U-turns the neocon way

Battles between US neoconservatives and so-called "liberal media" have hit new depths in the run-up to today's midterm elections, sparking claims of U-turns and partisan opportunism. But beneath the froth a more significant question lurks: whether the neocon movement, extraordinarily influential in formulating Bush administration foreign policy since 2001, is disintegrating.

The immediate cause of the furore is last week's publication by Vanity Fair of excerpts from interviews conducted with leading neocons. Richard Perle, a Pentagon insider known as the Prince of Darkness, is quoted as suggesting that the Iraq intervention, which he previously supported, was mistaken.

David Frum, Mr Bush's "axis of evil" speechwriter, reportedly believes failure in Iraq is inescapable and the president is to blame. Other well-known neocons also have critical things to say about administration competence.

In a furious response collated online by National Review magazine, several interviewees are now claiming their views were misrepresented. Mr Perle does not deny specific quotes attributed to him, but says a promise not to publish his remarks before the elections was broken. For the record, he says, "we are on the right path" in Iraq.

Mr Frum calls Vanity Fair's excerpts "dishonest". He says he did not intend to criticise Mr Bush but rather his "malfunctioning" national security council. Contrary to the magazine's Neo Culpa headline, he is not remorseful about past judgments. "Obviously I wish the war had gone better. It's true I fear that there is a real danger that the US will lose in Iraq," he says. "And yes, I do blame a lot that has gone wrong on failures of US policy ... (But) my fundamental views on the war remain as they were in 2003."

Leaving aside disputes over who said what and what they meant, the row has exposed ganglions of raw nerves among neocon leading lights angry that Mr Bush and others have failed to implement their ideas with sufficient vigour. They appear convinced that official backsliding and bungling, not ideological flaws in their thinking, are to blame.

Most telling, perhaps, is a lament from Kenneth Adelman, a lifelong hawk and neocon icon. "The idea of a tough foreign policy on behalf of morality, the idea of using our power for moral good in the world is dead," at least for a generation, he says. He, too, is scathing about administration incompetence and Mr Bush's security advisers - "these are not serious people". But he appears to point to a deeper failure of confidence in the achievability of neocon aims.

According to Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke in their book, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order, the project has three themes. One is "a belief deriving from religious conviction that the human condition is defined as a choice between good and evil". The second is "the fundamental determinant of the relationship between states rests on military power and willingness to use it". And finally,"the Middle East and global Islam are the principal theatre for American overseas interests".

The authors conclude that neoconservatism is "an unfortunate detour", a temporary aberration that has undermined traditional international alliance and consensus-building. In their analysis, it belongs to the past.

Even neocons seem to accept that their over-simplified and over-militarised approach, while theoretically defensible, has led not to a new American century but a series of dead ends. Author Francis Fukuyama, a former adherent, says US policy needs a new realism "that better matches means to ends". The midterms, in other words, could be the beginning of history.