Let me start off by saying that during the Cold War and until the last couple years, I would have been considered a realist in foreign policy. I held my nose to support odious dictators who would at least help us fight the greater threat of the USSR.
And even after 9/11, I did not want to initially target Iraq in order to go after al Qaeda and their Taliban host. I can't say I even hoped that we would topple the Taliban regime when we launched the campaign in October 2001. I claim no particular prescience on these matters.
After we destroyed the Taliban regime, I was (and still am) all in favor of going after Saddam's Iraq because Iraq was a threat to the region and our interests even separate from the threat of terrorism or his WMD ambitions. If al Qaeda did not exist, we still would have needed to end his regime for moral and security reasons. With jihadis in existence, the need seemed overwhelming. And my hopes for the impact of the Iraq War were limited to the impact on regimes who would become too scared of us not to help fight al Qaeda and on people who would see the price of supporting their jihadi causes as too high. I did not foresee a wave of reform in the Arab world even with a successful democracy in Iraq established.
So I'm not a Neo-Con in any sense of the word. Though I don't consider it pejorative, there is nothing "neo" about me.
But looking at the impact of the Iraq War--a war we are clearly winning though we have not won it yet--I have come to see that the Iraq War is having an impact far greater than I could have hoped. In contrast to those who said the war would enflame the Arab street against us and topple friendly regimes to create even more jihadi states, the stability of autocracy and stagnation is being undermined in good ways. Democracy is making still feeble but real advances, and even the governments that fear such advances are actually working to stamp out jihadi terror rather than look the other way as long as it was aimed at the West.
Victor Hanson writes (via Real Clear Politics):
It may go mostly unspoken, but the removal of Saddam and the resulting effort to birth democracy in Iraq have sent tremors through the Middle East.
And even as Americans tire of the costs of reconstructing Iraq, millions of Arabs, who may not like interlopers in the ancient caliphate, are nevertheless curious to see Iraq's new politicians bicker and debate freely on television in a manner unseen in the past.
Look at what's been happening in the Middle East. True, the megaphones of the Arab state-run press are, as always, attacking the United States. But the Lebanese people are in a fury against their former occupiers, the Syrians. Tens of thousands of Jordanians took to the street to protest against the terror of fundamentalist Islam. Revolutionary Hamas is already looking ridiculous, as it tries to beg or cajole enough petty cash to keep its garbage collectors on the job.
And in Leptis Magna, where foreigners trickle back to rediscover the ancient sites, it's clear Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's Libya is not quite the same place it was four years ago.
Back in America, pensioned generals and out-of-work diplomats who oversaw the failed old realpolitik of the past keep telling us that Iraq is a disaster. They are too quick to declare defeat.
The truth is that a huge rock was dropped in the stagnant Middle East pond by the removal of Saddam Hussein. If we keep our cool and remain patient, the ripples that are slowing emanating may surprise us yet - as they do out here among the majestic stones of once-forgotten Leptis Magna.
A realistic assessment of the impact of the war even when it is not yet won shows that the disaster that was supposed to follow our invasion is right now the exact opposite. We have hope of reforming a stagnant region and stamping out the root cause of the terrorism that stalks us. And if you are basing your views on reality, can anybody really say that even imperfect democracy is worse for Arabs and Moslems than the pre-2001 "stability" that we (understandably under the circumstances) promoted?
I guess I still do consider myself a realist--it's just that I base my realism on the new situation of our strategic environment rather than staying stuck in the Cold War mindset and assumptions that first guided my sense of policy realism. Calling yourself a realist at minimum should mean you base your views on the world we exist in and not the world you remember.
To me, those who cling to the Cold War notions of foreign policy realism are not guided by reality in any meaningful sense of the word. And their lack of patience is just astounding for those willing to endure decades of autocrats just to maintain the then-status quo.
As an aside (die lurking editors! I digress at my whim!), it's funny how both the foreign policy "realists" and the "reality-based community" seem to ignore the reality of today's world. That word must not mean what I think it means...
