US polity in need of fresh concepts

This analysis - US polity in need of fresh concepts

The construct behind George W. Bush's foreign policy has collapsed under the weight of

Is published in the Australian and is well worth a look. The curious thing is that the writer, Paul Kelly, is a well known apologist for the right. Like the article itself, there is a suggestion that all is not well among the camp followers of the right.

THE Bush administration is confronted by strategic failure and fatigue. The ideas and methods devised by George W. Bush to interpret the unipolar world have been discredited by the Iraqi debacle. The search has begun for new concepts to govern the US polity.

This debate runs parallel with America's desperate need to salvage the best possible outcome in Iraq. The premise, however, is manifest: Iraq symbolises the collapse of the intellectual framework that defined Bush's foreign policy.

In the latest issue of The National Interest, National Intelligence Council former vice-chairman Graham Fuller says that Bush's universal war on terror, predicted to last for decades, is flawed because "the task is *Sisyphean, the enemy generalised, the goals unclear, the scope open-ended". [* laborious or futile]

… The neo-con philosophy was shaped by four ideas: that the character of evil regimes and their values did matter; that US power could be deployed for great moral purpose, as in World WarII and the Cold War; that government-led social engineering from communism to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society was to be distrusted; and that neither global institutions such as the UN nor international law should be relied on to deliver security and justice.

The full article is HERE