Tuesday, May 24, 2011

BIG THINK VIDEO: Fukuyama Iraq Rethinking

3 comments:

amagi said...

Do you believe this man? I sure don't.

I also find it galling that he, of all people, deigns to lecture us on groupthink. If the war had gone well, he would be basking in praise and probably only too happy to take credit. He 'changed his mind,' after the fact, to save his career. I'm sure that seeing the horrific results of the war he had always wanted played a part as well.

Many of us wanted Saddam gone and many of us thought it could be accomplished with a minimum of bloodshed. That's not what happened, and we own the aftermath. Fukuyama doesn't have the moral courage to face the consequences of the policies he advocated, and it makes me furious. For someone who was such a stalwart believer in democracy, he is terrible at taking responsibility for his own ideas.

Joel Wing said...

I don't have a problem with his change of heart. I think he changed his mind relatively early on, and has written and spoken about it in the past as well. I've changed my mind on a couple things about Iraq myself, so I have to give that right to others.

Joel Wing said...

To follow up on that, I don't think Fukuyama's change of heart was an opportunistic move meant to save himself. I don't think he supported the war, and then saw how the post-war situation was going and then wanted to jump ship. He considered himself a neoconservative beforehand and supported the war, and then not only turned on the war, but left the neoconservative movement. He even wrote a book criticizing the intellectual foundations of neoconservative foreign policy called America At The Crossroads.

http://www.amazon.com/America-Crossroads-Democracy-Neoconservative-Legacy/dp/0300122535/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1306336834&sr=8-1

Security In Iraq Mar 8-14, 2024

The Islamic State suddenly lurched back to life in Iraq during the second week of March carrying out the most attacks in ...