, I wrote this.
On another point, could you even say they got lucky? Sure, they got their "transformative event," and the wars they wanted - which proved what a complete bunch of idiots they were. The wars have been disastrous failures for everyone except defense contractors, and the people who argued for them are generally agreed to have been either dramatically misguided or idiots. Their big master plan was shown to be little more than fanboy drooling, as America teeters on the bring of complete collapse.
This prompted a response from generic . . .
But in a lot of ways they succeeded. Constitutional rights are almost gone and a lot of their policies are now locked in.
Unemployment may be disastrously high, but absent a social movement that threatens the hierarchy of property in a big way that will probably only lead to more recruits for the army. The Federal deficit is quite a lot bigger than it would have been, but it is also not all that important. The army may be overstretched, but it also isn't needed to make defiance of US dictates incredible costly.
The point I am trying to make is as follows: The Neocons may have through their actions made most everyone worse off, but I doubt that they brought the US empire much closer to collapse.
It seems like something worth discussing.
Since its my diary, I'll explain my side in a bit more detail.
The PNAC proposal was rather sweeping, and had some rather impressive goals. I propose that Bush and Cheney got the opportunity they wanted, and executed their strategy without opposition - and were greeted by pathetic failure. Their adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan not only failed to accomplish the broad goals of the PNAC, namely making the world quake in fear of the triumphant American Empire, but they also failed to accomplish any other positive outcomes, no matter how narrowly drawn.
America and its empire may or may not be on the brink of collapse - I suppose that depends on how apocalypse minded one is. However, is it really any more respected or feared than it was before the war? All that money spent, and all those chances - just to be in a position comparable to where one started. How is that a success? Especially when one factors in the ridicule and contempt heaped upon the actors involved in the fiasco for the gross and obvious incompetence with which they carried out their devious master plans.
