When Joe Conason speaks, I listen. Today's piece at Salon.com is titled "It's Worse Than We Know" - and it ain't pretty for the neocons. In part:
I spent a few minutes on CNN with Frank Gaffney, head of the Center for Security Policy and a longtime neocon insider. It was supposed to be a debate, but I thought he sounded rather subdued as we discussed the Bush administration's decision to seek multilateral assistance through the United Nations -- a sound if belated policy that he and his circle abhor, though one against which they no longer seem able to muster an energetic argument.
The problem facing the neocons, of course, is that their plans have gone terribly wrong.
The Vietnam parallel was invoked again yesterday by retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, the president's former Mideast envoy, in a tough speech to members of the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association. "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," said the former general, who suffered serious wounds as a young officer there. "I ask you, is it happening again?"
Saying that the administration's Iraq policy was in "danger of failing," he added: "We certainly blew past the U.N. Why, I don't know. Now we're going back hat in hand."
Zinni's comments were met with sustained applause from the veteran officers in attendance. Here's a prediction based on many such anecdotes and my own e-mail from active-duty and retired military officers: There will be a shift away from the Republicans by Americans in uniform next year.
