Francis Fukuyama: Running from the blood

In the past 18 months or so, media observers have witnessed a change in focus in US newspapers and broadcast television. Headlines of US accomplishments in Iraq slowly slipped from the foreground to be replaced with disparaging remarks of officials from both sides of the political divide. Criticism of the Bush presidency -- unheard of in the first two years after the events of 9/11 -- became the jeux du jour as mainstream media admitted its mistakes in reporting the "weapons of mass destruction" (WMD) issue and promised better coverage of Iraq events.

That coverage leaves much to be desired. US media on Iraq is still lacking in depth and veracity. Nonetheless, there has been one recurrent theme: Iraq is on the throes of a chaotic post- Saddam pre-Iranian-style theocracy because of poor planning and a lack of American insight. Finally, the media is admitting that not only was US intelligence utterly wrong -- if not outright moulded to fit political whims -- on Iraq's WMD, but that planning for the post-conflict scenario was at best incompetent.

Therefore, it was not surprising to see Francis Fukuyama, erstwhile neo-conservative pundit and author, reverse course on his once over-enthusiastic desire for a pre-emptive invasion of Iraq and admit he had been wrong. In his 1992 The End of History, Fukuyama wrote of the urgent need to transport ideals of liberal democracy as practised in the United States to the four corners of the world. It was, effectively, an archetypal neo-conservative manifesto. But in his 2006 America at the Crossroads, Fukuyama has abandoned his neo-conservative zeal and come out in force condemning the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war, the notion that democracy can be so easily planted in the heart of undemocratic societies, and the misplaced notion that America will be loved for intervening in global conflicts.

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http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2006/790/re6.htm